held a clear, uncomplicated view of the crime, and that view was that its repercussions should be kept to a minimum. Another man might have called it something else, but the idea was simply that we had to answer for what we did. be ambushed. Incident On Hill 192 - amazon.com He said it would be good for the morale of the squad.. incident on hill 192 where are they now - acting-jobs.net 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. Between us, weve taken care of that whole family., Eriksson never did become a door gunner. It could keep them from believing that life was so valuableanyones life, I mean, even their own. It was Manuel, Eriksson told me. After half an hour, their watch on the stream paid off, producing a more interesting sight than Rafes water buffalo. Only one piece of military action occurred that morning, and it could have been dispensed with. 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. He had wanted to tell of the way the episode with Mao had affected him, and why it was that he had felt impelled to report the othersfour young Americans like him, each dependent on the others for survival deep in enemy territory. There had been times when Id thought that if I had been in Vietnam longer than just a month when the incident took place I might have felt differently about ithad the same attitude, that is, as most of the fellows. Some Vietnamese people were bringing children out of. 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. In Vietnam, the jurors petition urging clemency for Clark had been acted upon, with the result that the G.I.s life sentence had been commuted to a sentence of twenty years. stockport council wards map; 0 comments. At the start, he spoke laconically, but gradually his natural reticence thawed out, and there were timesgenerally after one of his silenceswhen he produced such a burst of talk that it seemed to cost him an effort to bring it to a halt. [14], In 1992, former PFC Thomas gained further notoriety when he was charged with being an accessory after the fact in the murder trial of George Loeb, who was charged with the 17 May 1991 shooting death of an African-American USS Saratoga sailor named Harold J. Mansfield. The prosecutor, it appeared, counted it a safe bet that the defense attorneys would attempt to portray Eriksson as some kind of repressed nut for having failed to join in the festivities on Hill 192. Eriksson told me that he felt weary at the mere prospect of reappearing as a witness a year after the Radcliff trials. At first, the chain of command, including the company commander, took no action. 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. 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. Casualties of War (Film) - TV Tropes 971 Words4 Pages. The C.I.D. Mao was ungagged but was given no food; noticing that she was flushed and coughing slightly, Meserve handed her an aspirin. Daniel Lang's "Incident on Hill 192" - YouTube Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. At ten-thirty, a short distance below the summit of Hill 192, Meserve found what he was looking fora command post for the day. The following day, in the midst of a firefight with the Viet Cong, Thomas and Gervase became worried that the woman would be seen with the squad. . John J. TolsonMajor General, U.S.A. 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. (Eriksson had done the same for Rafe at his trial in Vietnam.) His plane was a commercial airliner, the Army having chartered it for a flight to Fort Lewis, Seattle, from which point the men, all of whom were going on leave, would be on their own. They locked me up in a steel box, in solitary. All rights reserved. Eriksson shook his head again. Rowan listened with astonishment as Eriksson apprised him of the Sergeants plan, but when Eriksson asked his friend whether he thought Meserves statements should be reported to an officer before the patrol left camp, Rowan immediately shook his head, replying, as the court record shows, Meserve wouldnt dare do such a fool thing. This incredulity notwithstanding, the news of Meserves briefing left Rowan unhappy. Recalling the interview, Eriksson said, Id answer a question, then hed wait and Id have to wait along with him, then hed ask another question, real fast, and in Id come with my next answer. His break came after just a weekby accident, which was the only way it could come. They were alone this time, Eriksson told me, and when Eriksson inquired what progress there had been in the murder case, the Captain seemed not to hear but posed a series of questions. Please dont ask me to explain why they did it. It was based on an actual incident known as "the incident on Hill 192" which occurred in 1966. 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. I simply asked, do you think a murderer should be retained in the United States Army? 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. In True Grit, and other novels, Portis displayed a genius that went beyond character in the strictly literary sense. In due course, they came upon Mao, her remains a rigid crescent settled grotesquely in a half nest of soil and rocks and matted foliage. Loc and her father had moved from their native hamlet; they now lived in a village several miles from there. When he spoke, however, it was about his friendship with the Marine. 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. . Anyway, thats what made me believe I was interested in religion. His spirits on the upswing, Eriksson set about trying to meet the chaplain. Nor could the concern that the C.O. . 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. In the late spring, for instance, he learned that a change of sentence might be in the making for Clark, whose lawyer, it appeared, had asked the jurors who convicted him to approve a petition urging clemency; all but two of them had agreed, and Eriksson was given to understand that this augured an almost certain reduction in sentence. In one form or another, he said, they took place almost daily, but he was slow, or reluctant, to perceive that they were as much a part of the war as shells and targets were. The man was never captured, Eriksson said, despite the fact that he became the single target of the gunships rockets and the infantrys bullets and grenades. The later actions of the convicted including murder of us naval serving enlisted members from the Saratoga in 92, don't assuage their guilt. Captain Vorst handed Meserve a piece of paper with three words printed on itKidnapping, Rape, Murder. In addition to the occasional remarks he heard in the police barracks, a train of other developments served to remind him of the girl. *The Incident on Hill 192 is what the U.S army calls the kidnapping, rape, and murder of Phan Thi Mao. 'Casualties of War': Brian De Palma's Exorcism of the Vietnam War By then, too, the men were approaching the hamlet of Cat Tuong, in the district of Phu My, and Eriksson was cursing himself for having listened to Rowan. 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? The atrocity that Eriksson had reported was too big for that. 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. 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. 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. Well, during this Operation Thayer II, which started [last October], we ran into a hootch that was burned down. Im not saying that every fellow who roughed up a civilian liked himself for itnot that hed admit in so many words that he didnt. However, Maos sister, Phan Thi Loc, who was present, has done this at one of the trials. That had to have some purpose. Unlike their civilian counterparts, Vorst said, the law officers (the term by which military judges were known) and members of the court (as jurors were known) had a sympathetic understanding of the pressures a combat man faced in risking his life daily; military jurists didnt expect foot soldiers to be on their best behavior in a war zone. Incident on Hill 192 by Vanessa Pantoja - Prezi I figured somebody would have to be out there for security, because there were V.C. Florida Highway Patrol Current Traffic Incidents Clark, convicted of rape and premeditated murder, was to serve for life. Time and again, at chow or during a break out in the field, someone would tell him (as Vorst had told him) that it was pointless to throw good lives after bad by having Meserve and the others up on charges, since (as Reilly had said) violence was the language of war, and, naturally, it could not always be controlled. All four soldiers were sentenced to hard labor at the United States Army Disciplinary Barracks, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Based on the actual events of an incident on Hill 192 in November, 1966. No matter how close the questioning, and no matter how detailed the testimony he gave, or heard, it all seemed related to Maos murder in only a surface sense. The patrol and Mao shared the hootch that night, the girl spending it in a corner by herself. Q: Why did you want other members of the squad to think you were a rapist? 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. Who says we dont get along with Charlie? We made up something to get him to go away, Eriksson told me. 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. There Is Yet More to Casualties of War - Phoenix New Times down a trail between two hedgerows when the patrol was suddenly fired upon from one side. 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. To do so, he believed, might only invite their censure, enforcers of the law though they were. He said for me to think that over again very carefully, Eriksson recalled. 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. Clark could knife the girl from the front, the Sergeant said, while he bayoneted her from behind; the body would then be tossed over a cliff from the summit of Hill 192, where the patrol had reconnoitred the previous day. The trials were held in a courthouse at Camp Radcliff, a frame structure measuring thirty feet by thirty and roofed with tin. The C.I.D. He was just more serious-minded. I had this picture that when we did, theyd fire at us, or, at least, Meserve would have me up on charges of desertion. 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. We were all told to look for the girl. All five men shot, but Eriksson aimed his weapona grenade launcher, which looks like a shotgundown into the valley, away from the general direction of Mao. 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. I might say I was praying to God that if I ever got out of there alive Id do everything I could to see that these men would pay for what they did., Eriksson now lapsed into the longest of his silences with me, and when he spoke again, it was, for him, at great length. They were all strange faces. Asked whether Maos continued presence on Hill 192 might not ultimately have endangered the lives of the members of the patrol, Eriksson said, Sir, this girl wasnt supposed to be on this patrol.. 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.. . 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. 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. When he first got back from Hill 192, he said, he had imagined that it might have been his peculiar misfortune to draw a patrol made up of psychopaths, but now each time a new G.I. Eriksson had never laid eyes on the chaplain before. No such thing happened. Eriksson tries to rescue the girl, but the squad . This is how it is with Casualties of War, Brian DePalma's tale of an atrocity . He sounded genuinely concerned. Something else the prosecutor did was to advise him to see a psychiatrist before the trials started. Greenacre might react disapprovingly, as the fellows in the platoon hador, for all Eriksson knew, Greenacre might turn out to be Meserves best friend. LANG, DANIEL (Author) Secker and Warburg (Publisher) Production date. Additional pictures were taken a week later, when Eriksson led a second pilgrimage to Hill 192. Meserve fought well that day. Lang's article for The New Yorker described the so-called "Incident on Hill 192" that involved the kidnapping, . He still has a tendency to fight off its memory, he said, and he thinks the reason for this is that although the experience he had may have revealed certain strengths in himself, he is far more concerned with the limitations it exposed. For that matter, he said, he knew almost nothing about Greenacreonly that he was a cowboy from Arizona, a wiry type, who put in a good days work as a carpenter and didnt have much to say. Of course, I was a foot soldier all this time. For this action, Meserve was nominated for a Bronze Star. And I told her, in English, I cant understand you. I wanted to tell her other things. 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.