(who escaped the following morning) wounded five Americans, and Meserve displayed considerable courage in rescuing the most seriously injured of them, a G.I. 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. Once this was done, the patrol filed out of the camp in the faintly humid darkness, the men still uncertain of their leaders intent. And, in practice, neither Manuel nor any of the other defendants (nor Eriksson, for that matter) paid a cent for legal services. 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. He had yet to exonerate himself from the self-imposed charge of having failed to save Maos life. It was ten inches long, and its handle was wrapped with tape that bore a pattern of tiny diamonds. He was uncertain how he would act with her, he said, even though, oddly, he felt he knew her well; her cries, he said, had thrown him into a turmoil he had never before experienced. Eriksson also stated that the entire taking of the girl, the rape, and killing of the girl were pre-planned. According to Eriksson, Meserve, who was assertive and confident, was both the patrols youngest soldier and its most experienced one, being a volunteer of three years standing who had fought in Vietnam for a year and had been decorated several times; he was due to go back to the United States in a month. The weather had turned hot and dry, Eriksson remembers, and the interior of the courtroom throbbed with the whirr of electric fans. I needed more of an impression of Boyd than I had, Eriksson said. As for himself, Eriksson told me, Meserve had ordered him to a ledge from which he could overlook the complex as he trained his grenade launcher on two cave mouths in particular, either one of which, the Sergeant thought, could afford the entombed V.C. Agreeing, the Lieutenant said that he would order another squad, operating at the base of the mountain, to cordinate its movements with those of Meserves patrol, and that he would also dispatch two other squads to the area. There was little pattern to the verdicts, each of the juries indulging in its own vagaries. Of course, I was a foot soldier all this time. Bunkers, trenches, trails that were not marked on maps, caches of enemy equipmentthese, too, were to be reconnaissance objectives. Far from where the daily, relentless fighting was going on, he pointed out, Radcliff was probably less disposed to take gratuitous violence in stride; besides, there were infinitely more people at the division base, and that gave him a better chance of finding the effective ally he needed. 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. Speaking matter-of-factly, Mrs. Eriksson said, Out in the boonies, where we come from, you get an A if you dont throw erasers.. 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. fellows knew about law, Eriksson said. De Palma wanted to make the movie after reading Daniel Lang's article in The New Yorker in 1969. Unless Eriksson went along with the others, Meserve warned, he would run the risk of being reported a friendly casualty. Clark seconded this vociferously, and both Diazes concentrated puzzled stares on the difficult member of the patrol. Arriving on the run, the two explained their errand to Clark, who heard the news eagerly, then pulled rank on Eriksson and ordered him to take his place in guarding the hootch. That guy, hes scared of doing this, hes scared of doing that. Everybody is going to make fun of you. Six months ago, he said, he had taken a Minneapolis bus home from work and, being very tired, had dozed off. That this weak, coughing girl had overpowered me? Below was a valley with a winding stream, and along its banks were paddy fields with neat little dikes around them. In his affidavit for Army investigators, Manuel gave what is probably a comprehensive account of the confrontation that took place in the Captains quarters. Apocalypse Now 1979. 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. "Casualties of War" is Brian De Palma's entry into the Vietnam War movies competition. 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. Meserve, Clark, and Manuel, together with members of the other squads, were shooting away at the solitary V.C., who was behind an aperture that measured perhaps six inches wide and a couple of inches high. . Looking back, Eriksson thinks that the small band of V.C. Fortunately, he ran into a fellow-Minnesotan at the airport, an artilleryman with whom he had gone off to Asia thirteen months earlier; the artilleryman, also homeward bound, unhesitatingly lent Eriksson the ten dollars. 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. 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. They found the company commander, who had himself only just returned, waiting impatiently to confront them with Erikssons report. They were just doing their job. Once the pair had assessed the gravity of the crimes being charged, they moved swiftly. 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. 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. Meserve saw to that, for a brilliant sun had come up, its glare exposing the bizarre party as clearly as it did the landscape. All four soldiers were sentenced to hard labor at the United States Army Disciplinary Barracks, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. 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. 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. Whatever I could do about her depended on finding someone with both the rank and the conscience to help me, he told me. 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. 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. For Rafe, the fighting had ended an hour earlierwell before the patrol reached the cave complex. Thinking along these lines, Eriksson said, he arrived at a kind of strategy in regard to Mao. Ad Choices, He wanted never to be away from her. The two have no children. The C.I.D. The only thing these women had to do on their way to the stream was breathe pure mountain air.. None of the four hit anything, and the Sergeant radioed the platoon command for artillery support, which was quickly granted; the coperation, Eriksson recalled, pleased Meserve no end, since it implicitly conferred an importance on the skirmish. To listen to them, and to the testimony that the guys in the patrol gave, Mao was probably living happily in her hamlet. As early as the opening day of Rafes trial, which was the first one held, he realized that it was idle to consider whether the G.I.s punishment would, or could, fit the crime. 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. Vorst filled out transfer forms, and Eriksson signed them. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The five-man squad, led by a 20-year-old sergeant, Tony Meserve, had been sent on 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.. Plot This arose when a defense witness, a sergeant in the platoon, said that Eriksson had none. He was shirtless; his face wore an expression of swaggering irresistibility. 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. depredations. 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. We just tell them to dee deemeaning to go away. 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. . It was based on the actual incident on Hill 192. 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 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. During his months leave, he was always with her and with relatives and friends and, in a way, Eriksson said, with Mao. Do you consider yourself braver than Eriksson?. It repeated itself in waves, broken only, Eriksson assumed, by Maos need to summon fresh breath. In charge of the group were a colonel, a major, and, after they reached the airstrip, Captain Vorst himself, who maintained silence toward Eriksson. sonoma academy calendar; why are my bluetooth headphones connected but not working; incident on hill 192 where are they now; By . A: The Army expects you to do it the Army way, and thats follow orders. Eriksson tries to rescue the girl, but the squad . . Technically, I myself was a suspect, Eriksson told me. If it didnt, then coming back from that patrol meant nothing., Recalling her husbands arrival, Mrs. Eriksson said that when she went out to the airport to meet him, she could tell at once that there was a stronger kindness in him than when he had left. Hit it! the patrol leader shouted, and his men hit the ground, the bullets from the still invisible attackers raising columns of dust all around the flattened G.I.s. Given this confusion of values, the legalistic consideration of Maos death sometimes bordered on the incongruous. 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. The soldiers set up a night watch, each man pulling guard duty outside in the moonlight, alert for any lurking enemy. 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. Mostly to my lawyer.. The holed-up V.C. To do so, he believed, might only invite their censure, enforcers of the law though they were. That occurred in February, 1968, when Manuel was granted a retrial on the ground that although his C.I.D. However, in the last month or so, Rowan told Eriksson, the Sergeant, apparently undergoing changes, had exhibited a mean streak toward the Vietnamese; a couple of weeks before, Rowan said, Meserve had shot at and wounded one of them, giving as his reason afterward that he had felt like it. The way Curly talked about him, Meserve sounded as though he had become a kind of war casualty, Eriksson told me. He was confident, he told me, that he stood a better chance of finding help there than in the confines of the platoon area. Although news of the incident reached the U.S. shortly after the soldiers' trials, the story gained widespread notoriety through Daniel Lang's 1969 article for The New Yorker and his subsequent book. The hootch contained a table, a low bench built against a wall, and tattered remnants of a straw mat strewn in a dark corner, and the dirt floor was littered with scrap metal, rocks, and cans. The five men and Mao kept up a steady pace. 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. Those baskets could get awfully heavy, Eriksson recalled. The first of them, he told me, was that Mao woke up less alluring than when she had gone to bed. Impressed though he may have been, he heard Eriksson out with some skepticism, for before Kirk entered the Mormon priesthood he had spent ten years as a policeman on the Salt Lake City force. It was six in morning and dark. The father was away in Phu My market, the interpreter went on. 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 wanted to get out of the platoon, he stated. One of the soldiers stabbed her three times, and when defense counsel challenged Eriksson at the court-martial proceedings to describe the sound that the stabbings made, he testified, Well, Ive shot deer and Ive gutted deer. As if his family had any money! He had a wild mannerhe couldnt stand still, and his eyes looked every which way. There, corpsmen deposited him on a bed alongside that of a battalion officer he knew and liked. 2. gcdc. He said it was only human to make mistakes., Erikssons attempt to forget Mao proved futile, as he had really known it would. I couldnt tell who was supposed to have the hard feelingsManuel or myself, Eriksson told me. The true story in question is what's commonly referred to as Incident on Hill 192: in 1966, an American army squad in the Vietnam War kidnapped a young village girl, then subsequently gang-raped and murdered her. It makes for an easier mission and no problems. 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. It did not occur in the United States. In turn, the sergeant passed the news on to Lieutenant Reilly, who sent for Eriksson. He wouldnt mind being a door gunner aboard a helicopter, he told Vorst, citing as his qualifications for such a post that he had been trained as a machine gunner and that he was fond of flying. As it happened, the Captain heard about it from a second source as wellfrom Eriksson himself. For example, the ballistics and firearms specialists, working together, were able to analyze the lead bullet fragments as having come from an M-16 rifle and to offer it as their judgment in court that Mao had been shot at close rangea judgment that afforded a presumably objective basis for incriminating Clark, at least, as one of her assassins. [1], On November 17, 1966, Sergeant David Edward Gervase (aged 20) and Private First Class Steven Cabbot Thomas (21)both members of C Company, 2nd Battalion (Airborne), 8th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Divisiontalked to three other squad members (Privates First Class Robert M. Storeby, 22; cousins Cipriano S. Garcia, 21, and Joseph C. Garcia, 20)[3] about plans to kidnap a "pretty girl" during their reconnaissance mission planned for the next day,[6] and "at the end of five days we would kill her." Helicopter crews might spot her. Before the patrol left the hamlet, a swarm of local children materialized, chattering agitatedly in a circle around Mao, and then out of the white hootch came Loc. Yes or no? The four soldiers visitation lasted nearly an hour and a half, and two minutes after it was terminated the men, to conceal themselves from any Vietcong who might be in the vicinity, rentered the hootch together. Though Eriksson testified at greater length than anyone else, most of the witnesses who appeared in the close, noisy courtroom spoke in support of the defendants, extolling their gallantry, their sense of duty, and their other soldierly virtues. The thought of them, he said, makes him feel discouraged at times about his future, which, he pointed out, could be a long one. Uninitiated though he was in the ways of jurisprudence, Eriksson said, he found it odd that defense lawyers could freely engage him in conversation during court recesses, questioning him on subjects that he was later asked about under oath when the court session was resumed. Only one piece of military action occurred that morning, and it could have been dispensed with. When Eriksson reaffirmed that he was, Kirk picked up his phone and called the Criminal Investigation Division office at Camp Radcliff. Wild with rage, Reilly had tried to wreck the place, whereupon hospital orderlies summoned the police, and the new father was arrested and jailed. Two escaped, and the fifth man made it to the caves, where he holed up for a last-ditch stand. He was upset and frustratedit was in all his letters. 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. Eriksson continued as an M.P., his duties generally less onerous than they had been in Vietnam, and his existence certainly more relaxed, since, as he observed to me, he was waking up every morning not only in his own country but in the presence of the Rockies. Through an interpreter, Loc related that after the patrol finished with their hamlet, she and her mother had searched desperately for Mao. Mrs. Eriksson, who was once more plying her husband and me with coffee and cake, put in, Sven and I are Lutherans. . 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. The 1966 incident at hill 192, and the courage shown by p f c storeby is not in doubt. 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. Eriksson told me he has no qualms about Rafes being at large, because Rafes remorse over the criminal episode had been evident to everybody in the Radcliff courtroom. In any event, Eriksson went on, he lost little time in seeking out his friend Curly Rowan to tell him the story of Mao. Twenty minutes later, they knew what it was. said something to the effect, You people acted like animals up there and do not deserve to live. He said he would have never learned about this but one man had the balls to tell [the officers] about it. A: Well, in general, sir, [but] in this specific case. Q: I didnt ask you for a long elaboration. Besides, she was in no condition to reach home or anywhere else. He felt even wearier on arriving in Kansas, when he learned that there was little point to his presence. I couldnt even guess at the answersnot without knowing what kind of jam Manuel thought he was in.. 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. He was twenty-two, a stringbean in physique, and blond, with eyes that were a pale, cold blue. Thats where the woman was going in the early morning, but it was peacetime and it wasnt necessary either for her or for the peasant women she was with to smell the bodies that were always rotting for miles around, no one knew where, when I was in the Central Highlands. Additional pictures were taken a week later, when Eriksson led a second pilgrimage to Hill 192. As he recalled his briefing, he had told the men, Itd be nice if we could pick up five women for the five days up there and have an orgy, and then, he said, everybody had made comments and laughed. As for going to Maos hamlet, the Sergeant said that he had led the patrol there to look for V.C., and that he had captured the girl because she had behaved suspiciously inside her hootch.

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