In our part of Minnesota, just about everyone is., It was ten at night when Eriksson sat down to talk with Kirk, and he found he was able to speak more freely than he had even to Curly Rowan. Not sitting next to each other anymore, are they now standing opposite each other, with the frightened girl in the middle, separating them visually, just as she is the matter dividing them ideologically. 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. In the hootch, Eriksson recalled, Mao, now relieved of Manuels pack, watched him and Rafe heave out junk for a while, and then, unasked, the girl lent the G.I.s a hand. 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. 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. Better relax about that Vietnamese girl, Eriksson. Anyway, thats what made me believe I was interested in religion. These were always demanding and hazardous, yet they could not distract him from the intense feeling of frustration that now beset him. Going about their tasks with unrelieved efficiency, the men staked out an area thirty feet square in which to conduct their operations, soon gathering a harvest of clues, among them lead fragments of spent bullets, for the ballistics and firearms men, and parts of Maos remains, for the pathologists. All were dishonorably discharged, reduced in rank to private, and deprived of all pay, with the exception of Rafe, who was to go on receiving pay but forfeit fifty dollars monthly for eight years. 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. That word handle! Eriksson said reminiscently. 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. The novel was published in 1969. With me, he said, he trusted he would be able to go into these matters freely, but he had early discovered that in a court of law they were of little interest. Journalist Daniel Lang brought this to further public attention with a 1969 article in The New Yorker entitled Casualties of War . 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. Helicopter crews might spot her. Before the patrol left the hamlet, a swarm of local children materialized, chattering agitatedly in a circle around Mao, and then out of the white hootch came Loc. Accompanied by troops of the South Vietnamese government, the two women had eventually come to the hootch on Hill 192, where they had found Maos brassiere, flecked with blood; the troops had burned down the hootch. Acting on this, he enrolled in a non-credit course at the University of Minnesota designed to teach adults with an inadequate education how to study. was shooting, and Meserve, braving a fusillade of bullets, crept forward and pulled the man out of the V.C.s line of fire. 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. These guys right here are going to start laughing you out. Incident on Hill 192 November 19, 1966 The kidnapping, gang rape, and murder of Phan Thi Mao, a young Vietnamese woman by an American squad of soldiers during the Vietnam War. Even though the two were alone, Eriksson remained cautious, revealing nothing about Maos murder. It is going to be yourself. After that, wed have to stay out of sight until the third day of the patrols missionthat was the day the patrol was supposed to rendezvous with another unit for fresh supplies. Accompanied by a squad of armed enlisted men, as a precaution against an enemy ambush, the search party set out early the following morning, December 9th, flying from An Khe to an airstrip near Captain Vorsts company headquarters. The only thing that could stop me was if I became a friendly casualty.. Manuel gave similar testimony. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. . Im still young, he said, and it took me a moments effort to recall the fact of his youth, and the youth of Meserve and the rest of the patrol. As he recalled his briefing, he had told the men, Itd be nice if we could pick up five women for the five days up there and have an orgy, and then, he said, everybody had made comments and laughed. As for going to Maos hamlet, the Sergeant said that he had led the patrol there to look for V.C., and that he had captured the girl because she had behaved suspiciously inside her hootch. 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. (He got a break. Q: Isnt it true you were so afraid you could hardly move? recognized that there were forces of conscience that might have to be contended with? For that matter, he said, he knew almost nothing about Greenacreonly that he was a cowboy from Arizona, a wiry type, who put in a good days work as a carpenter and didnt have much to say. The five men and Mao kept up a steady pace. She herself had thus far been the only person with whom her husband had discussed it since returning from Vietnam, and even with her he had not gone into much detail. This time, he said, it would be Clark who would stay behind to guard Mao and the weapons in the hootch. Actually, Eriksson told me, he had once asked Reilly for permission to discuss Maos murder with a chaplain, but the Lieutenant had discouraged the idea. agents, lawyers, and ballistics and firearms specialists. Q: You think your fear was apparent to anyone else? Nor could the concern that the C.O. Thats where she is, he said with certainty. 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. I called him back and commended him on the job that he did and reported it, in turn, to the company headquarters.. Once he was inside the camp perimeter, he assumed, it would be a simple matter to bring Meserve and the others to judgment. Gazing into the valley below, Rafe thought he spied a Vietnamese in a native type of straw hat standing in the stream. 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. 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 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. Lang later turned the article into a book entitled "Casualties of War". 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. Incident On Hill 192 Paperback - Import, January 1, 1970 by Daniel Lang (Author) 1 rating Hardcover from $198.24 2 Used from $198.24 Paperback from $36.18 3 Used from $36.18 Print length 128 pages Language English Publisher Pan Books Publication date January 1, 1970 ISBN-10 033002518X ISBN-13 978-0330025188 See all details The Amazon Book Review Whatever the answers, Captain Vorst saw to it that Eriksson left his command early the following morning, sending the enlisted man seventy miles away to Camp Radcliff, the 1st Cavalry (Airmobile) Division base, near the small city of An Khe. Or maybe its our winters that make Sven so different from those other menour Januaries, when its fifty below and the snowdrifts are so high you cant get from the house to the barn without pulling on a rope.. This was true of many farmers in the area, Mrs. Eriksson told me, adding that most of its inhabitants were of Scandinavian background. 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. Whatever I could do about her depended on finding someone with both the rank and the conscience to help me, he told me. Related period. 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. He had yet to exonerate himself from the self-imposed charge of having failed to save Maos life. 1945-1989 (content) Creator. All soldiers (excluding Storeby) were dishonorably discharged from the Army. 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. Storeby also recalled that Gervase claimed it would be "good for the morale of the squad. bus that collected G.I.s who had fallen on hard times in Sin City, a section of bars and bordellos in An Khe, two miles away. He displayed a hunting knife. A small, pretty blonde with an alert, intelligent manner, she offered me coffee and cake the instant I set foot in the apartment. The two Diazes laughed, either out of embarrassment, Eriksson conjectures, or because they thought Meserve was joking, in view of his remark about the morale of the squadan old gag in the platoon. As Rafe recounted it, Meserve saw her and said, There she goes. Clark said, Why, that bitch, I stabbed her more than twice. Meserve told us all to shoot her before she could get away. Manuel showed no initiative in that regard, Eriksson told me, his attitude toward authority being simple and automatic: he heeded it devoutly. 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. I heard that argument over and over again, and I could never buy it. After his last talk with Vorst, he told me, that frustration was always with himeating at him, keeping him remote from his fellow-G.I.s, costing him sleep. 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. Yours was not an easy task, but you did your duty as an American soldier. He said it was only human to make mistakes., Erikssons attempt to forget Mao proved futile, as he had really known it would. He had thought of them uneasily, imagining that the act of testifying might force him to relive the macabre episode on Hill 192. said something to the effect, You people acted like animals up there and do not deserve to live. He said he would have never learned about this but one man had the balls to tell [the officers] about it.
