Incident on Hill 192 (1970 edition) | Open Library They were hard workers, those Vietnamese women picking little bananas, shinnying up palm trees for coconuts. Eriksson was confident, though, he told me, that the older he grew, the more accepting he would be of his memory. wouldnt let me become a door gunner, Eriksson told me. As Manuel was going into the hootch, Maos sounds could he heard, weak and conquered. At the time, Eriksson told me, he had no idea that the Captain had chewed them out. Meserve and the others returned an hour later, toward noon, and had a hearty snack, eating it outdoors, near the entrance to the hut. Esri, HERE, Garmin, NGA, USGS, NPS. and wounding another. You Are Here: ross dress for less throw blankets apprentissage des lettres de l'alphabet incident on hill 192 where are they now. . Greenacre was present throughout the talk, at Erikssons insistence. 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. 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. PNP Change of Command Ceremony and Retirement Honors for - Facebook 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. Thomas caught her and shot her in the head with his M16 rifle. In fact, it would have been difficult to find any other kind in Vietnam, since the Army was dispensing such benefits all over the place. The men were to be gone five days, the Sergeant revealeda fairly long time for a reconnaissance missionand on hearing this Eriksson experienced a sense of exhilaration, just as he had at the prospect of far shorter patrols in which he had taken part. Daniel Lang's "Incident on Hill 192" - YouTube I had this picture that when we did, theyd fire at us, or, at least, Meserve would have me up on charges of desertion. 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. Id never known the Army had any such unit, Eriksson told me. Perhaps because Meserve had been the leader of the four accused, he came in for particularly heavy praise. Incident on Hill 192 - The New York Times an exit. 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. Gervase was found guilty on the count of premeditated murder. The girl was very much with us when Sven came home that day, and maybe she always will be, Mrs. Eriksson said. Three Vietnamese were spotted walking along the edge of the water, and though they wore no uniforms, Meserve assumed they were V.C., and he and his men, including Eriksson, opened fire on them. I can assure you I wasnt being paranoid in thinking he might be shot in the back for seeing me. 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. Conscience was one thing that crossed over from civilian life to war, he said. It was six in morning and dark. The father was away in Phu My market, the interpreter went on. they said if you were fortunate enough to get in a group where you had an old-timer who had been in Vietnam like six months longer than you had, if you followed what he said, you would live longer. Besides, Manuel testified, If he had not gone into the hootch he would have risked becoming an outcast. It was certainly possible to do so, as I knew for myself from having read the court record of the trials he had brought about: seven bulky volumes in the offices of the Clerk of Courts, U.S. Army Judiciary, in Falls Church, Virginia, which included Erikssons testimony against the members of the patrol; their convictions and appeals; interminable correspondence between judges and opposing counsel; and depositions concerning the character of individual defendants. But here was this Marine, who had put in much more combat service than Meserve or Clark or anyone else Id met, and he felt exactly as I did about the crime., Eriksson now fell into one of his silences, and I imagined he was contemplating the mystery of human character. He sounded genuinely concerned. Something else the prosecutor did was to advise him to see a psychiatrist before the trials started. The five-man squad, led by a 20-year-old sergeant, Tony Meserve, had been sent on patrol. As it happened, the Captain heard about it from a second source as wellfrom Eriksson himself. [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. It repeated itself in waves, broken only, Eriksson assumed, by Maos need to summon fresh breath. I then heard the girl cry out, but not too loud, Rafe continued. Sprawled on the ground after the meal, Meserve, refreshed, glanced at his fellows and then, with a knowing smile, indicated the partly ruined structure. gcdc on Twitter I stepped outside the hootch to be by myself awhile, and out there I could hear the muffled noise of artillery off in the distance. When he spoke, however, it was about his friendship with the Marine. 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. Q: For a murder. . Or maybe its our winters that make Sven so different from those other menour Januaries, when its fifty below and the snowdrifts are so high you cant get from the house to the barn without pulling on a rope.. I decided I was hearing an individual who wished he could have saved that girl but hadnt been able to, Kirk told me. No one would ever know what had become of her, he exclaimed. The girl looked so innocent, so calm, he testified. [8] After finding Phan Thi Mao (21), they bound her wrists with rope, gagged her, and took her on the mission. She had stopped whimpering, and there was even a little look of trust in her eyes. Between us, weve taken care of that whole family., Eriksson never did become a door gunner. Eriksson shook his head again. Clark came back to where we were. Having appeared as a witness before four tribunals in Vietnam, Eriksson told me, he had had his fill of the judicial processof the dogged grillings by lawyers and the repeated strictures of judges insisting on precise answers to questions that were often vague. The Vietcong, Loc said, had abducted her, accusing her of having led South Vietnamese forces to a V.C. Leave it to me. Rafe subsequently testified that the Sergeant was in an expansive mood, cheerfully observing to his men that it wasnt every day he could rate artillery support and have himself a woman as well. incident on hill 192 where are they now - jbgetfit.com about Mao, and three times he used itIll handle everything, Ill handle everything, Ill handle everything. Maybe he did, but not in a way that had anything to do with anyones making amends. At his meeting with Vorst the day of the Captains return, he went on, he noticed thatlike Reilly, who was presentthe company commander failed to deplore the murder, and instead stressed its potentialities as a scandal. Lang's article for The New Yorker described the so-called "Incident on Hill 192" that involved the kidnapping, . Now the V.C., flushed from their temporary hideout, continued to beat a desperate retreat, relying on sniper fire to fend off their attackers, who were converging on them from both sides of the stream. All of us in the patrol had long ago stopped pretending nothing horrible had happened. It was rustling. Captain Vorst handed Meserve a piece of paper with three words printed on itKidnapping, Rape, Murder. I couldnt even guess at the answersnot without knowing what kind of jam Manuel thought he was in.. She has a gold tooth! Instantly, the Sergeant said, Thats the girl well find. Astounded by the enormity of his own suggestion, Rafe looked miserably at Manuel and Eriksson as Meserve and Clark, quickening their steps, made for the white hootch that contained the pretty girl with a gold tooth. These varying decisions, it seemed, were attributable to a variety of factors, among them considerations of the defendants character and background. To counter any such strategy, the prosecutor wanted to have on hand a statement attesting to his chief witnesss mental stability. 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. There, corpsmen deposited him on a bed alongside that of a battalion officer he knew and liked. "[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. While Eriksson, Manuel, and the now wretched Rafe hovered outside, Meserve and Clark entered the hutMaos home. Eriksson was now with them, and he saw that Mao had retreated to a corner of the hut, frightened, watchful, her eyes glistening with tears, her presence made known chiefly by a cough that had grown more pronounced since morning. The whole thing made me sick to my stomach. He was upset and frustratedit was in all his letters. Flying back to Carson, I thought to myself, So Manuels out. Im talking about a murder. 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. The only thing these women had to do on their way to the stream was breathe pure mountain air.. In April, Eriksson received his honorable discharge from the Army, and in April, too, he heard of further judicial developments. Two escaped, and the fifth man made it to the caves, where he holed up for a last-ditch stand. We were on a plateau in the Highlands, and all around us were small mountain ranges, hazy and green. At last, someone outside the patrol knew of Mao, he said. 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. 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?. 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. . It was as though he had shot himself with two rounds of his own ammo. The wounded man lay helpless, directly in front of the small opening from which the V.C. 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. By the time he concluded his last appearance on the stand, he had been accused of lying, of cowardice, and even of Maos murder. LANG, DANIEL (Author) Secker and Warburg (Publisher) Production date. Needless to say, Eriksson continued, the kind of behavior he was describing was by no means limited to Americans. It was the way I felt, he said. You want her gold tooth? Clark called over his shoulder to Rafe, who was then, he testified, a foot away and was staring, aghast, at Mao. He was merely asking, Vorst said, but had Eriksson really thought through what he was doing in pushing his charges? . 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. Again according to Eriksson, Clark was given to quick movements and to seemingly abrupt decisions that reflected Meserves thinking in an exaggerated form. Both refused, Eriksson said. Listening to the fellows, I had the feeling there might be any number of Meserves and Clarks around me, he said. Of course, I was a foot soldier all this time. In mild contrast, Rafe was capable of questioning authority, Eriksson said, but he generally wound up by going along with whoever seemed to be the leaderjust to keep from making trouble.. . When she finished eating, she mumbled something in Vietnamese; maybe it was Thank youI wouldnt know. [11], Likewise, Gervase's initial sentence of ten years with hard labor was reduced to eight. I couldnt tell whether it was Charlie or the girl, Rafe testified. carefully explained that to me, informing me of my legal rights, one of which was to shut up. When the interrogation was over, he was asked to lead a search party to the spot on Hill 192 where he had claimed that Maos body could be found. Im not talking about any specific case. The patrol and Mao shared the hootch that night, the girl spending it in a corner by herself. 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. You should know that the courage and steadfastness you demonstrated make me proud to have you a member of this division. It was just like when you stick a deer with a knifesort of a thudor something like this, sir.. Why else had Vorst seen fit to reshuffle the patrol, leaving only Manuel within shooting distance, so to speak? As the men had raced to get there, clambering and sliding, Rafe had slipped and fallen from a ledge, dislocating an elbow and a shoulder. Ill handle everything, Vorst said. She had her black pajamas on. Incident on Hill 192 by Vanessa Pantoja - Prezi Casualties of War: Incident On Hill 192 Dolce Vanity She kept looking at me, as though she was trying to guess what my game could be. It turned out to be a letter of commendation. Meserve, however, counselled patience. Ordering Eriksson and Rafe to clean up the hootch, and leaving Mao in their charge, the Sergeant went off with Clark and Manuel to have a careful look around. An edition of Incident on Hill 192 (1970) Incident on Hill 192 by Daniel Lang 0 Ratings 0 Want to read 0 Currently reading 0 Have read Overview View 1 Edition Details Reviews Lists Related Books Publish Date 1970 Publisher Pan Books Language English Pages 124 This edition doesn't have a description yet. Sitting by himself on a sofa, Eriksson smiled somewhat ruefully, a deep dimple forming in one cheek. 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. [9], Thomas, Cipriano Garcia, and Joseph Garcia were each convicted of unpremeditated murder in March and April 1967. 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?. . After several minutes, the moan turned to a steady sobbing, and this did not cease until, after a half hour, Meserve reappeared in the open. He had no one to talk to over there. When you go out on a patrol, you aint going to be as good as you want to be, because these guys aint helping you do anything. He said it would be good for the morale of the squad.. 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. Eriksson considers himself hazy about the girls looks. 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 had no idea how long this feeling would continue, but for the present, he knew, he lived with the charge daily, often wondering how Mao might have fared in a time of peace. 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. 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. The men ate, again without feeding her, and reminisced about their communal feat, comparing Mao with other girls they had known, and talking about how long it had been since they had had a woman. Kirsten and I have talked about the day of their release, he told me, and our realistic hope is that Meserve and Clark have been able to see for themselves what theyve done., What else can we hope? Mrs. Eriksson asked. Incident on Hill 192 View source 19 November 1967. The incident on Hill 192 refers to the kidnap, 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 a result, Eriksson left Colorado for Fort Leavenworth, where Manuel, serving his time in the Disciplinary Barracks, was to be retried. Erikssons patrol leader delivered a tongue-lashing to his counterpart, who apologized. If he had known this, he thinks, he might have realized then, as he did later, that the Captain was in a bind; that is, he was torn between the dictates of his conscience, which condemned the crime, and concern for his Army career, which, Eriksson later discovered, the battalion commanderwho outranked Vorst, and who was also a liferwas in the habit of admonishing the Captain to bear in mind. 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. The guys would back him up, of course. But then I dont know how much the C.I.D. Using the upper one as a vantage point, they spied the small band of V.C. The Sergeant had made his announcement with a straight face, leaving his men to interpret it as they would. View Source Suggest Edits Memorial Photos Flowers Created by: TrentLane Added: 26 Aug 2021 Find a Grave Memorial ID: 231233841 Sponsored by Jennifer Brown Source citation 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. His target turned out to be the rump of a wallowing water buffalo, the animal raising itself from the shallow stream in clumsy panic and lumbering out of view. On one occasion that he knew of, Eriksson said, American troops, attracted by the familiar odor of decomposing bodies, had found a pit piled high with Vietnamese men and women who had been machine-gunned by the V.C. His interest in religion still strong, Eriksson took part in church activities, he told me; he had recently supervised a group of high-school-age boys and girls making a two-week retreat on an island in a lake between Minnesota and Canada. Its time for some fun, he said. Explaining his choice of the patrol, Reilly testified, These people, I felt, knew what they were doing, and a second reason was because the company commanding officer asked for good people. On the following afternoon, November 17th, the members of the newly formed patrol met in a corner of the platoons headquarters area, near the village of My Tho, where, relaxed as they stood or sat on the ground, they listened to a briefing from their leader, who was seated on a low stool.
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