Steven Michael Gardner served side by side with John Forbes Kerry in Vietnam, was wounded under Kerry's command, and was manning twin .50-caliber machine guns on a night that has forever haunted Kerry -- the night his crew killed a young boy in a sampan.

But unlike many of Kerry's crewmates, Gardner has not appeared at Kerry's side at campaign rallies, and his view of Kerry at war is far different from the heroic view presented by others. "He absolutely did not want to engage the enemy when I was with him," Gardner said in a recent interview. "He wouldn't go in there and search. That is why I have a negative viewpoint of John Kerry."

Gardner's view is dramatically at odds with that of many other crewmates whom the Globe interviewed, who praise Kerry's leadership and say he was one of the most aggressive skippers in the Navy at the time. Gardner, who said he intends to support President Bush for reelection, clashed with Kerry on one of the most memorable and haunting nights that the two sailors spent together in Vietnam. That story, which until recently has been told publicly only in fragmentary form, involved the killing of the young boy.

As Gardner recalls it, he was in the "tub" above the pilot house with the twin machine guns, and Kerry was in command, when the Navy swift boat came upon a sampan in the darkness. Gardner flashed a searchlight and ordered the craft to stop. Then, he said, he saw a figure rise up over the gunwale with a semiautomatic weapon. Spotting tracers in the sky and fearing an attack, Gardner said, he laced the sampan with bullets, and other crew members fired as well. Gardner recalls a man in the sampan falling overboard, presumably dead.

After the shooting had stopped and Kerry had ordered a cease-fire, Gardner said, the crew found a woman in the sampan who was alive. There was also the boy, dead in the bottom of the boat. Gardner said there is no way to know which crewmate fired the shots that killed the boy, but he said Kerry was in the pilot house and did not fire. Kerry was livid when he emerged, Gardner said.

"Kerry threatened me with a court-martial, screaming at the top of his lungs: `What the hell do you think you're doing? I ought to have you court-martialed,' " Gardner recalled. "Thankfully, the whole crew was there in the middle of it . . . they verified there were weapons being shot at us. That was the end of it."

To this day, Gardner said, he wonders whether Kerry had that day in mind when he became an antiwar leader in 1971 and reported that atrocities occurred in Vietnam. But Gardner said "the only atrocity that night was that the parents of that kid had him in that boat while running contraband." He did not know how old the boy was.

When Kerry was interviewed last year for the Globe's "Candidate in the Making" series and discussed what seemed to be the same shooting, he said he could not remember when the killing occurred or which crewmates were with him. But he characterized it like this: "It is one of those terrible things, and I'll never forget, ever, the sight of that child. But there was nothing that anybody could have done about it. It was the only instance of that happening."

"It angered me," Kerry added. "But look, the Viet Cong used women and children. Who knows if they had -- under the rice -- a satchel [containing an explosive], and if we had come along beside them they had thrown the satchel in [our] boat. . . . So it was a terrible thing, but I've never thought we were somehow at fault or guilty. There wasn't anybody in that area that didn't know you don't move at night, that you don't go out in a sampan on the rivers, and there's a curfew."

Gardner, who served on Kerry's first swift-boat crew, Patrol Craft Fast No. 44, said his view of Kerry is based on a comparison with three more-experienced skippers with whom Gardner served earlier in the Vietnam War. He said Kerry was new to combat and thus more tentative.

Gardner served with Kerry the month after the skipper had arrived in Vietnam.

In addition to the killing of the boy, the other combat experience that Gardner vividly recalls was when he was wounded Dec. 28, 1968, while serving as Kerry's gunner.

Gardner had looked down and saw blood in the gun tub, dripping over the boxes of bullets stored on the floor. After the momentary shock, he recalled, Gardner realized his injury was "no big deal" and kept on firing. But Gardner said that when Kerry learned of the wound, he ordered the boat turned around to get medical attention for his gunner. Gardner argued that the retreat was unnecessary and worried that leaving the scene might endanger others on the mission. "I said, Lieutenant Kerry, I'm fine, nothing's wrong, I got a little flesh wound here.' But [Kerry] was already backing out of the canal, getting ready to run for it," Gardner said.

Other crewmates who served at the same time have portrayed Kerry in the most admirable terms and praised his aggressiveness. Crewmate Stephen Hatch said Kerry turned back with the injured Gardner because "we didn't know how hurt he was."

James Wasser, who served with Kerry and Gardner, said that while he has great respect for Gardner as a "warrior," he does not agree with Gardner's view of what happened that day. "I would have done the same thing" as Kerry, Wasser said. "You don't stay in harm's way." Wasser does not believe anyone else on the mission was endangered by the way Kerry's boat exited the canal.

On Saturday, a Kerry campaign official told the Globe he had learned that the newspaper had spoken to Gardner for a forthcoming biography of Kerry.

Later, Gardner said, a campaign official working with Kerry's crewmates contacted him to sound him out on his views about Kerry. Then historian Douglas Brinkley, who did not interview Gardner for his recent book about Kerry's Vietnam service, "Tour of Duty," called Gardner over the weekend. Brinkley told him there would be a firestorm if he went public, and the two discussed Gardner's views on Kerry's Vietnam service, Gardner said.

Brinkley then wrote an article, published on the website of Time magazine Tuesday night, in which he said Gardner's criticism was politically motivated. "After interviewing Gardner for over an hour, it essentially boils down to one word: politics," Brinkley wrote. "Gardner is sickened by the idea of Kerry as president."

The story quoted Gardner as saying Kerry is another "Slick Willy," a reference to former President Clinton.

Kerry, who has declined numerous interview requests this year to talk about his Vietnam experiences, was quoted in Brinkley's article as saying Gardner's stories "are made up. It's sad, but that's the way it goes in war, and especially in politics."

Gardner, in his interviews with the Globe, said he was upset with Brinkley's portrayal of him and said his memory of Kerry in Vietnam has nothing to do with his political views. "Absolutely not. I never made the first call to anyone," Gardner said. "Until somebody called me, I kept it to myself." With Gardner's name and viewpoint made public in the Time story, the Globe decided to publish this article, which is based on material in a forthcoming book, "John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography." The book is written by three Globe staff members and based on a seven-part series that ran last June.

Gardner said yesterday that he wonders whether speaking critically about Kerry led to his losing his job as a home inspection field manager. The Brinkley story said Gardner "claims he works at Millennium Services." Within hours of the publication of the article on Time's website, Gardner said, he was fired from his job as a home inspection field manager.

Gardner's former boss, Randy Girton, of Millennium Information Services of Illinois, said Gardner's view about Kerry had nothing to do with it, adding that it was a "weird coincidence" that Gardner and some others were let go yesterday. "He was a great employee, but just in this economic situation we didn't have the volume in that territory to warrant a manager in that territory," Girton said. He said Gardner did not accept an offer to work as an independent contractor.