They send you reeling from the theatre. Did you fire your weapon? Just who, I wanted to ask, was the man in Manuels patrol who started the shooting? I was operating in a forward area and probably seeing the war at its ugliest. It might have influenced my thinking if Id had that information, but Im not sure. In a sample encomium, Lieutenant Reilly declared that the Sergeants character and reputation are the best I have seen, and [he is] one of the best combat soldiers I have known. Reilly also called him a fine soldier, and went on to say, He never failed to accomplish the mission. Ill handle everything, Vorst said. But they werent as sure about it as the guys in the platoon had been, he said. Sven wasnt raised churchy, Mrs. Eriksson remarked. All of us in the patrol had long ago stopped pretending nothing horrible had happened. Ill never know. Today, on Hill 192, located between the Normandy cities of St. L and Bayeux, sleek horses graze the fields, and people in hacking gear travel the roads and bridle paths. LANG, DANIEL (Author) Secker and Warburg (Publisher) Production date. the bunker in the hootch. Eriksson was not called upon to testify this time, and this was a vast relief, he told me, not only because he was eager to get on with his civilian life but because it looked to him as though Rafes rehearing would be a duplication of Manuels second trial; that is, with Rafes tainted admissions thrown out, the governments arguments would be undermined and a verdict of acquittal brought in. Clark could knife the girl from the front, the Sergeant said, while he bayoneted her from behind; the body would then be tossed over a cliff from the summit of Hill 192, where the patrol had reconnoitred the previous day. Q: You think your fear was apparent to anyone else? They locked me up in a steel box, in solitary. 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. Yours was not an easy task, but you did your duty as an American soldier. Can you add one ? . But he was very tolerant about it. Based on the actual events of the incident on Hill 192 in 1966 during the Vietnam War, 'Casualties of War', directed by legendary filmmaker Brian De Palma, is An Effective Film, that talks about Human-Cruelty & Violence. At the start, he spoke laconically, but gradually his natural reticence thawed out, and there were timesgenerally after one of his silenceswhen he produced such a burst of talk that it seemed to cost him an effort to bring it to a halt. He was upset and frustratedit was in all his letters. 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 makes for an easier mission and no problems. It had nothing to do with a mans being responsible for his own behavior. . who was murdered, but how could I do it for a Vietnamese? Esri, HERE, Garmin, NGA, USGS, NPS. In court, Rafe said that he found Mao naked, lying on the table, her hands bound behind her back. When Eriksson replied that he was prepared to take his chances on that, Vorst asked whether Eriksson might not care to transfer out of the companyor, for that matter, out of the infantry altogether. Leave it to me. He thought of her as his plane, full of singing soldiers, took off from Cam Ranh Bay and he held his last look at the unhappy land below. Are you afraid of Sergeant Meserve? Eriksson was asked at one point, and he replied, Thats affirmative, sir. [1] Subjects At about the same time, other boards of review had dealt with Rafes and Meserves convictions. He sounded genuinely concerned. Something else the prosecutor did was to advise him to see a psychiatrist before the trials started. She had the spark of life., The Oddballs and Odysseys of Charles Portis. I saw him raise his rifle, Rafe stated, adding that he then started toward Clark. Rafe was the man closest to Clark and Maoonly a few metres awayand because he was, his testimony concerning the events that now took place carried special weight with the court. . Ad Choices, He wanted never to be away from her. They said that door-gunner duty was too dangerousthat if I was going to be any use as a witness I had to stay alive., Eriksson recognized the abrupt transformation of his military life the morning after his meeting with Kirk. Thomas took Mao into a brushy area, and although he stabbed her three times with his hunting knife, he failed to kill her. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. When Eriksson was able to state that he had put in for door gunner aboard helicopters, which could hardly be considered safe duty, the lawyer persisted in reminding him that you testified you wanted to get out of the platoon., Eriksson agreed. There was to be an autopsy at the United States Army mortuary in Saigon, by a Japanese anthropologist, Professor Tadao Furue, of Tokyo University, and Colonel Pierre A. Finck, commanding officer of the 9th Medical Laboratory. They were her last. Rafes case, I learned, had taken a fresh turn in recent weeks. Just as long as he stayed in line, just as long as he kept the setup going, he could do whatever he wanted., Perhaps the most jarring of all the discoveries he made during this unhappy period, Eriksson told me, was that his fellow-G.I.s took a dim view of his efforts in behalf of Mao. (Asked by a C.I.D. Nor could the concern that the C.O. At Rafes court-martial, it was disclosed that for several days the two patients in the hospital ward seemingly talked about whatever came into their heads but that Rafe never mentioned Mao. His parents stayed home plenty of Sundays.. In addition to the occasional remarks he heard in the police barracks, a train of other developments served to remind him of the girl. As Manuel was going into the hootch, Maos sounds could he heard, weak and conquered. was shooting, and Meserve, braving a fusillade of bullets, crept forward and pulled the man out of the V.C.s line of fire. Panting, she finally reached the soldiers, indicating to them that the scarf was Maos and that she would like her daughter to have it; the womans cheeks were wet and her manner was imploring. I had to know whether he could at least be trusted to keep quiet about what I was up to. As indirectly and offhandedly as he could, Eriksson sounded out various members of the work detail about Greenacrenone of whom, he remarked, he knew any better than he knew the Arizonan. Thus, early in his tour of duty, Eriksson recalled, G.I.s in his unit were empowered to shoot any Vietnamese violating a 7 P.M. curfew, but in practice it was largely a matter of individual discretion whether a soldier chose to fire at a stray Vietnamese hurrying home a few minutes late to his hootchthe American term for the mud-and-bamboo huts in which most natives lived. 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. incident on hill 192 where are they now. Addeddate 2021-04-03 19:38:39 Identifier turner_video_1757 Scanner Internet Archive Python library 2.0.0.dev3 Otherwise, Id stay boxed in by the chain of command., On the last day of November, Eriksson was in a patrol that was chasing two or three V.C. Q : You feel that the government has done you a grave injustice in bringing you here today for trial? 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. Here, the C.O. As Clark and Rafe left, Eriksson told me, he realized that he was about to exchange one kind of excitement for anotherthe encounter with the three Vietnamese, that is, for the quieter, more complicated ordeal of being alone with Mao. At times, Eriksson displayed a certain poise on the stand. Thus, a couple of weeks before the first court-martial opened, Eriksson found himself sitting in a cubbyhole office at Camp Radcliff face to face with a stocky medical captain with an extremely close crew cut who wanted to know whether the young infantryman loved his mother and whether he heard from his wife. The incident on Hill 192 is the name the United States Army called [1] the kidnapping, gang rape, and murder of Phan Thi Mao, a young Vietnamese woman [2] on November 19, 1966 [1] by an American squad during the Vietnam War. To be sure, there were a few individuals, like Rowan, who shared his outlook, but the great majority saw things the way their officers did. The whole thing made me sick to my stomach. now had to do with law enforcement, for he was reassigned to the 545th Military Police Company at Camp Radcliff, in which outfit he guarded high-ranking officers, pulled gate duty, made periodic sweeps of the base area for signs of infiltrating V.C., and, every day at 4 P.M., climbed into the drunk wagon, which was an M.P. He said, We all figured we might be dead in the next minute, so what difference did it make what we did? Another man might have called it something else, but the idea was simply that we had to answer for what we did. All soldiers (excluding Storeby) were dishonorably discharged from the Army. Pointing to the hootch, he signalled to Rafe to be his successor, and Rafe, sparing himself ridicule, walked in. Clark at once greeted it with enthusiasm. Under cross-examination at his court-martial concerning this disregard of his commanding officers instructions, the Sergeant stated, Sir, most of the time everybody agrees with his C.O. 2: The great pressures you were subject to during those critical months are appreciated. Of course, I was a foot soldier all this time. In the hours we spent together, there were intervals that may have lasted as long as a minute when he sat silent, a brooding expression on his face, before resuming his account. Based on the notorious Hill 192 Incident during the Vietnam War in 1966, De Palma's Casualties of War takes on a much more serious and difficult subject than any of his other efforts and as far as I can tell seems to be his most mature work to date. [12] He was paroled on August 9, 1969. In the case of Manuel (the father of a three-month-old girl), this attitude of mystification became so palpable that the prosecutor finally inquired, Do you feel you are involved in any way in this rape and murder? To which Manuel replied No.. That leaves three to go.. Rowan listened with astonishment as Eriksson apprised him of the Sergeants plan, but when Eriksson asked his friend whether he thought Meserves statements should be reported to an officer before the patrol left camp, Rowan immediately shook his head, replying, as the court record shows, Meserve wouldnt dare do such a fool thing. This incredulity notwithstanding, the news of Meserves briefing left Rowan unhappy. No such thing happened. But I couldnt think any of my brainstorms through. (He got a break. In recalling it for investigators later on, Manuel stated, He told us he had attempted to keep the incident quiet but that now he couldnt give us any further advice or help. The M.P.s took the enlisted men to the Provost Marshals office at An Khe, where they were given an initial interrogation before being remanded to the stockade at Long Binh. entered the caves, he said, the patrol had long ago left the vicinity of the curiously shaped rock formation, and had descended so deep into the valley that the men were practically able to touch the thick, rough outer walls of the caves. As Mao stood listening, mute and uncomprehending, Meserve said that she had to be got out of the way; if they ran into action, he pointed out, she would be a hindrance, and even if they didnt, helicopter crews scouting the area might want to know who she was. At last, someone outside the patrol knew of Mao, he said. They found the company commander, who had himself only just returned, waiting impatiently to confront them with Erikssons report. I told him I was being wrongly brought to trial. [9], Thomas, Cipriano Garcia, and Joseph Garcia were each convicted of unpremeditated murder in March and April 1967. The Sergeant seemed more attracted by the possibility of military action, to judge by the speed with which he had his charges break camp. argo parts amazon. Asked whether Meserve might not have been searching the hootches of Maos hamlet for the strictly military purpose of finding strange faces, he answered, I wouldnt say this, sir. If he had known this, he thinks, he might have realized then, as he did later, that the Captain was in a bind; that is, he was torn between the dictates of his conscience, which condemned the crime, and concern for his Army career, which, Eriksson later discovered, the battalion commanderwho outranked Vorst, and who was also a liferwas in the habit of admonishing the Captain to bear in mind. Though the men had to struggle for footing, Eriksson related, they made a point of keeping an eye on the stream that ran near the hootch; it had its source high up on the mountain, flowing down past a number of rice fields. These guys right here are going to start laughing you out. Vorsts executive officer, by contrast, could not countenance the thought of Meserves being cashiered. On November 22nd, Meserve, Clark, and Manuel, weary from their five-day stint (Rafe was still hospitalized), had scarcely dropped into their foxholes back in the platoon area when they were ordered to appear at Captain Vorsts command posta hootch somewhat larger than Reillys but equally bare. He still has a tendency to fight off its memory, he said, and he thinks the reason for this is that although the experience he had may have revealed certain strengths in himself, he is far more concerned with the limitations it exposed. Gazing into the valley below, Rafe thought he spied a Vietnamese in a native type of straw hat standing in the stream. Eriksson considers himself hazy about the girls looks. They had gone scarcely twenty metres when a cry of distress halted them. There shouldnt have been, because I had decided, outside, that there wasnt a thing in the world I could do for her. They had known each other since childhood, their fathers having been neighboring farmers, who both had difficulty making ends meet. On one occasion that he knew of, Eriksson said, American troops, attracted by the familiar odor of decomposing bodies, had found a pit piled high with Vietnamese men and women who had been machine-gunned by the V.C. The four courts-martial took place in the winter of 1967, within a period of about ten days in the middle of March. He saw now how wrong he had been in thinking that a report of rape and murder would evoke instant action, as in civilian life. 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. Acting fast, he sent Manuel backtracking to the summit to tell Eriksson and Rafe to report to him with Mao. Former Private First Class Sven Erikssonas I shall call him, since to use his actual name might add to the danger he may be inhas also come back with his memories, but he has no idea what the future will do to them. You could never tell how a man was going to behave under pressure, Eriksson said. Six months ago, he said, he had taken a Minneapolis bus home from work and, being very tired, had dozed off. . Eriksson was now with them, and he saw that Mao had retreated to a corner of the hut, frightened, watchful, her eyes glistening with tears, her presence made known chiefly by a cough that had grown more pronounced since morning.
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