incident on hill 192 where are they now incident on hill 192 where are they now

The group walked from the airstrip to Hill 192. When she finished eating, she mumbled something in Vietnamese; maybe it was Thank youI wouldnt know. Eriksson wouldnt be going along, though; the Lieutenant had assigned another G.I. Eriksson replied that he wouldnt mind a changenot that it would deter him from pressing charges. It had to be on one of the two rocks that the girl lay, Eriksson knew, and to spare the others in the party unnecessary exertion he screened out the nearer rock by himself, doggedly plunging through formidable brush to reach it. We just tell them to dee deemeaning to go away. But at the other end of the path, just as we were leaving the village behind, the enemy would open up on us, and there was bitterness among us that the villagers hadnt given us warning. 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.. Eriksson now believes he should have foreseen that sooner or later one of these incidents was bound to strike him with special, climactic force. 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. 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. They suffered from smoke inhalation. I decided I was hearing an individual who wished he could have saved that girl but hadnt been able to, Kirk told me. 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. Like Clark, he was given to quick movements, but his behavior had nothing to do with embellishing Meserves thinking. Much as he loved it, he told me, it was what he had been working at before he was drafted, and, as is often true of new war veterans, he felt restless and in need of a change. In addition to the occasional remarks he heard in the police barracks, a train of other developments served to remind him of the girl. In disbelief and confusion, his heart palpitating, Eriksson saw that Meserve was losing no time in carrying out his plan, for, with Clark at his heels, the Sergeant had embarked on a systematic search of the hamlets hootches. Incident on Hill 192 explained Acknowledging the danger in which Eriksson had placed himself, the Lieutenant told him, If I sent you out with that patrol, youd never make it back.. I listened to Svens story with a cops ear, the chaplain said. However, he did call Clarks attention to a bush directly ahead. The paintings made her unhappy, or, rather, they led her to acknowledge the existence of an unhappiness that seemed always to have been inside her.. . The incident on Hill 192 refers to the kidnap, gang rape, and murder of Phan Thi Mao, a young Vietnamese woman on November 19, 1966 by an American squad during the Vietnam War. about Mao, and three times he used itIll handle everything, Ill handle everything, Ill handle everything. Maybe he did, but not in a way that had anything to do with anyones making amends. At his meeting with Vorst the day of the Captains return, he went on, he noticed thatlike Reilly, who was presentthe company commander failed to deplore the murder, and instead stressed its potentialities as a scandal. It took an hour to negotiate the climb, and the group had barely attained the ridge when Rafe, his eyes sweeping the vista below, saw five Vietnamese in peasant dress making their way along a mountain trail toward the paddy fields near the stream. 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. Another defense attorney repeatedly taxed Eriksson with having fabricated his charges against Meserve and the others in order to escape further assignments to hazardous infantry missions. 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. 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. Ill never know. 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. I gave her crackers and beef stew and water. Chief of the Philippine National Police, retirement | 297K views, 1.1K likes, 812 loves, 1K comments, 873 shares, Facebook Watch Videos from Radio. 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. Who else would tell but myself? Vorst was in the group, and Eriksson, detaching himself from his unit, went up to the Captain and told him about Mao. And it had to be Boyd Greenacre who would introduce me. It was like claiming that just because a drunken driver hit your friend, you had a right to get in your car and aim it at some pedestrian. The land was very changeable. I called him back and commended him on the job that he did and reported it, in turn, to the company headquarters.. Even though the two were alone, Eriksson remained cautious, revealing nothing about Maos murder. man attending the sessions assured him that this was highly improper. Perhaps as an earnest of his friendship, Eriksson told the Marine about Mao one afternoon, and the captain was shocked to hear what had happened to her. I hadnt let out anything to him about the murder, but as long as I was with Chaplain Kirk, I thought he was entitled to hear everything. The gesture impressed him, the chaplain has since told me. Thirty metres down, they came to a curiously shaped rock formation composed of two jutting ledges. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. down a trail between two hedgerows when the patrol was suddenly fired upon from one side. And, in fact, Eriksson told me, a C.I.D. By the time he concluded his last appearance on the stand, he had been accused of lying, of cowardice, and even of Maos murder. All that many of us could think at such times was that we were fools to be ready to die for people who defecated in public, whose food was dirtier than anything in our garbage cans back home. Im not going to say that, sir. They were very definite. As it happened, the Captain heard about it from a second source as wellfrom Eriksson himself. So now its only the father whos leftor is he? 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. 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. Naturally, Meserve said, if the men could spot any Vietcong in the open, that would be all to the good, but the patrols ordersand these had been spelled out in no uncertain terms by the battalion commandwere to avoid any shooting matches with the enemy except in self-defense; as a so-called pony patrol, he said, they were out to collect early-warning information concerning enemy intentions. Looking back, Eriksson thinks that the small band of V.C. All four soldiers were sentenced to hard labor at the United States Army Disciplinary Barracks, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. 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. agents, photographers, a firearms expert, and a ballistics man. The film stars Michael J. Meserve said nothing to Rafe; nor did he say anything to any of the others when, as the mission unfolded, they committed similar derelictions. As for himself, Eriksson told me, Meserve had ordered him to a ledge from which he could overlook the complex as he trained his grenade launcher on two cave mouths in particular, either one of which, the Sergeant thought, could afford the entombed V.C. It had built up sharply. 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. He has no idea to what extent that may operate, however; nor is he prepared, he said, to bank on anything so abstract. In the end, the four juries sitting at Camp Radcliff found the defendants guilty of one crime or another. [10] At the trial of Thomas, who committed the actual stabbing and shooting, the prosecutor asked the jury to impose a death sentence. Conscience was one thing that crossed over from civilian life to war, he said. Eriksson continued as an M.P., his duties generally less onerous than they had been in Vietnam, and his existence certainly more relaxed, since, as he observed to me, he was waking up every morning not only in his own country but in the presence of the Rockies. 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. The four courts-martial took place in the winter of 1967, within a period of about ten days in the middle of March. Sure, there were always advance plans to do this or that, but they didnt often stand up in the field. The men were to be gone five days, the Sergeant revealeda fairly long time for a reconnaissance missionand on hearing this Eriksson experienced a sense of exhilaration, just as he had at the prospect of far shorter patrols in which he had taken part. 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. incident on hill 192 where are they now. 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. . Eriksson was delighted with this duty, since he had had a passion for carpentry all his life. She had stopped whimpering, and there was even a little look of trust in her eyes. The film was based on the real-life incident on Hill 192, and on Daniel Lang's book of the same title, but all names and some details of the story were altered. in his stead. 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. That occurred in February, 1968, when Manuel was granted a retrial on the ground that although his C.I.D. Late in July, Eriksson was handed a communication from the commanding officer of his division, the 1st Cavalry (Airmobile). For this action, Meserve was nominated for a Bronze Star. Late one afternoon, when he and about twenty other G.I.s putting up a barracks were about to knock off for the day, he saw a fellow-carpenter, Boyd Greenacre, detach himself from the crew to have a talk with a passing chaplain, a blond, long-nosed six-footer wearing a captains bars; the two men, Eriksson could see, were on cordial terms. Three times I saw the C.O. 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. But on the bus the peasant woman across from me was going to work in paddy fields that were near Maos hamlet, from which it was a nice walk downhill to a stream that flooded the rice fields. Additional pictures were taken a week later, when Eriksson led a second pilgrimage to Hill 192. It took him a while to realize this, he said, and, curiously, he became persuaded of its prevalence as a result of thinking about Vorst s negative handling. As he went over it in his mind for the hundredth time, he began to suspect the existence of cracks in the Captains seemingly certain, untroubled faade. He was merely asking, Vorst said, but had Eriksson really thought through what he was doing in pushing his charges? No such dismay was expressed. 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. They had known each other since childhood, their fathers having been neighboring farmers, who both had difficulty making ends meet. I didnt know then that they were four hundred metres away, at the top of Hill 192, or that it would be a whole hour before they returned. Navigation - The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center & School 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. He might turn out to be dumb or brave or to have a wonderful stock of jokes. She might have helped me know what to do, instead of my having to figure it out aloneit was her life that was at stake. Here is the interchange between the executive officer and the prosecutor: Q: Do you feel there is a place in the United States Army for any murderers? And then there was Vorsts invitation to Eriksson to transfer out of the company. In that season, Eriksson told me, when the M.P.s yakked the hours away together in their quarters, one or another of his fellow-cops would periodically recall what Eriksson had chosen to do. They were just doing their job. Once the pair had assessed the gravity of the crimes being charged, they moved swiftly. Once this was done, the patrol filed out of the camp in the faintly humid darkness, the men still uncertain of their leaders intent. The men found her feverish and coughing, and Clark was all for rescheduling her death hour to that evening. This sentence was first commuted to 20 years, then reduced to eight, which made him eligible for parole after half that time. When you go out on a patrol, you aint going to be as good as you want to be, because these guys aint helping you do anything. Had he taken into account the amount of suffering that Americans had already undergone in behalf of the Vietnamese? Manuel received a sentence of fifteen years, his punishment for rape. As the men had raced to get there, clambering and sliding, Rafe had slipped and fallen from a ledge, dislocating an elbow and a shoulder. While Eriksson, Manuel, and the now wretched Rafe hovered outside, Meserve and Clark entered the hutMaos home. The trial records make it clear that the question left the witnesses uncomfortable, for their responses were reluctant and tortured. There was little pattern to the verdicts, each of the juries indulging in its own vagaries. It seemed like a deal, but why was it, Eriksson asked himself, that a captain should feel constrained to bargain with a lowly enlisted man? At first, the chain of command, including the company commander, took no action. Rafe, hospitalized at Qui Nhon, was already accounted for; Clark was to take a relatively rear-area post, at battalion headquarters; Meserve was to be shifted to another platoon. The C.I.D. Ad Choices, He wanted never to be away from her. 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. 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. He sounded genuinely concerned. Something else the prosecutor did was to advise him to see a psychiatrist before the trials started. 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. 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. They obscured her figure, Eriksson says, but he has the impression that she was slender and slight, and was perhaps five feet two or three inches tall. Q: As a matter of fact, you have complained [from the stockade] that your promotion is being held up? Meserve at once radioed the platoon command, reaching Lieutenant Reilly, to whom he suggested that the V.C. 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. The four soldiers visitation lasted nearly an hour and a half, and two minutes after it was terminated the men, to conceal themselves from any Vietcong who might be in the vicinity, rentered the hootch together. He stated at the trial, From where I was, I observed Clark grab the girl by the arm and take her into the bushes nearby. 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. 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,. Listening to the fellows, I had the feeling there might be any number of Meserves and Clarks around me, he said. The mother, Eriksson told me, was waving a scarf and laboriously propelling herself forward. Mao seemed to figure constantly in his thoughts, he said, which were concerned mostly with how he would earn his livelihood after he left the Army, the following April. [6], Storeby initially reported the crime. 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. Those baskets could get awfully heavy, Eriksson recalled. The participants in the cases, including lawyers, witnesses, law officers, and members of the court, lived in tents near the courthouse, and often at night the vicious thump of artillery shells, enemy-bound, from the edges of the division base disturbed the quiet of the legal encampment. the bunker in the hootch. Did you fire your weapon? Rebuffed a second time, Meserve lashed out with an attack on Erikssons manliness, deriding him as queer and chicken. The attack didnt bother him, Eriksson told me, but it appears from the court record that it did affect Rafe, who testified that he could not have withstood the epithets he heard Meserve heap on Eriksson; it was his fear of such derision, Rafe stated, that caused him to join those who entered the hootch he had helped make tidy. Do you consider yourself braver than Eriksson?. The thought of them, he said, makes him feel discouraged at times about his future, which, he pointed out, could be a long one. This was about 1400 hours, Manuel stated. Eriksson shook his head. A. Weiss Causualties of war Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2013 Verified Purchase The movie "Casualties of war" (1986) 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. 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. However, Maos sister, Phan Thi Loc, who was present, has done this at one of the trials. Incident On Hill 192 - amazon.com As far as he was concerned, Eriksson said, it had all seemed a morass of cleverness, but then, he conceded, he may well have entered the military courtroom in the Central Highlands, where the four trials were held, with unwarranted expectations, for it had been his hope that the trials would help him unravel his reactions to Maos fate.