Eriksson decides to do something about her death and reports it to his superiors. Mrs. Eriksson fetched it for me from a bureau drawer, and I read: 1: You are to be commended for the important role you played in seeing that justice was done in the recent court-martial cases involving four soldiers charged with the rape and murder of a young Vietnamese woman. One of the defense lawyers hammered away at the point that Eriksson had killed the girl when, in obeying the Sergeants command to shoot her, he fired his grenade launcher. . may have rescued him from Meserve. The farther back you got, the closer you approached the way people lived in civilian life., On November 16, 1966, the commanding officer of Erikssons platoon, a Negro lieutenant, Harold Reilly (whose name, like every soldiers name in this account, has been changed), assigned him as one of five enlisted men who were to make up a reconnaissance patrol, its mission to comb a sector of the Central Highlands for signs of Vietcong activity. It had nothing to do with a mans being responsible for his own behavior. The holed-up V.C. Q: You would suggest some minor form of punishment, in other words? He felt even wearier on arriving in Kansas, when he learned that there was little point to his presence. I couldnt even guess at the answersnot without knowing what kind of jam Manuel thought he was in.. He had only been fooling, he testified, when he talked of having fun on the reconnaissance mission. Though news of the incident reached state-side shortly after the soldiers' trials the story gained widespread notoriety through Daniel Lang's 1969 article for The New . At any rate, he felt that he was on the right track, since chaplains were professionally concerned with conscience. man, Who raped or had sexual intercourse with the girl?, Manuel replied, Sergeant Meserve, Clark, R. Diaz, and myself. War crimes such as the Incident on Hill 192 (dramatized in the equally harrowing Casualties of War ), the My Lai Massacre, the Shelling of Highway 1, the Phoenix Program, and many more all involved the torture, rape, and mass murder of unarmed Vietnamese civilians. . The four courts-martial took place in the winter of 1967, within a period of about ten days in the middle of March. For this action, Meserve was nominated for a Bronze Star. Sven wasnt raised churchy, Mrs. Eriksson remarked. To counter any such strategy, the prosecutor wanted to have on hand a statement attesting to his chief witnesss mental stability. Throughout, Eriksson recalls, dozens of pictures were taken, for possible use as trial exhibits, the flashes of the photographers bulbs pale in the afternoon sun. It had to be him, and no other chaplain, he recalled, smiling. It was just that he was less than average as far as being one of the guys, should we say? Invariably, Eriksson said, he found himself reproved for the deed. When Mao saw me come into the hootch, she thought I was there to rape her, Eriksson said. Even the prosecutor predicted defeat, Eriksson told me, and during a short break Eriksson heard the judge remark to the court reporter that the trial was a waste of the taxpayers money. And, in fact, Eriksson told me, a C.I.D. He was at his wits end for a way to circumvent the system, Eriksson told me, because he was convinced that it was this system that lay at the heart of his difficulties. It might have influenced my thinking if Id had that information, but Im not sure. June 17, 2022 . The judges had ordered that the incarcerated Rafe be given a new trial, which, like Manuels, was held at Fort Leavenworth. It was impossible for me to have any part of what I knew was about to take place. He suspects that Meserve sensed this, for before anything else happened the Sergeant confronted him, demanding to know whether he would enter the hootch when his turn came. Sometimes I didnt see what kept the stick from snapping. They were cousins named DiazRafael, known as Rafe, whose home was near Amarillo, Texas, and Manuel, who came from a town some distance north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The following day, in the midst of a firefight with the Viet Cong, Thomas and Gervase became worried that the woman would be seen with the squad. . I gave her crackers and beef stew and water. [2] He had no illusion, though, that Rowan himself could do much about what he had just learned, but at that, Eriksson said, his friend did what he could, immediately relaying news of the murder to the sergeant of his own squad. I made sure I wrote to him every day, and in each letter I put a packet of Kool-Aid, so that at least his water would be tasty. Ill never know. Echoing the instructions that a battalion officer had given him earlier, the Sergeant informed the four men of the duties that each was expected to carry out, of the chain of command in the field, and of radio-communication arrangements with the platoon command, and then, consulting the grid cordinates of a map he was holding, the Sergeant described a precise westerly route that the patrol was to follow. To Erikssons surprise, the trial, which occurred in June, 1969, resulted in Rafes second conviction, an inevitable finding, in view of the fact that Rafe pleaded guilty to the charge of unpremeditated murder. Conscience was one thing that crossed over from civilian life to war, he said. (He got a break. His persistence in reporting the crime to higher authorities eventually resulted in general courts-martial against his four fellow squad mates. The weather had turned hot and dry, Eriksson remembers, and the interior of the courtroom throbbed with the whirr of electric fans. That occurred in February, 1968, when Manuel was granted a retrial on the ground that although his C.I.D. Cross-examining, the prosecutor asked, When you say he didnt have a sense of humor, you mean he wasnt a jokester, running around making or seeing the funny side of everything?. Fortunately, he ran into a fellow-Minnesotan at the airport, an artilleryman with whom he had gone off to Asia thirteen months earlier; the artilleryman, also homeward bound, unhesitatingly lent Eriksson the ten dollars. simply told him to bug off from the word go? They constantly reported rapes and kidnappings by the Vietcong; in fact, the Vietcong committed these crimes so indiscriminately that the victims were sometimes their own sympathizers. His farewell to them was succinct. Journalist Daniel Lang brought this to further public attention with a 1969 article in The New Yorker entitled Casualties of War . However, he did call Clarks attention to a bush directly ahead. The thought of them, he said, makes him feel discouraged at times about his future, which, he pointed out, could be a long one. Theyd say there had never been a girl with the patrol, and Id be left looking crazy., Shifting uneasily on the sofa, Eriksson went on, When I stepped back into the hootch, I saw that Mao had made up her mind that I wasnt going to harm her. Below was a valley with a winding stream, and along its banks were paddy fields with neat little dikes around them. It excited me. Impatiently, Clark volunteered his services, but Meserve wouldnt have that, insisting that they collaborate. He had no idea how long this feeling would continue, but for the present, he knew, he lived with the charge daily, often wondering how Mao might have fared in a time of peace. Seeing him and Greenacre chatting together, Eriksson went on, had made him realize that the only chance he had of escaping the chain of command was through a chaplain. . He had stopped the shooting as soon as he heard an American voice yell Hit it! Still fuming as the two patrols stood facing each other awkwardly, Erikssons sergeant declared that in all the time he had spent in Vietnam he had never before experienced any such mistake. As Eriksson waited for his sergeant to cool off, he idly scanned the men in the other squad, his eyes stopping abruptly when they met the expressionless gaze of a familiar face. All he need do, he believed, was report that they had committed rape and murder, and the military authorities would investigate with the same alacrity that civilian authorities are expected to show in such situations. The poor guys guts were out, Eriksson said. Instead, to Erikssons astonishment, Reilly chose that moment to offer a reminiscence. [1], On November 17, 1966, Sergeant David Edward Gervase (aged 20) and Private First Class Steven Cabbot Thomas (21)both members of C Company, 2nd Battalion (Airborne), 8th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Divisiontalked to three other squad members (Privates First Class Robert M. Storeby, 22; cousins Cipriano S. Garcia, 21, and Joseph C. Garcia, 20)[3] about plans to kidnap a "pretty girl" during their reconnaissance mission planned for the next day,[6] and "at the end of five days we would kill her." She was in an advanced state of labor, the Lieutenant related, but she had been refused admittance to the hospital, on racial grounds, and she had eventually had her baby on the floor of its reception room. He sounded genuinely concerned. Something else the prosecutor did was to advise him to see a psychiatrist before the trials started. The four soldiers with whom he was on patrol raped and killed her, abandoning her body in mountain brush. . His discontent abated when he managed to remind himself of the plan he had made during his leave to reach out beyond his jobs, whatever they might be. Eriksson and four other enlisted men were then on a reconnaissance patrol in the vicinity of the girls home. He had thought of them uneasily, imagining that the act of testifying might force him to relive the macabre episode on Hill 192. Q: Did he endeavor to actively join in with the free-time activity of the rest of the people, or did he have to be coaxed. Agreeing, the Lieutenant said that he would order another squad, operating at the base of the mountain, to cordinate its movements with those of Meserves patrol, and that he would also dispatch two other squads to the area. For Eriksson, the trials were totally unlike anything he had anticipated. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories, Like their predecessors in all wars, American veterans of the Vietnamese campaign who are coming home to civilian life have their heads filled with memories that may last the rest of their days, for, no matter how far from the front a man may have spent his time as a soldier, he will remember it as a special time, when, fleetingly, his daily existence appeared to approach the heroic. Whatever I could do about her depended on finding someone with both the rank and the conscience to help me, he told me. It was the least I could doI had failed her in so many ways. Only one piece of military action occurred that morning, and it could have been dispensed with. I thought he wanted to destroy living evidence., In the morning, everyone got up shortly after six, and it wasnt long before Maos fate was sealed. Arriving at the austere hootch that Reilly used as a command post, Eriksson told me, he imagined that the Lieutenant, if only conversationally, would express dismay over the murder. None of the four hit anything, and the Sergeant radioed the platoon command for artillery support, which was quickly granted; the coperation, Eriksson recalled, pleased Meserve no end, since it implicitly conferred an importance on the skirmish. The true story in question is what's commonly referred to as Incident on Hill 192: in 1966, an American army squad in the Vietnam War kidnapped a young village girl, then subsequently gang-raped and murdered her. At one point, Eriksson recalled, the Captain warned him that if the incident did result in courts-martial, he might face rough going on the witness stand. [9], Thomas, Cipriano Garcia, and Joseph Garcia were each convicted of unpremeditated murder in March and April 1967. As for the defendants themselves, only Rafe showed contrition, the most striking manifestation of which was his decision to testify against Clark. He is now on duty as a soldier in the United States while awaiting further word on his case, which since September has been in the hands of a board of review. In 1989 Brian De Palma directed the film Casualties of War, which was based on Lang's book. No such thing happened. As in all armies, he believed, it pervaded every facet of military life, embracing officers and enlisted men, volunteers and draftees, and, for that matter, men with college degrees, like Vorst and Reilly, and men with meagre educations, like Meserve and him. Cipriano Garcia's 4-year sentence was shortened to 22 months. I discovered its not difficult to kill a human beingin combat its as instinctive as ducking bullets. He is a short man of fair complexion, blond and blue-eyed, and he is not voluble. Explaining his choice of the patrol, Reilly testified, These people, I felt, knew what they were doing, and a second reason was because the company commanding officer asked for good people. On the following afternoon, November 17th, the members of the newly formed patrol met in a corner of the platoons headquarters area, near the village of My Tho, where, relaxed as they stood or sat on the ground, they listened to a briefing from their leader, who was seated on a low stool. incident on hill 192 where are they now. Once this was done, the patrol filed out of the camp in the faintly humid darkness, the men still uncertain of their leaders intent. She ate, standing, and it was whimper, then eat, whimper, then eat. The next thing I knew, I was in jail, Eriksson told me. "Casualties of War" is Brian De Palma's entry into the Vietnam War movies competition. A veteran of thirty-five thousand autopsies, Professor Furue told the court, Compared with other female Mongoloids, Maos remains were well developed, a well-balanced body build., Meserve, Clark, and the two Diazes were taken into custody the day after the first search party made its visit to Hill 192. Before Eriksson was through, even his possession of a sense of humor became an issue. Time and again, at chow or during a break out in the field, someone would tell him (as Vorst had told him) that it was pointless to throw good lives after bad by having Meserve and the others up on charges, since (as Reilly had said) violence was the language of war, and, naturally, it could not always be controlled. But they werent as sure about it as the guys in the platoon had been, he said. She had lain moldering there for three weeks and her body was badly decayed. And I told her, in English, I cant understand you. I wanted to tell her other things. He was brand-new. Meserve stated that we would get the woman for the purpose of boom boom, or sexual intercourse, and at the end of five days we would kill her. And in Manuels testimony one finds: After we were briefed by Meserve, he said that we would take a girl with us on patrol, or that we would try to take a girl with us to have some fun. It happened when the Sergeant, having delivered his instructions, concluded the briefing by telling the assembled men that they were going to have a good time on the mission, because he was going to see to it that they found themselves a girl and took her along for the morale of the squad. For five days, the Sergeant said, they would avail themselves of her body, finally disposing of it, to keep the girl from ever accusing them of abduction and rapeboth listed as capital crimes in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. One M.P., I remember, told me he could have understood it if Id gone to bat for a G.I. He told me that their bond was religion and that the interest each of them took in it had been heightened by their experiences in the war. At ten-thirty, a short distance below the summit of Hill 192, Meserve found what he was looking fora command post for the day. I saw that Clark had his hunting knife hidden in one of his hands. It was in the next seconds that deer-gutting sounds issued from the bushes. Im talking about a murder. To do so, he believed, might only invite their censure, enforcers of the law though they were. Asked by the prosecutor why he thought Eriksson had stayed out of the hootch, Manuel answered, Eriksson was different. Outside, according to the court record, Clark was watching his comrade through a hole in the mud faade and letting out whoops of delight that mingled with Maos cries. She was pleased, she told me, that I had asked to hear about the episode involving Mao. Although news of the incident reached the U.S. shortly after the soldiers' trials, the story gained widespread notoriety through Daniel Lang's 1969 article for The New Yorker and his subsequent book. After the young woman was murdered, Pfc. But he was very tolerant about it. Incident on Hill 192 Daniel Lang Published by Secker & Warburg, London, Great Britain, 1970 Seller: Secondhand Books 'n' Things, Ross Creek, Australia Seller Rating: Contact seller Book First Edition Used - Hardcover Condition: Good 44.51 Convert currency 9.15 Shipping From Australia to United Kingdom Quantity: 1 Add to Basket Hardcover. That was how my hunch went, and I didnt dare change it in any way. Eriksson moved cautiously. man attending the sessions assured him that this was highly improper. The incident on Hill 192 refers to the kidnapping, gang rape and murder of Tran Thi Oahn, a young Vietnamese woman on 19 November 1967 by an American squad during the Vietnam War. It was as though he had shot himself with two rounds of his own ammo. The wounded man lay helpless, directly in front of the small opening from which the V.C. All four soldiers were sentenced to hard labor at the United States Army Disciplinary Barracks, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. It was still dark in the area, and no civilians attempted to stop us. Leaving the mother behind, the patrol resumed its march, prodding Mao to match its stride. It didnt take many further interrogations to convince the law-enforcement officers that they had a case, for Rafe and Manuel readily signed affidavits whose substance supported Erikssons account of the incident on Hill 192the name by which Maos murder became known among the military. The two have no children. He was asked, Couldnt you have thought up a story [for Meserve] to the effect that you heard some noises or heard some V.C. . It came from Maos mother, who was giving chase. To Erikssons astonishment and deep relief, the Sergeant abruptly shifted his attention to the Diazes, asking first Rafe and then Manuel to carry out the murder. In addition, Meserve learned that he was again to be the recipient of artillery support; in a short while, Reilly said, helicopter gunshipsaircraft equipped with rocket artillery and machine gunswould be in the area. It was her first food since shed been taken away from her hamletit had been still dark then, and here it was the middle of the afternoon. I needed more of an impression of Boyd than I had, Eriksson said. (Asked by a C.I.D. Leave it to me. fellows knew about law, Eriksson said. He was 34 years old. Before long, Eriksson told me, his sleuthing established that Greenacre was well thought of, and one evening, after the carpenters had finished eating, he invited Greenacre to take a walk with him. This was true of many farmers in the area, Mrs. Eriksson told me, adding that most of its inhabitants were of Scandinavian background. Q: As a matter of fact, you have complained [from the stockade] that your promotion is being held up? All of us in the patrol had long ago stopped pretending nothing horrible had happened. Who else would tell but myself? Plot Testifying later in court, Lieutenant Reilly characterized the mission as extremely dangerous, and said that to carry it out he had picked members of the best of the four squads in the platoon. It was six in morning and dark. The father was away in Phu My market, the interpreter went on. A: Better to go into the hootch, sir, and keep contentment in the squad, and keep a betterwell, how can I explain it?keep the thing running smooth. Esri, HERE, Garmin, NGA, USGS, NPS. Necessarily, he said, he was in a position to speak only of the behavior of American soldiers, since they were the people he fought and lived with. Q : You feel that the government has done you a grave injustice in bringing you here today for trial? A. Oh, no, sir, it was not that he was disliked in any way. . You never knew whose turn it was to die, and that isnt how it was in rear areas. Incensed, the Sergeant uttered the first of a series of threats. In the first place, he wanted to act fast, and, besides, he had no doubt that once he did act, there would be fast results. In 1969, the New Yorker published a report by Daniel Lang about the court martial of a group of men who had served in Vietnam. Thats where she is, he said with certainty. held a clear, uncomplicated view of the crime, and that view was that its repercussions should be kept to a minimum. Speaking evenly, Eriksson said, They were among the onesamong the fewwho did what everyone around them wanted to do. Nor was he himself free of blame, he went on, without pausingonce again referring to the limitations within himself that he had glimpsed in Asia. agent, poking through leaves with a bayonet, found teeth, finger bones, and yet more bullet fragments, all of which he deposited in a plastic bag. (who escaped the following morning) wounded five Americans, and Meserve displayed considerable courage in rescuing the most seriously injured of them, a G.I. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. He had yet to exonerate himself from the self-imposed charge of having failed to save Maos life. Recurrently, the court records show, witnesses found it deplorable that the defendants should have to fight for their survival in a prisoners dock when they might be far better employed doing that on the battlefield; in their every utterance these witnesses reflected the view that losing soldiers of Meserves calibre could result only in gaining a stronger enemy. When I got up to the girl, I saw that her head was partially blown away, he testified. When she tried to flee, three of the soldiers chased after her. Thinking like thatwell, as I say, it could change some fellows. Q: Why did you want other members of the squad to think you were a rapist? Eriksson was confident, though, he told me, that the older he grew, the more accepting he would be of his memory. Mao coughed throughout the night, and at one point, Eriksson recalls, Clark again urged that the girl be finished off forthwith. But here was this Marine, who had put in much more combat service than Meserve or Clark or anyone else Id met, and he felt exactly as I did about the crime., Eriksson now fell into one of his silences, and I imagined he was contemplating the mystery of human character. As he was leaving, he told me, the Captain called out reassuringly, Ill handle everything!, When Eriksson heard nothing from Vorst for four days, he sought an interview, which was granted. He had imagined that he would be able to ask how it was that he alone of the patrol had come to act as he had. I realize that we are over here fighting a war, but to go out and kill an innocent person has nothing to do with the war., Accused of shrewdness in seeking to evade infantry duty, Eriksson found himself also accused of a lack of shrewdness in failing to let Mao escape when he was alone with her in the hootch. The five men and Mao kept up a steady pace. Eriksson told me he has no qualms about Rafes being at large, because Rafes remorse over the criminal episode had been evident to everybody in the Radcliff courtroom. Based on the actual events of an incident on Hill 192 in November, 1966. Mostly to my lawyer.. Eriksson found it impressive that these procedures should be so punctiliously observed within easy artillery range of the enemywhich, he added, was not to say that he was unaware of various shortcomings. Id been there a month or three weeks longer., When he went on to imply that Eriksson might be chicken, the prosecutor asked, How come he stood up to Meserve? In the Army, he had discovered, that kind of action depended entirely on the discretion of ones superiorunless it was possible to figure out some way of bypassing him. The search party was a smaller one this time, Eriksson said, its assignment to make certain that nothing of any conceivable courtroom value still lay hidden in the area around Maos body; eventually, a C.I.D. Asked why, he answered, O.K., lets say you are on a patrol. We would be fools to think those men couldnt do again what they did before., He would never cease to condemn the members of the patrol personally for their crime, Eriksson said, but that didnt mean they were beyond pity. He called me back in a few minutes, or a couple of minutes, and informed me that he could not catch the girl, that he had had to shoot her. As a result, Eriksson spent the next two days surreptitiously doing a kind of security check on Greenacres character. They were hard workers, those Vietnamese women picking little bananas, shinnying up palm trees for coconuts. Moreover, Eriksson told me, the enemy soldier inflicted casualties on the infantrymen deployed around the cave complex, which was some two hundred metres long and had numerous mouths. see review David rated it liked it Nov 11, 2021 Glen rated it liked it Jan 29, 2014 His manner became momentarily subdued when Meserve waved him in as the third man, but Clark was his jaunty self again when he returned. Thomas took Mao into a brushy area, and although he stabbed her three times with his hunting knife, he failed to kill her.