The land was very changeable. The image is that of a Vietnamese peasant girl, two or three years younger than he was, whom he met, so to speak, on November 18, 1966, in a remote hamlet in the Central Highlands, a few miles west of the South China Sea. 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. We had to answer to something, to someonemaybe just to ourselves., Before Eriksson saw the last of Fort Carson, he again acted as a witness for the government. Rafe subsequently testified that the Sergeant was in an expansive mood, cheerfully observing to his men that it wasnt every day he could rate artillery support and have himself a woman as well. Eriksson said to me, It only looked as though he was the one out to do everything in, but the C.O., I knew, had someone over him, and his superior had a superior. 1970. At the time the fifth V.C. Released from jail in a few hours, he found himself no longer a lone, underground accuser but, instead, a cog in an elaborate law-enforcement machine, whose purpose was to gather evidence, question suspects, and generally determine whether a case existed. Just as the prosecutor had foreseen, the defense attorneys did try to make Eriksson look odd, but that was among the milder of their insinuations. At times, Eriksson displayed a certain poise on the stand. Based on the actual events of the incident on Hill 192 in 1966, we follow . 971 Words4 Pages. A good nights rest might do wonders for Maos health, he pointed out, in which case he, for one, wouldnt mind revisiting her in the morning. But I couldnt think any of my brainstorms through. He said it would be good for the morale of the squad.. 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. I wanted to find out first what Meserve and Clark might do. The fire fight in the ravine lasted several hours, the attackers finally breaking off after dark. I discovered its not difficult to kill a human beingin combat its as instinctive as ducking bullets. Eriksson was to remain there until his reassignment as a door gunner came through, Vorst having sent his transfer papers on for official approval by the helicopter command. Who else would tell but myself? And wasnt it just possible that the victim might not necessarily be Eriksson himself but, rather, his new bride? Clark at once greeted it with enthusiasm. Eriksson told me that he himself reacted silently but that after Meserve and the men had broken up to go their separate ways until morning he sought out his friend Corporal Curly Rowan, a West Virginian, who had been in Vietnam, and with the platoon, just as long as Meserve had. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Of those who were asked the question, only Captain Vorst, lifer though he was, stated that if Meserve was guilty of rape and murder, then he did not care to have the Sergeant in his command. He sounded as though the war would have to come to an end before his work could make much sense.. Now the V.C., flushed from their temporary hideout, continued to beat a desperate retreat, relying on sniper fire to fend off their attackers, who were converging on them from both sides of the stream. 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. They scare that discipline into you in basic training, Eriksson told me. 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. If it didnt, then coming back from that patrol meant nothing., Recalling her husbands arrival, Mrs. Eriksson said that when she went out to the airport to meet him, she could tell at once that there was a stronger kindness in him than when he had left. 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. Do you consider yourself braver than Eriksson?. His manner became momentarily subdued when Meserve waved him in as the third man, but Clark was his jaunty self again when he returned. down a trail between two hedgerows when the patrol was suddenly fired upon from one side. Pretty soon, youre going to be an outcast from the platoon. I was operating in a forward area and probably seeing the war at its ugliest. 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. Before Eriksson was through, even his possession of a sense of humor became an issue. Occasionally, official orders were used for justifying gratuitous acts of violence. He sounded genuinely concerned. Something else the prosecutor did was to advise him to see a psychiatrist before the trials started. 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. Events happened fast that day, Eriksson said. He displayed a hunting knife. When she finished eating, she mumbled something in Vietnamese; maybe it was Thank youI wouldnt know. 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. In due course, they came upon Mao, her remains a rigid crescent settled grotesquely in a half nest of soil and rocks and matted foliage. This morning, Manuel carried his own. It was rustling. 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. held a clear, uncomplicated view of the crime, and that view was that its repercussions should be kept to a minimum. Their eyes were terrified, Eriksson remembers. As the court transcript shows, Reilly didnt let matters rest there. From his point of view, as he had indicated at the beginning of our talk, the legal consideration of the crime was a field day of fencing and distortion, of quibbling and traps. 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. When they returned, Eriksson told me, they discovered that Clark was no longer alone in advocating Maos early demise. Locs mother was now missing. 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?. He had yet to exonerate himself from the self-imposed charge of having failed to save Maos life. Evacuated by a medical helicopter, he was flown to a hospital at Qui Nhon. The enemy did the same thing, and much of the evidence for this came from the Vietnamese themselves. It was a six-hour trek, over difficult terrain, and when the men finally stood just below the summit, several of them, who were unaccustomed to tramping so long, were near exhaustion. Mrs. Eriksson, who was once more plying her husband and me with coffee and cake, put in, Sven and I are Lutherans. Wed had to support each other in a new way after she was killed. [14], In 1992, former PFC Thomas gained further notoriety when he was charged with being an accessory after the fact in the murder trial of George Loeb, who was charged with the 17 May 1991 shooting death of an African-American USS Saratoga sailor named Harold J. Mansfield. 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. He does remember, though, that she had a prominent gold tooth, and that her eyes, which were dark brown, could be particularly expressive. 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. 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. Naturally, Erikssons experiences in Vietnam were varied, and many of them impressed themselves vividly on his mind. Glancing at the girl with distaste, the Sergeant ordered Eriksson and Rafe to stay with her on the ridge, whereupon he, Clark, and Manuel began a cautious descent of the mountain, their purpose to stalk the Vietcong. Speaking matter-of-factly, Mrs. Eriksson said, Out in the boonies, where we come from, you get an A if you dont throw erasers.. Thinking along these lines, Eriksson said, he arrived at a kind of strategy in regard to Mao. Inasmuch as the board may only affirm or reduce Rafes sentence, any changes that it makes will necessarily fall under the heading of good news for him; for example, the board may decide that Rafe served too long a sentence by five or six months, in which event it will be incumbent upon the Army to restore back pay for that period; it is also within the boards power to reverse Rafes dishonorable discharge. 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.. The incident on Hill 192 refers to the kidnapping, gang rape, and murder of Phan Thi Mao, a young Vietnamese woman, on November 19, 1966 by an American squad during the Vietnam War. 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. His persistence in reporting the crime to higher authorities eventually resulted in general courts-martial against his four fellow squad mates. [8] After finding Phan Thi Mao (21), they bound her wrists with rope, gagged her, and took her on the mission. 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. 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. 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. The C.I.D. At the time, Eriksson told me, he had no idea that the Captain had chewed them out. Loc and her father had moved from their native hamlet; they now lived in a village several miles from there. In April, Eriksson received his honorable discharge from the Army, and in April, too, he heard of further judicial developments. I wanted to get out of the platoon, he stated. Yes or no? 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. 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. The only thing that could stop me was if I became a friendly casualty.. Deciding that he was looking at a V.C., Rafe let fly with a couple of rounds from his M-16 rifle. 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. He was 34 years old. I called him back and commended him on the job that he did and reported it, in turn, to the company headquarters.. . FLORIDA HIGHWAY PATROL'S LIVE TRAFFIC CRASH AND ROAD CONDITION REPORTClick Here For Additional Information | Click Here for FDOT Emergency Real Time Traffic4/30/2023, 3:20:59 AM. Manuel showed no initiative in that regard, Eriksson told me, his attitude toward authority being simple and automatic: he heeded it devoutly. Seeing him made me think at once of two questions I would have liked to ask him or his sergeant. He had scarcely landed in Vietnam, in October, 1966, when he was made aware of these occurrences, each of them apparently impulsive and unrelated to military strategy. The five-man squad, led by a 20-year-old sergeant, Tony Meserve, had been sent on patrol. 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. The Captaina lifer, or career Army manhad left instructions that he was to be sent urgent messages only, but shortly after Eriksson took leave of Reilly, the Lieutenant, confident that the murder merited his superiors attention, radioed word of it to Vorst. 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 the very outset, Eriksson told me that the last thing he wished to do was discuss Maos murder in any legalistic vein. 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. be ambushed. Other soldiers, he said, might just as easily have betrayed the weakness that the four men had betrayed on Hill 192, but it had fallen to Meserve and Clark and Rafe and Manuel in particular to act as they had. The patrol and Mao shared the hootch that night, the girl spending it in a corner by herself. Eriksson considers himself hazy about the girls looks. Serving as radioman, he was in the vanguard with Meserve and Clark; Mao walked ten metres behind, wearily ascending the rugged terrain, with Rafe as her forward guard and Eriksson bringing up the rear. Clark appeared to be beside himself with anticipation, Eriksson told me, and Manuel and Rafe appeared less so. It had to be him, and no other chaplain, he recalled, smiling. Thomas took Mao into a brushy area, and although he stabbed her three times with his hunting knife, he failed to kill her. The Vietnamese proved to be V.C., for the moment they were aware that they had been seen they fired at the patrol with small arms, then changed their direction and passed temporarily out of sight. Shitstink McLanahan. Professor Furue and Colonel Finck also appeared as witnesses, to offer information based on clinical studies they had made of Maos skeletal parts in Saigon. 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. Q : You feel that the government has done you a grave injustice in bringing you here today for trial? The mother wept and pleaded, and her daughters, clinging to one another, cowered against the wall. [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." There, corpsmen deposited him on a bed alongside that of a battalion officer he knew and liked. There was little pattern to the verdicts, each of the juries indulging in its own vagaries. When Eriksson reaffirmed that he was, Kirk picked up his phone and called the Criminal Investigation Division office at Camp Radcliff. 1945-1989 (content) Creator. Greenacre was present throughout the talk, at Erikssons insistence. Sounding as though he felt he would be years mining its lessons, he told me, I decided that whatever jobs Id get, they werent going to be as important to me as the way I lived. But they were halfway around the world now, in a strange country, where they couldnt tell who was their friend and who wasnt. Between us, weve taken care of that whole family., Eriksson never did become a door gunner. "Casualties of War" is Brian De Palma's entry into the Vietnam War movies competition. 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. He has yet to come to terms with the incident on Hill 192, Eriksson told me. Sprawled on the ground after the meal, Meserve, refreshed, glanced at his fellows and then, with a knowing smile, indicated the partly ruined structure. They were hard workers, those Vietnamese women picking little bananas, shinnying up palm trees for coconuts. also kidnapped, raped, murdered. However, it was essentially intact, and Meserve quickly converted it into a weapons depot, dumping ammunition stocks, and also food supplies, on its dirt floor. As if his family had any money! Manuel received a sentence of fifteen years, his punishment for rape. 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. 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. 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. 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. Then I thought of taking off together with her. 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. Sitting by himself on a sofa, Eriksson smiled somewhat ruefully, a deep dimple forming in one cheek. No doubt, Eriksson said, the close brushes that he and his friend had been through had something to do with this, but in his own case he had been deeply impressed while he was overseas by what he called an upside-down mentality, which he believed explained the general unconcern there about incidents like the one he had taken part in. With Greenacre there, it meant that Sven was waiving his right to my silence, he said. Meserve asked him if he had finished the girl. Clark had just replied yes when Mao, like a wounded apparition, was seen crawling rapidly downhill and then disappearing into the thick foliage. They were married four years ago, shortly after Eriksson was drafted. . 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. View Source Suggest Edits Memorial Photos Flowers Created by: TrentLane Added: 26 Aug 2021 Find a Grave Memorial ID: 231233841 Sponsored by Jennifer Brown Source citation [11], Likewise, Gervase's initial sentence of ten years with hard labor was reduced to eight. The two other G.I.s in the combat team were a year younger than Eriksson, who was then twenty-two. . Because of the C.I.D.s slipup, it appeared, practically all the pretrial information obtained by the investigators could be successfully challenged in court by the defensewhich meant that Manuels confession of guilt would be inadmissible as evidence, and without that the governments case was as good as emasculated. It might have influenced my thinking if Id had that information, but Im not sure. As he listened to her, he said, it had even crossed his mind to shoot her assailants, but then, he observed to me, Id have had the bodies of four men to justify. Asked in court for his thoughts during the period he had sat on the grassy turf, he testified, Well, sir, I was wishing I wasnt in the situation I was in. Youre hurt, I can see, but how are you? who was murdered, but how could I do it for a Vietnamese? During his months leave, he was always with her and with relatives and friends and, in a way, Eriksson said, with Mao. . Translating the testimony of Loc, who was two years younger than Mao, an interpreter informed the court, She said they come in, use flashlight and shone around the house and saw her mothers face and her sisters face and all of them wake up at the same time. Accordingly, at nine the group struck out for the cliff. Q: I didnt ask you for a long elaboration. The ideas that came to him, he said, had less to do with jobs than they had to do with life, and he attributed this to the incident on Hill 192. Needless to say, the question was not examined philosophically in the Camp Radcliff courthouse; instead, it was employed narrowly as a government gambit for stumping a witness. 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. Cipriano Garcia's 4-year sentence was shortened to 22 months. Invariably, Eriksson said, he found himself reproved for the deed. Eriksson said to me, his voice urgent, as though he had just heard the news, Charlie kidnapped her, just as he did Maos mother. 1/4 Fifty-four years ago today four US army soldiers murdered Phan Thi Mao, whom they had kidnapped and gang-raped in what is now called the incident on hill 192. en.wikipedia.org.
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