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. The girl looked so innocent, so calm, he testified. 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. [10] At the trial of Thomas, who committed the actual stabbing and shooting, the prosecutor asked the jury to impose a death sentence. He had no impulse to talk about Maocertainly not with his fellow-policemen. 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. . recognized that there were forces of conscience that might have to be contended with? Among its members were C.I.D. Id been there a month or three weeks longer., When he went on to imply that Eriksson might be chicken, the prosecutor asked, How come he stood up to Meserve? Grinning, Manuel approached Eriksson, stuck out his hand, and said, No hard feelings. Before Eriksson could say anything, Manuel turned and left the courtroom, a free man. To counter any such strategy, the prosecutor wanted to have on hand a statement attesting to his chief witnesss mental stability. 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. [5] In 1970 Michael Verhoeven made the film o.k., based on the incident. He was all of seven when he was driving a tractor on the farm. I had this picture that when we did, theyd fire at us, or, at least, Meserve would have me up on charges of desertion. Fortunately, he ran into a fellow-Minnesotan at the airport, an artilleryman with whom he had gone off to Asia thirteen months earlier; the artilleryman, also homeward bound, unhesitatingly lent Eriksson the ten dollars. or did he just refuse at all times? The Sergeant had made his announcement with a straight face, leaving his men to interpret it as they would. The young woman was abducted, not a prostitute. 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 certainly was not the Army's finest hour, given the reticence. Late in July, Eriksson was handed a communication from the commanding officer of his division, the 1st Cavalry (Airmobile). Thinking like thatwell, as I say, it could change some fellows. 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. His persistence in reporting the crime to higher authorities eventually resulted in general courts-martial against his four fellow squad mates. [12] He was paroled on August 9, 1969. I just wanted to feel quiet, he said. All soldiers (excluding Storeby) were dishonorably discharged from the Army. Incident on Hill 192 - Wikipedia Mrs. Eriksson, who was once more plying her husband and me with coffee and cake, put in, Sven and I are Lutherans. Manuel received a sentence of fifteen years, his punishment for rape. 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. But. Q : You feel that the government has done you a grave injustice in bringing you here today for trial? The weather had turned hot and dry, Eriksson remembers, and the interior of the courtroom throbbed with the whirr of electric fans. fellows knew about law, Eriksson said. Eriksson also stated that the entire taking of the girl, the rape, and killing of the girl were pre-planned. I realize that we are over here fighting a war, but to go out and kill an innocent person has nothing to do with the war., Accused of shrewdness in seeking to evade infantry duty, Eriksson found himself also accused of a lack of shrewdness in failing to let Mao escape when he was alone with her in the hootch. Manuel showed no initiative in that regard, Eriksson told me, his attitude toward authority being simple and automatic: he heeded it devoutly. Exploring the mountain further, often making their way through shoulder-high vegetation, Eriksson, Meserve, Manuel, and Rafe pushed on toward the summit. He wouldnt mind being a door gunner aboard a helicopter, he told Vorst, citing as his qualifications for such a post that he had been trained as a machine gunner and that he was fond of flying. 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. It happened when the Sergeant, having delivered his instructions, concluded the briefing by telling the assembled men that they were going to have a good time on the mission, because he was going to see to it that they found themselves a girl and took her along for the morale of the squad. For five days, the Sergeant said, they would avail themselves of her body, finally disposing of it, to keep the girl from ever accusing them of abduction and rapeboth listed as capital crimes in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. 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. At first, we all denied any knowledge about it. I wanted to be very sure that he himself hadnt taken part in the rape. Eriksson was bound for Minnesota, for a month at home before his discharge in the spring, but when his plane put down at Seattle he found that he was ten dollars short for the final leg of his journey. Eriksson never exchanged a word with her; neither spoke the others language. Its obey the man over you, follow the chain of command, or into the stockade you go. Something that added to his feeling of frustration in those trying weeks was that he could not find it within himself to single out Vorst as the arch-villain, from whom all evil flowed. The first of them, he told me, was that Mao woke up less alluring than when she had gone to bed. Sprawled on the ground after the meal, Meserve, refreshed, glanced at his fellows and then, with a knowing smile, indicated the partly ruined structure. 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. In 1989 Brian De Palma directed the film Casualties of War, which was based on Lang's book. 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. Clark was holding her elbow, and he pushed her forward when Meserve ordered the patrol to get moving. 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. She had lain moldering there for three weeks and her body was badly decayed. The five-man squad, led by a 20-year-old sergeant, Tony Meserve, had been sent on patrol. Outside, a diesel generator, the base camps source of electricity, made a constant racket, causing the law officers frequently to request witnesses to raise their voices. She began to weep, and backed away, cringing. Looking back, Eriksson thinks that the small band of V.C. The soldiers set up a night watch, each man pulling guard duty outside in the moonlight, alert for any lurking enemy. Rafes sentence of eight years had been cut to four, and Meserves ten years had been trimmed to eight. As if his family had any money! Had he stopped to think of the consequences to himself of accusing four fellow-G.I.sthereby adding to that suffering? Thus, defense lawyers raised no objections when the prosecutor asked the defendants and the defense witnesses whether a soldier who was condemned for having committed civilian homicide, such as the killing of Mao, should be kept on as a member of the armed forcesthat is, should be permitted to go on committing military homicide. As a result, Eriksson spent the next two days surreptitiously doing a kind of security check on Greenacres character. De Palma handles this unsettling & disturbing fare with ruthlessness, making it an experience to remember. He also remembers that she was wearing dusty earrings made of bluish glass; he noticed the trinkets because they gave off a dull glint one bright afternoon when he was assigned to stand guard over her. Needless to say, Eriksson continued, the kind of behavior he was describing was by no means limited to Americans. He made one particular friend at Fort Carson, a Marine captain who had seen eighteen months of combat in Vietnam and was also about to become a civilian. Incident on Hill 192 Daniel Lang Published by Secker & Warburg, London, Great Britain, 1970 Seller: Secondhand Books 'n' Things, Ross Creek, Australia Seller Rating: Contact seller Book First Edition Used - Hardcover Condition: Good 44.51 Convert currency 9.15 Shipping From Australia to United Kingdom Quantity: 1 Add to Basket Hardcover. 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. Indeed, there are some that would say it did not even occur in civilization, when you are out on combat operations., Two weeks after the trials ended, one of the court interpreters, a Vietnamese schoolteacher, with whom Eriksson had made friends, brought word to him that Maos sister was missing. Greenacre might react disapprovingly, as the fellows in the platoon hador, for all Eriksson knew, Greenacre might turn out to be Meserves best friend. All of us had come back scared and upset, but Clark, I thought, showed it the most. Once Clark had left them, Eriksson continued with his story, feeling an immense relief when he had finished telling it. The girl was dressed and her hands had been freed. 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. (Dr. Finck, a well-known Army pathologist, was one of the team of three physicians that performed the autopsy on the late President Kennedy.) It is going to be yourself. 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. When I got up to the girl, I saw that her head was partially blown away, he testified. 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. Q: You dont believe the military gives a choice between rules, orders, and conscience? Below was a valley with a winding stream, and along its banks were paddy fields with neat little dikes around them. . agents, lawyers, and ballistics and firearms specialists. There is going to be four people on that patrol and an individual., Once Meserve had delivered his estimate of Erikssons virility, the ill-fated bacchanal got under way. Anyway, thats what made me believe I was interested in religion. Casualties of War | The New Yorker This time, he said, it would be Clark who would stay behind to guard Mao and the weapons in the hootch. I decided I was hearing an individual who wished he could have saved that girl but hadnt been able to, Kirk told me. It was the least I could doI had failed her in so many ways. It was rustling. The men found her feverish and coughing, and Clark was all for rescheduling her death hour to that evening. . Eriksson told me that he felt weary at the mere prospect of reappearing as a witness a year after the Radcliff trials. . He felt even wearier on arriving in Kansas, when he learned that there was little point to his presence. Wild with rage, Reilly had tried to wreck the place, whereupon hospital orderlies summoned the police, and the new father was arrested and jailed. 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. Acting fast, he sent Manuel backtracking to the summit to tell Eriksson and Rafe to report to him with Mao. Eriksson was fond of his uncle, Mrs. Eriksson said, but, reluctantly, he answered, Im afraid I dont want to talk about her., When Erikssons leave was over, he finished out his two-year hitch at Fort Carson, Colorado, where many of the men were either completing their service, like him, or departing for war. At the time the fifth V.C. Well, during this Operation Thayer II, which started [last October], we ran into a hootch that was burned down. Things will get sorted out, he said. As the court transcript shows, Reilly didnt let matters rest there. 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. 1989 Topics Trailer, Movie, Drama During the Vietnam War, a soldier finds himself the outsider of his own squad when they unnecessarily kidnap a female villager. Vorst was in the group, and Eriksson, detaching himself from his unit, went up to the Captain and told him about Mao. When Meserve had been convicted but not yet sentenced, he was asked by the law officer, Is there any particular thing that you would like to tell the court? Standing before the bench, Meserve replied, Well, sir, Ive seen a lot of killing, which it is our duty to do, because its kill or be killed. Seeing him and Greenacre chatting together, Eriksson went on, had made him realize that the only chance he had of escaping the chain of command was through a chaplain. Again according to Eriksson, Clark was given to quick movements and to seemingly abrupt decisions that reflected Meserves thinking in an exaggerated form. I discovered its not difficult to kill a human beingin combat its as instinctive as ducking bullets. 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. According to Eriksson, Meserve, who was assertive and confident, was both the patrols youngest soldier and its most experienced one, being a volunteer of three years standing who had fought in Vietnam for a year and had been decorated several times; he was due to go back to the United States in a month. [11] In 1968, Joseph Garcia was acquitted on the appeal of his initial 15-year sentence and his dishonorable discharge was reversed after it was determined that his Fifth Amendment rights were violated, and his confession was ruled as inadmissible. making slow progress toward the refuge of the cave complex, which was three hundred metres away, almost at the bottom of the ravine. No such thing happened. Interested in "Incident On Hill 192 Where Are They Now" find IP Addresses, Websites, IP Tools, Articles, and other useful resources on IPAddress.com. What if he refused to arrange an introduction for me? It was just that he was less than average as far as being one of the guys, should we say? You should know that the courage and steadfastness you demonstrated make me proud to have you a member of this division. It did not occur in the United States. Before Eriksson was through, even his possession of a sense of humor became an issue. He had a wild mannerhe couldnt stand still, and his eyes looked every which way. There Is Yet More to Casualties of War - Phoenix New Times The trial records make it clear that the question left the witnesses uncomfortable, for their responses were reluctant and tortured. As if Sven had it so easy! Mrs. Eriksson said to me when she heard of these findings. Eriksson was determined to meet the Arizonans friend, he told me, for he had a feeling that the long-nosed chaplain was the man who would help him bring Maos case to light. Thomas took Mao into a brushy area, and although he stabbed her three times with his hunting knife, he failed to kill her. I saw him raise his rifle, Rafe stated, adding that he then started toward Clark. Better relax about that Vietnamese girl, Eriksson. The lawyers were playing a game, he said. 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. 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. A moment later, the two groups went off in different directions.
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