Meserve, however, counselled patience. . (He got a break. During his months leave, he was always with her and with relatives and friends and, in a way, Eriksson said, with Mao. One of them, I know, goofed on his interrogation of Manuelhe forgot to read off one of Manuels rights before he started asking questions. In addition, Eriksson told me, he would have appreciated it if the prosecutorwhom he looked upon as his lawyerhad tutored him slightly in how to conduct himself in court; despite his status as the Armys chief witness, Eriksson said, he took the stand practically cold. see review David rated it liked it Nov 11, 2021 Glen rated it liked it Jan 29, 2014 Almost before he was awake, M.P.s escorted him from his cell to the Provost Marshals office, where he underwent a further interrogation. I was afraid of being ridiculed, sir, he told the prosecutor. The gunships were now unmistakably in the area, their motors sending up a storm of noise as the machines hovered low and their crews searched out the enemy. The incident on Hill 192 refers to the kidnapping, gang rape, and murder of Phan Thi Mao, a young Vietnamese woman, [1] on November 19, 1966 [2] by an American squad during the Vietnam War. Rafes sentence of eight years had been cut to four, and Meserves ten years had been trimmed to eight. 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. When Meserve ended his testimony, the prosecutor inquired how many times and to whom he had told the story you just told on the witness stand., Numerous times, sir, the Sergeant replied. 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. 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. The first of them, he told me, was that Mao woke up less alluring than when she had gone to bed. 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. 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. Book Title: Casualties of War: Incident on Hill 192 Author: Daniel Lang Genres: Nonfiction, True Crime. Both refused, Eriksson said. Hey, Sven, how do you know that girl wasnt a V.C. The five men and Mao kept up a steady pace. As for the defendants themselves, only Rafe showed contrition, the most striking manifestation of which was his decision to testify against Clark. Instead, to Erikssons astonishment, Reilly chose that moment to offer a reminiscence. They were cousins named DiazRafael, known as Rafe, whose home was near Amarillo, Texas, and Manuel, who came from a town some distance north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Since the patrol would be going out again, Eriksson said, he knew he had to act fast, but that seemed no big deal. Its a part of the country where we pride ourselves on not being demonstrative, she said. 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. Straggling uphill, he said, they gravitated toward their leader, who stood, unflustered, near the jutting rock formation, surveying the combat situation. 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. . 2023 Cond Nast. It did not occur in the United States. Incident on Hill 192 by Daniel Lang - Goodreads Launching into his unlegalistic account, Eriksson told me that it seemed clear to him in retrospect that he should have been prepared for Maos death. 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. We just looked at each other, without saying hello. This arose when a defense witness, a sergeant in the platoon, said that Eriksson had none. [5] In 1970 Michael Verhoeven made the film o.k., based on the incident. In an affidavit that Manuel later signed, he stated, Clark gagged the girl to keep her from yelling out. 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. man attending the sessions assured him that this was highly improper. The trials were held in a courthouse at Camp Radcliff, a frame structure measuring thirty feet by thirty and roofed with tin. He had only been fooling, he testified, when he talked of having fun on the reconnaissance mission. Learn more about Incident On Hill 192 Where Are They Now 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. Mao was ungagged but was given no food; noticing that she was flushed and coughing slightly, Meserve handed her an aspirin. The Sergeant seemed more attracted by the possibility of military action, to judge by the speed with which he had his charges break camp. 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. Your prompt reporting of this serious incident to your superiors and subsequent testimony in court were essential elements in the apprehension and trials of the men responsible for this brutal crime. Inevitably, though, the defense witnesses were unable to confine their remarks to Meserves service record, foralmost tactlessly, it seemedthe prosecutor would inject the topic of Maos murder, the implications of which had less to do with the conquest of an enemy than with the requirements of an ordered civilian life. 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. She began to weep, and backed away, cringing. For Eriksson, the trials were totally unlike anything he had anticipated. You never knew whose turn it was to die, and that isnt how it was in rear areas. He sounded genuinely concerned. Something else the prosecutor did was to advise him to see a psychiatrist before the trials started. 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. 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. She ate, standing, and it was whimper, then eat, whimper, then eat. (Eriksson had done the same for Rafe at his trial in Vietnam.) The guys would back him up, of course. 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 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. 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. Rafe had flouted the order against unnecessary shooting, confirming Erikssons observation that plans could mean little in the field and that out there any patrol was a unit only in theory. That was the thing about the chain of commandyou couldnt tell who was to blame for what. He said for me to think that over again very carefully, Eriksson recalled. In 1989 Brian De Palma directed the film Casualties of War, which was based on Lang's book. The groups second-in-command was Ralph Clark, a corporal who came from a town near Philadelphia. No such dismay was expressed. Another board might have found differently, a colonel in the Judge Advocate Generals office told me.) Ordinarily, he conjectured, the promise of such generous support would have cheered Meserve, but Maos presence seemed to confuse matters. He had wanted to unburden himself of his doubts about whether he had done all he might have done for Mao in her travaildoubts that gnaw at him to this day. 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. I wanted to get out of the platoon, he stated. We were each acting the way we had to, he told me. As a disciplined soldier, I knew I wouldnt abandon the weapons in the hootch to the enemy, but, just the same, I was dizzy with thinking how to save Mao. 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. Both Thomas and Loeb were leaders of the white supremacist World Church of the Creator. Additional pictures were taken a week later, when Eriksson led a second pilgrimage to Hill 192. 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. Perhaps, Eriksson said, he remembered that idea just then because of his recent stewing about Vorst and conscience. With Greenacre there, it meant that Sven was waiving his right to my silence, he said. Platoon True Story: How Accurate Is The Vietnam War Movie - Screen Rant They found the company commander, who had himself only just returned, waiting impatiently to confront them with Erikssons report. Incident on Hill 192 explained Casualties of War (1989) - User Reviews - IMDb 1970. Eriksson replied that he wouldnt mind a changenot that it would deter him from pressing charges. The mother, Eriksson told me, was waving a scarf and laboriously propelling herself forward. Once this was done, the patrol filed out of the camp in the faintly humid darkness, the men still uncertain of their leaders intent. From the minute I got to Radcliff, I was on the lookout for him, whoever he might turn out to be, Eriksson said. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. 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. 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. Listening to the fellows, I had the feeling there might be any number of Meserves and Clarks around me, he said. Before Meserve could devise any next step, Clark took hold of Maos arm. It had to be him, and no other chaplain, he recalled, smiling. After half an hour, their watch on the stream paid off, producing a more interesting sight than Rafes water buffalo. I had no idea where my unit was. 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. 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. Id never known the Army had any such unit, Eriksson told me. The lawyers were playing a game, he said. That leaves three to go.. Lang later turned the article into a book entitled "Casualties of War". Tony Meserve (Sean Penn), kidnap a young Vietnamese woman named Oanh (Thuy Thu Le) from her village and take her on a patrol, making her their sex slave. What if he refused to arrange an introduction for me? Just who, I wanted to ask, was the man in Manuels patrol who started the shooting? Wild with rage, Reilly had tried to wreck the place, whereupon hospital orderlies summoned the police, and the new father was arrested and jailed. 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. Though news of the incident reached the U.S. shortly after the soldiers' trials, [3] the story gained widespread notoriety through Daniel Lang's 1969 article . It was the final talk between the two men. Lang's article for The New Yorker described the so-called "Incident on Hill 192" that involved the kidnapping, . He had no impulse to talk about Maocertainly not with his fellow-policemen. Shitstink McLanahan. 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. 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. already had more prison time than that to his credit, so the force of the generals ruling was to bring about Rafes immediate release from confinement. Well, during this Operation Thayer II, which started [last October], we ran into a hootch that was burned down. 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. In any event, Eriksson went on, he lost little time in seeking out his friend Curly Rowan to tell him the story of Mao. Sometimes you hate the enemy so bad. I said, Probably the firing squad, sir. He then said something to the effect, I could send you all back to the States for courts-martial, or he could court-martial us out here and still have a firing squad. Eriksson remembers Rafe as a tall, swarthy, round-faced man with a disposition that was naturally sunny and amiable. Pointing to the hootch, he signalled to Rafe to be his successor, and Rafe, sparing himself ridicule, walked in. Given this confusion of values, the legalistic consideration of Maos death sometimes bordered on the incongruous. So now its only the father whos leftor is he? 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. However, a board of review in Washington, made up of three senior officers, had noticed the C.I.D.s oversight, and it had resulted in a second chance for Manuel. That word handle! Eriksson said reminiscently. As in all armies, he believed, it pervaded every facet of military life, embracing officers and enlisted men, volunteers and draftees, and, for that matter, men with college degrees, like Vorst and Reilly, and men with meagre educations, like Meserve and him. Using the upper one as a vantage point, they spied the small band of V.C. Eriksson said to me, his voice urgent, as though he had just heard the news, Charlie kidnapped her, just as he did Maos mother. In a matter of seconds, the shooting broke off, and another patrol, consisting of another squad in Reillys platoon, emerged from behind the hedgerow. They lingered in it longer than they had in the other hootches, but since Eriksson was standing outside the hut he is unable to describe what went on inside. Then, of course, after rehabilitationI think theres a difference, sir. The Sergeant was the first man to enter the hootch, and soon, Eriksson told me, a high, piercing moan of pain and despair came from the girl. The incident on Hill 192 refers to the kidnapping, gang rape, and murder of Phan Thi Mao, a young Vietnamese woman,[1] on November 19, 1966[2] by an American squad during the Vietnam War. INCIDENT ON HILL 192 (from my war diary) PNP Change of Command Ceremony and Retirement Honors for - Facebook 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. As if his family had any money! To Erikssons astonishment and deep relief, the Sergeant abruptly shifted his attention to the Diazes, asking first Rafe and then Manuel to carry out the murder. agent, poking through leaves with a bayonet, found teeth, finger bones, and yet more bullet fragments, all of which he deposited in a plastic bag. 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. 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. 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. Subjects Fortunately, he said, his assignments involved no murder or rape cases. I decided I was hearing an individual who wished he could have saved that girl but hadnt been able to, Kirk told me. . Even his routine duties as a G.I. Transitory though their show of character may have been, he said, it encouraged him in reaching a private resolve, for as he kept watch above the cave complex, Eriksson told me, he was suddenly seized with the overwhelming realization that unless he took it upon himself to speak out, the fact of Maos death would remain a secret. Cross-examined at Meserves trial as to why he had shifted his position, Eriksson testified, Well, sir, these gentlemen seemed to meoh, I should say kind of enthused about what was going on. I had to give one small child mouth-to-mouth respiration and bring her back to life. 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. Reilly later testified in court, Captain Vorst stated to Eriksson, I guess you realize how serious this incident is, and that it could cause an international issue. Eriksson stated thats why he reported the incidentbecause he knew it was serious. War crimes such as the Incident on Hill 192 (dramatized in the equally harrowing Casualties of War ), the My Lai Massacre, the Shelling of Highway 1, the Phoenix Program, and many more all involved the torture, rape, and mass murder of unarmed Vietnamese civilians. 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. Reillys immediate superior, Captain Otto Vorst, as was later brought out in court, was out in the field at the time on a tactical problem. He was not due back until November 22nd, the day Meserves patrol was scheduled to conclude its mission. Q: You would suggest some minor form of punishment, in other words? 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. The hamlet was barely out of sight when Manuel, perhaps competing with Clark, untied Maos hands, then slipped his pack from his shoulders and loaded it onto the girls. 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. However, he acknowledged that the prosecutor did warn him, as Vorst and Kirk had previously, of the possible consequences to him and his wife of his testifying for the government. Evacuated by a medical helicopter, he was flown to a hospital at Qui Nhon. He learned it, eventually, when the girls sister identified her at court-martial proceedingsproceedings that Eriksson himself instigated and in which he served as the governments chief witness. As far as he knew, he said, no legal developments were brewing in their behalfnot that it made much difference, he added, since he had learned just a few weeks earlier that Meserve and Clark stood to be declared eligible for parole before they had served even half their time at Fort Leavenworth. The two sisters looked at each other. Incident on Hill 192 ~ Murder & Rape Details with Photos | Videos Clark was holding her elbow, and he pushed her forward when Meserve ordered the patrol to get moving. Accordingly, at nine the group struck out for the cliff. . Daylight was coming on fast, and he wanted the girl in the light as little as possible, Eriksson told me. Q: You dont believe the military gives a choice between rules, orders, and conscience?
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