incident on hill 192 where are they now

incident on hill 192 where are they now - pamelahudson.net They werent shocked, or anything like that, Eriksson recalls. We were on a plateau in the Highlands, and all around us were small mountain ranges, hazy and green. . To Erikssons surprise, the trial, which occurred in June, 1969, resulted in Rafes second conviction, an inevitable finding, in view of the fact that Rafe pleaded guilty to the charge of unpremeditated murder. 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. . She had stopped whimpering, and there was even a little look of trust in her eyes. "Casualties of War" is Brian De Palma's entry into the Vietnam War movies competition. 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. My height, Eriksson said. 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. 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. The five-man squad, led by a 20-year-old sergeant, Tony Meserve, had been sent on patrol. His break came after just a weekby accident, which was the only way it could come. The holed-up V.C. Mrs. Eriksson, who was once more plying her husband and me with coffee and cake, put in, Sven and I are Lutherans. 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. Thinking along these lines, Eriksson said, he arrived at a kind of strategy in regard to Mao. However, Maos sister, Phan Thi Loc, who was present, has done this at one of the trials. Eriksson was to remain there until his reassignment as a door gunner came through, Vorst having sent his transfer papers on for official approval by the helicopter command. The G.I. I had this picture that when we did, theyd fire at us, or, at least, Meserve would have me up on charges of desertion. [15], "David E Gervase (1946-1981) - Find a Grave", "Report:Sailor-trial witness was in Vietnam rape-murder", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Incident_on_Hill_192&oldid=1147907196, This page was last edited on 2 April 2023, at 23:16. Erikssons patrol leader delivered a tongue-lashing to his counterpart, who apologized. 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. They may be out in a few months, he said. in the area.. Sure, there were always advance plans to do this or that, but they didnt often stand up in the field. 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. Rafes case, I learned, had taken a fresh turn in recent weeks. Q: Why did you want other members of the squad to think you were a rapist? The five men and Mao kept up a steady pace. Wed had to support each other in a new way after she was killed. 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. 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. Platoon True Story: How Accurate Is The Vietnam War Movie - Screen Rant [1] Although 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 for The New Yorker[4] and his subsequent book. Meserve said nothing to Rafe; nor did he say anything to any of the others when, as the mission unfolded, they committed similar derelictions. 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. However, he welcomed the shift to Radcliff for a more important reason. But at the other end of the path, just as we were leaving the village behind, the enemy would open up on us, and there was bitterness among us that the villagers hadnt given us warning. Florida Highway Patrol Current Traffic Incidents 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. Echoing the instructions that a battalion officer had given him earlier, the Sergeant informed the four men of the duties that each was expected to carry out, of the chain of command in the field, and of radio-communication arrangements with the platoon command, and then, consulting the grid cordinates of a map he was holding, the Sergeant described a precise westerly route that the patrol was to follow. 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. be ambushed. 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. Eriksson replied that he wouldnt mind a changenot that it would deter him from pressing charges. Things will get sorted out, he said. 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. The only thing that could stop me was if I became a friendly casualty.. [2] He does remember, though, that she had a prominent gold tooth, and that her eyes, which were dark brown, could be particularly expressive. [10] At the trial of Thomas, who committed the actual stabbing and shooting, the prosecutor asked the jury to impose a death sentence. As if his family had any money! 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. . Incident on Hill 192 (1970 edition) | Open Library Q: Did he endeavor to actively join in with the free-time activity of the rest of the people, or did he have to be coaxed. . Why had he bothered to discuss Mao with him three times? 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. As if Sven had it so easy! Mrs. Eriksson said to me when she heard of these findings. 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. The search party was a smaller one this time, Eriksson said, its assignment to make certain that nothing of any conceivable courtroom value still lay hidden in the area around Maos body; eventually, a C.I.D. They were her last. In 1989 Brian De Palma directed the film Casualties of War, which was based on Lang's book. I had to give one small child mouth-to-mouth respiration and bring her back to life. The two sisters looked at each other. Did you fire your weapon? A: I dont think Im braver than Eriksson. 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. Naturally, Erikssons experiences in Vietnam were varied, and many of them impressed themselves vividly on his mind. In warat least, the war we were init was nothing unusual to hear shots that were unexplained, to find a body that might or might not have been shot in combat. Im still young, he said, and it took me a moments effort to recall the fact of his youth, and the youth of Meserve and the rest of the patrol. (who escaped the following morning) wounded five Americans, and Meserve displayed considerable courage in rescuing the most seriously injured of them, a G.I. His last order before they left was to send Eriksson, Rafe, and Manuel to fetch the days supply of water from the stream. She had lain moldering there for three weeks and her body was badly decayed. The Sergeant had made his announcement with a straight face, leaving his men to interpret it as they would. Rafe later testified at his court-martial, Meserve stated we would leave an hour ahead of time so that we would have time to find a woman to take with us on the mission. In the end, the four juries sitting at Camp Radcliff found the defendants guilty of one crime or another. 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. Fox and Sean Penn, and is based on the events of the 1966 incident on Hill 192 during the Vietnam War, in which a Vietnamese woman was kidnapped from her village by a squad of American soldiers, who raped and murdered her. Bunkers, trenches, trails that were not marked on maps, caches of enemy equipmentthese, too, were to be reconnaissance objectives. 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. He was upset and frustratedit was in all his letters. The C.I.D. 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. The C.I.D. 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. His manner became momentarily subdued when Meserve waved him in as the third man, but Clark was his jaunty self again when he returned. Their testimony indicates that they were so inured to the epidemic, occupational violence of war that they found it hard to recognize their judicial plight as a type of retribution.
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