What if he refused to arrange an introduction for me? I give him max rating as a soldier. In other connections, it was brought out that the Sergeant had not waited to be drafted, that he was currently in line for the Bronze Star, and that in the course of his overseas duty he had been awarded five medals, of varying importance, and had a conduct rating of Excellent. Their eyes were terrified, Eriksson remembers. 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. That was how my hunch went, and I didnt dare change it in any way. Eriksson moved cautiously. That word handle! Eriksson said reminiscently. In the first place, he wanted to act fast, and, besides, he had no doubt that once he did act, there would be fast results. But the assertion was a hard one to prove, for Rafe was on hand to testify that Eriksson was so situated in that feverish moment that Mao wasnt even in his line of vision. Testifying in his own defense, Rafe stated, I was afraid to tell [the officer], because I might be the only one who brought it up. (Asked by a C.I.D. Did Eriksson know that military judges and jurors were notoriously lenient in their sentencing? He told me that their bond was religion and that the interest each of them took in it had been heightened by their experiences in the war. But, as Eriksson unhesitatingly acknowledges, the fact is that when he thinks of his tour of duty in Vietnam it is always a single image that comes to his mind. 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. Exploring the mountain further, often making their way through shoulder-high vegetation, Eriksson, Meserve, Manuel, and Rafe pushed on toward the summit. The 1966 incident at hill 192, and the courage shown by p f c storeby is not in doubt. Given this confusion of values, the legalistic consideration of Maos death sometimes bordered on the incongruous. De Palma wanted to make the movie after reading Daniel Lang's article in The New Yorker in 1969. 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. 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. Q: I didnt ask you for a long elaboration. A moment later, the two groups went off in different directions. . Captain Vorst handed Meserve a piece of paper with three words printed on itKidnapping, Rape, Murder. A small, pretty blonde with an alert, intelligent manner, she offered me coffee and cake the instant I set foot in the apartment. As for Manuel, who was fair-skinned and stockier than his cousin, his manner was on the jumpier side. Some Vietnamese people were bringing children out of. All the others in the patrol had raped or killed her. The patrol and Mao shared the hootch that night, the girl spending it in a corner by herself. 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. Unfortunately they do nothing but settle for him to be relocated in order to not be killed by his fellow squad members. 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. And, in practice, neither Manuel nor any of the other defendants (nor Eriksson, for that matter) paid a cent for legal services. It was like living in an overorganized junglefull of names, ranks, and serial numbers but not much else., Dispiriting though he found the atmosphere in the platoon area, Eriksson went on, there were traces of conscience there. He had no illusion, though, that Rowan himself could do much about what he had just learned, but at that, Eriksson said, his friend did what he could, immediately relaying news of the murder to the sergeant of his own squad. A: I dont think Im braver than Eriksson. 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. It repeated itself in waves, broken only, Eriksson assumed, by Maos need to summon fresh breath. The first of them, he told me, was that Mao woke up less alluring than when she had gone to bed. 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?. The men found her feverish and coughing, and Clark was all for rescheduling her death hour to that evening. You never knew whose turn it was to die, and that isnt how it was in rear areas. In 1969, the New Yorker published a report by Daniel Lang about the court martial of a group of men who had served in Vietnam. Asked whether Meserve might not have been searching the hootches of Maos hamlet for the strictly military purpose of finding strange faces, he answered, I wouldnt say this, sir. Sometimes you have your disagreements, and sometimes you dont voice them, you keep them to yourself.. . It was based on the actual incident on Hill 192.
PNP Change of Command Ceremony and Retirement Honors for - Facebook Clark, convicted of rape and premeditated murder, was to serve for life. Ordinarily, he conjectured, the promise of such generous support would have cheered Meserve, but Maos presence seemed to confuse matters. 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. 2: The great pressures you were subject to during those critical months are appreciated. 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. For this action, Meserve was nominated for a Bronze Star. Eriksson decides to do something about her death and reports it to his superiors. They constantly reported rapes and kidnappings by the Vietcong; in fact, the Vietcong committed these crimes so indiscriminately that the victims were sometimes their own sympathizers. In a matter of seconds, the shooting broke off, and another patrol, consisting of another squad in Reillys platoon, emerged from behind the hedgerow. He first asked Sergeant Meserve, Do you know anything about this? To which Meserve said, We dont know what youre talking about. He then directed the same question to all of us, Do you people know what youve done up there? Captain Vorst then asked me did I know what would or could happen to me. Among its members were C.I.D. We were each acting the way we had to, he told me. It was the hardest decision Ive ever had to make, and it couldnt have been the best possible one, or Mao wouldnt be gone today., In the time that elapsed before the patrols return, Eriksson said, Maos condition worsened noticeably. They were very definite. His reaction interested me, Eriksson said. There, corpsmen deposited him on a bed alongside that of a battalion officer he knew and liked.
Navigation - The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center & School Lets kill her and get it over with, he said, according to the court record. Deciding to close in on the three Vietnamese, Meserve dispatched Eriksson and Rafe to the hootch to pick up a supply of smoke grenades. Leave it to 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. Throughout each trial, Eriksson said, the exponents of military law strove diligently to apply judicial rules largely borrowed from civilian law, as though they were seeking to re-create a semblance of civilian life. 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. Eriksson was confident, though, he told me, that the older he grew, the more accepting he would be of his memory. They were married four years ago, shortly after Eriksson was drafted. In addition, the hootch served as a place to hide Mao. Who says we dont get along with Charlie? He remembers that he talked with one of them while they were both shaving, and that in shooting the breeze with another he led the conversation around to Greenacre when the man mentioned that Arizona was where he dreamed of spending his first post-war vacation. He was shirtless; his face wore an expression of swaggering irresistibility. The decision was not easily arrived at, for two days before Clarks trial was to begin, and when Rafe had already been convicted, Clark approached Rafe in the stockade at Long Binh, where both were jailed, and, appealing to Rafes conscience, told him that if he gave unfriendly testimony against his comrades, he would have it on his mind the rest of his life. Troubled by this, Rafe sought, and heeded, the counsel of a Catholic chaplain at Camp Radcliff in resolving the dilemma of choosing between his moral obligation, as Rafe put it to the chaplain, and loyalty to the patrol. Summoned to the stand by Clarks lawyer, the priest said he had advised Rafe that, as opposed to defending Clarks interest, he had a greater obligation to his wife and his child and the young woman who, supposedly, I assume, was killed, and to justice and society. The priest also said he was asking a Franciscan brother in Texas to break the news of Rafes conviction to his wife, to help her absorb the initial shock., By contrast, the general demeanor of the other defendants was that of incredulity at being tried; the impression they gave was that they thought only the sheerest, most improbable sort of accident could explain their being haled before a tribunal.