Launching into his unlegalistic account, Eriksson told me that it seemed clear to him in retrospect that he should have been prepared for Maos death. 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. My height, Eriksson said. Arriving at the platoon area, Eriksson told me, he felt as though he had reached the promised land; the anxiety in which he had lived the past two days yielded to what he described as an almost tangible sense of safety. His manner became momentarily subdued when Meserve waved him in as the third man, but Clark was his jaunty self again when he returned. Rafe had flouted the order against unnecessary shooting, confirming Erikssons observation that plans could mean little in the field and that out there any patrol was a unit only in theory. 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. No one would ever know what had become of her, he exclaimed. That just shows you it isnt all combat over here. Meserves lawyer, pleading for his client immediately after this, spoke of the pressures on twenty-year-old sergeants. Vorst filled out transfer forms, and Eriksson signed them. One of the soldiers stabbed her three times, and when defense counsel challenged Eriksson at the court-martial proceedings to describe the sound that the stabbings made, he testified, Well, Ive shot deer and Ive gutted deer. It was an awkward moment, Eriksson said, and Clark terminated it. Here, the C.O. 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. (Eriksson had done the same for Rafe at his trial in Vietnam.) The lawyers were playing a game, he said. What conclusions may be drawn from "The Incident on Hill 192," as the war crime was known at the time of the courts-martial? Unreasonably, he granted, he had come into court with the idea that he and the others on hand would wonder aloud, in a kind of corporate searching, how it was possible for the young girl to meet the end she did. In 1966 in Vietnam, a squad of five American soldiers, lead by Sgt. By then, too, the men were approaching the hamlet of Cat Tuong, in the district of Phu My, and Eriksson was cursing himself for having listened to Rowan. Eriksson himself stood scanning the landscape intently, looking for the curiously shaped rock formation where the stabbed girl had been shot. As for the defendants themselves, only Rafe showed contrition, the most striking manifestation of which was his decision to testify against Clark. 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. Meserve, Clark, and Manuel, together with members of the other squads, were shooting away at the solitary V.C., who was behind an aperture that measured perhaps six inches wide and a couple of inches high. interrogators had apprised him of various rights he had, among them the right to remain silent and to have a lawyer, the interrogators had neglected to mention that he was entitled to have an appointed lawyer, meaning one whose services would be free of charge. I wanted to get out of the whole company, because I could not see staying in a company that would do anything such as here. Your prompt reporting of this serious incident to your superiors and subsequent testimony in court were essential elements in the apprehension and trials of the men responsible for this brutal crime. The young woman was abducted, not a prostitute. By the time I got out of jail, he told Eriksson, I was saying to myself, Whats happened is the way things are, so why try to buck the system? And take it from me, Eriksson, its even more hopeless to try to buck it in the middle of a wartheres more of a system then than ever. Arriving on the run, the two explained their errand to Clark, who heard the news eagerly, then pulled rank on Eriksson and ordered him to take his place in guarding the hootch. On the way, Greenacre told Eriksson that the chaplain, Captain Gerald Kirk, came from Ogden, Utah; he was a Mormon, Eriksson learned, and so was Greenacre. Incident on Hill 192 - The New York Times Incident on Hill 192 By Christopher Lehmann-Haupt Nov. 14, 1969 The New York Times Archives See the article in its original context from November 14,. Tony Meserve (Sean Penn), kidnap a young Vietnamese woman named Oanh (Thuy Thu Le) from her village and take her on a patrol, making her their sex slave. 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. I wanted to get out of the platoon, he stated. Lang later turned the article into a book entitled "Casualties of War". One M.P., I remember, told me he could have understood it if Id gone to bat for a G.I. His questions didnt take longmaybe twenty minutesand when they were over he wrote down on a piece of paper, Has no speech defects, steady manner. Offering an evaluation of his own, Eriksson added, He seemed like a nice guy. Similarly, it was permissible to shoot at any Vietnamese seen running, but, as Eriksson put it, the line between walking and running could be very thin. The day after the one on which his squad was ambushed and half its members were wounded, several enemy prisoners were taken, and, in retaliation, two were summarily killed, to serve as an example. A corporal who was still enraged over the ambush tried to strangle another of the prisoners; he had knotted a poncho, nooselike, around the captives neck and was tightening it when a merciful lieutenant commanded him to desist. Despite threats against his life by the soldiers who took part in the rape and murder, Storeby was determined to see the soldiers punished. sonoma academy calendar; why are my bluetooth headphones connected but not working; incident on hill 192 where are they now; By . Out of the blue, without being asked, hed start defending what hed done maybe hours ago by saying that, after all, it was no worse than what Charlie was doing. Though 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. 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. Small artillery spotter planes had arrived, heralding the imminent use of ground-artillery support. The only thing you could count on out there was that the unexpected would happen. Usually, Eriksson said, it took time for the unexpected to develop, but nowmore than half a day before the patrol was to leave platoon headquartersit happened with stunning abruptness. Eriksson talked with me at his home in (I shall say) Minneapolis, where, since leaving the Army, he has been earning his living as a cabinetmaker at a local department store. Given this confusion of values, the legalistic consideration of Maos death sometimes bordered on the incongruous. 2: The great pressures you were subject to during those critical months are appreciated. The court record attests that it was in the midst of this encircling racket that Meserve chose to initiate radio contact with Lieutenant Reilly, the burden of the Sergeants message being that he wanted to report one V.C., K.I.A. Under cross-examination at Meserves court-martial, Reilly, appearing as a defense witness, testified, Sergeant Meserve called me up and informed me in the middle of the fire fight that a girl was fleeing up the side of the mountain, and I informed him to get the girl. As the others clustered around it, Eriksson withdrew to the fringes of the circle, made uncomfortable by everyones purposeful curiosity. 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. At any rate, he felt that he was on the right track, since chaplains were professionally concerned with conscience. By the time he concluded his last appearance on the stand, he had been accused of lying, of cowardice, and even of Maos murder. At ten-thirty, a short distance below the summit of Hill 192, Meserve found what he was looking fora command post for the day. When Mao saw me come into the hootch, she thought I was there to rape her, Eriksson said. Invariably, Eriksson said, he found himself reproved for the deed. The men found her feverish and coughing, and Clark was all for rescheduling her death hour to that evening. [11], Likewise, Gervase's initial sentence of ten years with hard labor was reduced to eight. Then, of course, after rehabilitationI think theres a difference, sir. For a number of months, though, he found it less than exhilarating to pick up where he had left off. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Everything around him, he said, impressed him as pointless and aridhis fellow-workers, the monotony of clock punching, and even, at times, his beloved carpentry. Using the upper one as a vantage point, they spied the small band of V.C. investigators before the trial started that he had committed rape, but when the subject came up in the courtroom, it appeared to be Manuels judgment that he had taken part in a reasonable enterprise, and the justification that he gave for doing so was military discipline. The C.I.D. 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. His target turned out to be the rump of a wallowing water buffalo, the animal raising itself from the shallow stream in clumsy panic and lumbering out of view. A: Sir, Sergeant Meserve, he joined the unit in approximately February of last year, and he served under me when I was a rifle-platoon leader, and the reason he is a sergeant today is because we put the duties of squad leader upon him. At about the same time, other boards of review had dealt with Rafes and Meserves convictions. They were alone this time, Eriksson told me, and when Eriksson inquired what progress there had been in the murder case, the Captain seemed not to hear but posed a series of questions. 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. Once the investigation of Maos murder had been set in motion, Eriksson was frequently consulted by a variety of experts, among them pathologists, C.I.D. Just before it did, Eriksson moved away from the entrance to the hootch, where he had been standing, and sat down alone on the grassy turf to one side of the structure; periodically, he raised his field glasses to gaze at distant points. Pretty soon, youre going to be an outcast from the platoon. His reaction interested me, Eriksson said. He was shirtless; his face wore an expression of swaggering irresistibility. Since the verdicts would automatically come under review and the government might again need him as a witness, he was kept on in the post of military policeman at the division base. He said it would be good for the morale of the squad.. He felt that way, he explained, because out in the field, in territory that could turn hostile at any moment, the men in the patrol would be very much on their own, and this would be so even if a high-ranking officer were in charge. 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. The five-man squad, led by a 20-year-old sergeant, Tony Meserve, had been sent on patrol. The man was never captured, Eriksson said, despite the fact that he became the single target of the gunships rockets and the infantrys bullets and grenades. June 17, 2022 . He said for me to think that over again very carefully, Eriksson recalled. The incident on Hill 192 refers to the kidnapping, gang rape, and murder of Phan Thi Mao, a young Vietnamese woman [1] on 19 November 1966 [2] by an American squad during the Vietnam War. 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. 971 Words4 Pages. Both Thomas and Loeb were leaders of the white supremacist World Church of the Creator. Gazing into the valley below, Rafe thought he spied a Vietnamese in a native type of straw hat standing in the stream. Besides, as the defense could not dispute, the jacket containing the explosive charge of a grenade launcher is made not of lead but of copper, and the search parties experts had found only the lead of numerous bullets from an M-16 rifle littering the immediate vicinity of Maos body. But he was very tolerant about it. With Mao out of the way, he was able to concentrate on the action at hand, managing his patrol, working in concert with the other squads, and helping to guide the diving gunships, whose presence he now welcomed. Clark at once greeted it with enthusiasm. Below was a valley with a winding stream, and along its banks were paddy fields with neat little dikes around them. Each day, Eriksson said, he felt as though he were at war with war, a troublemaker out to undermine some careful, desperate code of survival. If he said no, he would appear to be disowning the defendants, his comrades-in-arms; if he said yes, he would in effect be telling the jury that he regarded the war as a public-works project for criminals. He has yet to come to terms with the incident on Hill 192, Eriksson told me. The soldiers set up a night watch, each man pulling guard duty outside in the moonlight, alert for any lurking enemy. man, Who raped or had sexual intercourse with the girl?, Manuel replied, Sergeant Meserve, Clark, R. Diaz, and myself. But the Sergeant did nothing about the escaping V.C., for he was now powerfully distracted from the enemy; in the distance, still inaudible and looking miniaturized, were four approaching gunships. A: Well, no, sir, until theyvenot until they serve their sentence. 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. In his cell, Reilly went on, he had made plans to shoot various officials at the hospital, but when he was finally released he gave up the idea of vengeance. For the film, all names and some details of the true story were altered. Enacting the role of chief government witness was not an edifying experience, Eriksson went on. An edition of Incident on Hill 192 (1970) Incident on Hill 192 by Daniel Lang 0 Ratings 0 Want to read 0 Currently reading 0 Have read Overview View 1 Edition Details Reviews Lists Related Books Publish Date 1970 Publisher Pan Books Language English Pages 124 This edition doesn't have a description yet. 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. In True Grit, and other novels, Portis displayed a genius that went beyond character in the strictly literary sense. 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. I decided I was hearing an individual who wished he could have saved that girl but hadnt been able to, Kirk told me. 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. He was twenty-two, a stringbean in physique, and blond, with eyes that were a pale, cold blue. He sounded as though the war would have to come to an end before his work could make much sense.. they said if you were fortunate enough to get in a group where you had an old-timer who had been in Vietnam like six months longer than you had, if you followed what he said, you would live longer. Besides, Manuel testified, If he had not gone into the hootch he would have risked becoming an outcast. The trial records make it clear that the question left the witnesses uncomfortable, for their responses were reluctant and tortured. There had been times when Id thought that if I had been in Vietnam longer than just a month when the incident took place I might have felt differently about ithad the same attitude, that is, as most of the fellows. Sometimes you have your disagreements, and sometimes you dont voice them, you keep them to yourself.. I am not afraid of him if he has no weapons. Eriksson answered, That is negative, sir, when a defense counsel, taking up the pre-Hill 192 patrol in which half of Erikssons squad had been wounded, inquired, Isnt it true, Eriksson, that you allowed the squad to walk into the ambush area without warning, because you were hiding in the bushes?. The girl was dressed and her hands had been freed. Besides, Eriksson said, none of the M.P.s at Fort Carson asked him about Maovery likely, he assumed, because they didnt connect him with her. I couldnt tell whether it was Charlie or the girl, Rafe testified. They send you reeling from the theatre. 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?. 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. As a result, Eriksson left Colorado for Fort Leavenworth, where Manuel, serving his time in the Disciplinary Barracks, was to be retried. he could control his aggressions in the future, like a professional prizefighter. In Clarks case, the commanding general, who was responsible for deciding whether the evidence supported Clarks conviction and whether Clarks sentence should be lowered, was informed by a staff lawyer who had interviewed Clark that the soldier in the Disciplinary Barracks was articulate and above average in intelligence, and that, if given a chance to renter society, he hoped to earn a college degree in either English or philosophy. Commenting on this, Eriksson told me, I realized that nothing definite had happened yet, but I had the feeling it was the first sign that things were going to work out the way Captain Vorst had warned me they wouldI mean, that the sentences would get shorter and shorter, maybe even disappear.. stockport council wards map; 0 comments. Eriksson saw Vorst shortly after the three soldiers left the company command post. He was all of seven when he was driving a tractor on the farm. Manuel received a sentence of fifteen years, his punishment for rape. Who else would tell but myself? John J. TolsonMajor General, U.S.A. The poor guys guts were out, Eriksson said. An infantryman, Eriksson saw a fair amount of action, so, if he chose, he could reminisce about strong points he helped take and fire fights in which he was pinned down, and one ambush, in particular, in which half his unit was wounded. She kept looking at me, as though she was trying to guess what my game could be. That was the thing about the chain of commandyou couldnt tell who was to blame for what. rallied to the patrols defense that idea seemed less tenable. Last winter, members of the Military Appeals Courtthe militarys highest appellate bodyhad decided that the admissions Rafe made in Vietnam were tainted; that is, like Manuel, he had made a confession without being fully informed of his rights. But I couldnt think any of my brainstorms through. 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. We made up something to get him to go away, Eriksson told me. Ending the first of his brooding silences, Eriksson said, From one day to the next, you could see for yourself changes coming over guys on our sidedecent fellows, who wouldnt dream of calling an Oriental a gook or a slopehead back home. We just tell them to dee deemeaning to go away. All right, go ahead, Meserve said, and he instantly turned his attention to the enemy, ordering Eriksson to the lower ledge of rock while he and Manuel returned to the upper one, with Rafe to their rear. Do you consider yourself braver than Eriksson?. Thats where the woman was going in the early morning, but it was peacetime and it wasnt necessary either for her or for the peasant women she was with to smell the bodies that were always rotting for miles around, no one knew where, when I was in the Central Highlands. Thinking like thatwell, as I say, it could change some fellows. The groups second-in-command was Ralph Clark, a corporal who came from a town near Philadelphia. Unless Eriksson went along with the others, Meserve warned, he would run the risk of being reported a friendly casualty. Clark seconded this vociferously, and both Diazes concentrated puzzled stares on the difficult member of the patrol. 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.
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