Thats where she is, he said with certainty. 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. Honorably discharged in April, 1968, this new war veteran, who is twenty-four and comes from a small farming community in northwestern Minnesota, isnt even sure that he would care to hold on to his recollections, if it were possible for him to control his memory. 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. . . leading men on fifty, sixty, seventy patrols, and gave it as his opinion that this incident did not occur as the normal incident. Making his chief point, Meserves lawyer told the court, Theres one thing that stands out about this particular offense. Its time for some fun, he said. I knew the rendezvous spot, and if Mao and I could show up there at the right time, there was no question in my mind but that the fellows in the resupply squad would help us both. Though news of the incident reached state-side shortly after the soldiers' trials the story gained widespread notoriety through Daniel Lang's 1969 article for The New . 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 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. 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.. who was murdered, but how could I do it for a Vietnamese? Then the C.O. These varying decisions, it seemed, were attributable to a variety of factors, among them considerations of the defendants character and background. A: Well, yes, sir, I think if someone has been found guilty of murder, they should be punished, but, knowing Meserve as an individual, I would accept him back in the unit, yes, sir. When Meserve and Clark rejoined their comrades, Eriksson told me, they had the bound Mao well in tow. The only thing these women had to do on their way to the stream was breathe pure mountain air.. He and his wife, Kirsten, have a neat, modest apartment of three rooms, its walls decorated with paintings by Mrs. Eriksson, a Sunday artist, who was present while we talked; she is twenty-three and is employed as a receptionist in an insurance office. I told him I was being wrongly brought to trial. agents, lawyers, and ballistics and firearms specialists. I was afraid of being ridiculed, sir, he told the prosecutor. Clark was holding her elbow, and he pushed her forward when Meserve ordered the patrol to get moving. bus that collected G.I.s who had fallen on hard times in Sin City, a section of bars and bordellos in An Khe, two miles away. Twenty minutes later, they knew what it was. 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. As it turned out, they required no invitation to talk about herparticularly in the summer months, when the torrential monsoon rains drowned any possibility of outdoor routine. Needless to say, Eriksson continued, the kind of behavior he was describing was by no means limited to Americans. 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. Conscience was one thing that crossed over from civilian life to war, he said. It was to take them, ultimately, to Hill 192a height, in the Bong Son valley, that overlooked a ravine laced with a cave complex, which was suspected of serving as a Vietcong hideout. Of course, I never bring up the girl now, because I know how much shes still on his mind, but Sven brings her up, and usually when I dont expect it. Eriksson and his wife spent Christmas of 1967 with members of their families in the small farm town up north that they both came from, and while they were there, an uncle of Erikssons asked him about Mao. 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. 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. 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. Before long, Eriksson told me, his sleuthing established that Greenacre was well thought of, and one evening, after the carpenters had finished eating, he invited Greenacre to take a walk with him. It would be open for a while, and then thered be sections so thick with thorny vines tearing at our clothes that we couldnt see each other, even though we were spaced no farther apart than you and I are, right here in this room. Around eight oclock, Meserve permitted his squad a half hours break for chow. 2023 Cond Nast. Pretty soon, youre going to be an outcast from the platoon. Throughout, Eriksson recalls, dozens of pictures were taken, for possible use as trial exhibits, the flashes of the photographers bulbs pale in the afternoon sun. Meserve saw to that, for a brilliant sun had come up, its glare exposing the bizarre party as clearly as it did the landscape. I knew I had cut myself off from the rest of my patrol, refusing to go into that hootch, and I had this idea that the fellows were watching the place from the brush, waiting for me to make just one false move with Mao. 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. Between us, weve taken care of that whole family., Eriksson never did become a door gunner. Theyd say there had never been a girl with the patrol, and Id be left looking crazy., Shifting uneasily on the sofa, Eriksson went on, When I stepped back into the hootch, I saw that Mao had made up her mind that I wasnt going to harm her. The four soldiers with whom he was on patrol raped and killed her, abandoning her body in mountain brush. Gazing into the valley below, Rafe thought he spied a Vietnamese in a native type of straw hat standing in the stream. That was the thing about the chain of commandyou couldnt tell who was to blame for what. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. During his months leave, he was always with her and with relatives and friends and, in a way, Eriksson said, with Mao. Interested in "Incident On Hill 192 Where Are They Now" find IP Addresses, Websites, IP Tools, Articles, and other useful resources on IPAddress.com. 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. Chief of the Philippine National Police, retirement | 297K views, 1.1K likes, 812 loves, 1K comments, 873 shares, Facebook Watch Videos from Radio. 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. Acting fast, he sent Manuel backtracking to the summit to tell Eriksson and Rafe to report to him with Mao. The mother wept and pleaded, and her daughters, clinging to one another, cowered against the wall. The men were familiar with the knife; it had recently been given to Clark by a close friend in the platoon who had been wounded. He did, however, speak of her abduction and rape, and that, it turned out, was quite enough to make Greenacre propose that he and Eriksson walk over to the chaplains quarters immediately. She was dead, Im sure., Immediately after the murder, Eriksson told me, the men appeared to assume a self-protective air of disbelief at what had taken place. Former Private First Class Sven Erikssonas I shall call him, since to use his actual name might add to the danger he may be inhas also come back with his memories, but he has no idea what the future will do to them. There was little pattern to the verdicts, each of the juries indulging in its own vagaries. Even his routine duties as a G.I. A: No, sir, Ive got nothing against the government. 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.. Meserve testified at his court-martial, The mother came out, like they always do, started crying, talking. By then, moving unhurriedly in the gray dusk, Meserves squad had dutifully followed him two thousand metres to the east, which, as Eriksson and the others realized, was a flagrant deviation from the westward route the Sergeant had described so precisely at the briefing. For Rafe, the fighting had ended an hour earlierwell before the patrol reached the cave complex. However, he did call Clarks attention to a bush directly ahead. I couldnt even guess at the answersnot without knowing what kind of jam Manuel thought he was in.. Storeby also recalled that Gervase claimed it would be "good for the morale of the squad. 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. In our part of Minnesota, just about everyone is., It was ten at night when Eriksson sat down to talk with Kirk, and he found he was able to speak more freely than he had even to Curly Rowan. When Eriksson reaffirmed that he was, Kirk picked up his phone and called the Criminal Investigation Division office at Camp Radcliff. His discontent abated when he managed to remind himself of the plan he had made during his leave to reach out beyond his jobs, whatever they might be. Looking back, Eriksson thinks that the small band of V.C. As far as he could make out, the company C.O. They had known each other since childhood, their fathers having been neighboring farmers, who both had difficulty making ends meet. Ill handle everything, Vorst said. It makes for an easier mission and no problems. 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. 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. Based on the notorious Hill 192 Incident during the Vietnam War in 1966, De Palma's Casualties of War takes on a much more serious and difficult subject than any of his other efforts and as far as I can tell seems to be his most mature work to date. Just as long as he stayed in line, just as long as he kept the setup going, he could do whatever he wanted., Perhaps the most jarring of all the discoveries he made during this unhappy period, Eriksson told me, was that his fellow-G.I.s took a dim view of his efforts in behalf of Mao. 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. Clark, convicted of rape and premeditated murder, was to serve for life. Related period. He felt even wearier on arriving in Kansas, when he learned that there was little point to his presence. 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. 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. 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. In court, Rafe said that he found Mao naked, lying on the table, her hands bound behind her back. The five men and Mao kept up a steady pace. It was ten inches long, and its handle was wrapped with tape that bore a pattern of tiny diamonds. 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. They may be out in a few months, he said. Mostly to my lawyer.. I wanted to be very sure that he himself hadnt taken part in the rape. Q : Well, you feel you are not involved in any way? We just tell them to dee deemeaning to go away. the bunker in the hootch. held a clear, uncomplicated view of the crime, and that view was that its repercussions should be kept to a minimum. Manuel showed no initiative in that regard, Eriksson told me, his attitude toward authority being simple and automatic: he heeded it devoutly. . The mother, Eriksson told me, was waving a scarf and laboriously propelling herself forward. If he said no, he would appear to be disowning the defendants, his comrades-in-arms; if he said yes, he would in effect be telling the jury that he regarded the war as a public-works project for criminals. Clark at once greeted it with enthusiasm. As Mao stood listening, mute and uncomprehending, Meserve said that she had to be got out of the way; if they ran into action, he pointed out, she would be a hindrance, and even if they didnt, helicopter crews scouting the area might want to know who she was. In addition, the hootch served as a place to hide Mao. He had stopped the shooting as soon as he heard an American voice yell Hit it! Still fuming as the two patrols stood facing each other awkwardly, Erikssons sergeant declared that in all the time he had spent in Vietnam he had never before experienced any such mistake. As Eriksson waited for his sergeant to cool off, he idly scanned the men in the other squad, his eyes stopping abruptly when they met the expressionless gaze of a familiar face. 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. It was an awkward moment, Eriksson said, and Clark terminated it. 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?. 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 country we were moving through was mostly all shades of green, but we also passed arid stretches and, here and there, places that had been browned by napalm. 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. 971 Words4 Pages. It repeated itself in waves, broken only, Eriksson assumed, by Maos need to summon fresh breath. With me, he said, he trusted he would be able to go into these matters freely, but he had early discovered that in a court of law they were of little interest. Manuel admitted to C.I.D. John J. TolsonMajor General, U.S.A. I had this picture that when we did, theyd fire at us, or, at least, Meserve would have me up on charges of desertion. Given this confusion of values, the legalistic consideration of Maos death sometimes bordered on the incongruous. 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. The next thing I knew, I was in jail, Eriksson told me. He thought of her as his plane, full of singing soldiers, took off from Cam Ranh Bay and he held his last look at the unhappy land below. He was ten when his father suddenly died. All that awaited decision, Meserve went on, was the moment and method of the girls murder, but, whatever was settled on, the Sergeants thought was to have Eriksson do the job; if Eriksson refused, Meserve said, he would be reported as K.I.A.killed in action. 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. I had a feeling she had been injured in some waynot that I could tell. The climb took longer than it had the day before, the mens pace slowed by the packs they bore. He had thought of them uneasily, imagining that the act of testifying might force him to relive the macabre episode on Hill 192. "[7], At approximately 05:00 on the morning of 18 November, the squad entered the tiny village of Cat Tuong, in the Phu My District, looking for a woman. 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. I then heard the girl cry out, but not too loud, Rafe continued. 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. 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. Eriksson had never laid eyes on the chaplain before. Eriksson never exchanged a word with her; neither spoke the others language.

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