. It had nothing to do with a mans being responsible for his own behavior. Needless to say, Eriksson continued, the kind of behavior he was describing was by no means limited to Americans. Q: You dont believe the military gives a choice between rules, orders, and conscience? The C.I.D. 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. In the case of Manuel (the father of a three-month-old girl), this attitude of mystification became so palpable that the prosecutor finally inquired, Do you feel you are involved in any way in this rape and murder? To which Manuel replied No.. His manner became momentarily subdued when Meserve waved him in as the third man, but Clark was his jaunty self again when he returned. 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. With few exceptions, these witnesses had fought alongside the defendants, and it was a powerful camaraderie they shared, forged, as it was, in combat, where they had all saved each others lives more than once. 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. "[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. email: dr.diipk@gmail.comtwitter.com/diipkfacebook.com/diipkhttps://literarism.blogspot.comTelegram Grouphttps://t.me/KashyapDeepak#diipk #KashyapDeepak As a result, Eriksson left Colorado for Fort Leavenworth, where Manuel, serving his time in the Disciplinary Barracks, was to be retried. 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. 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. It was a consciousness he could have done without, he remarked, for its effect was to remind him of Mao, and, following the trials, he was in a mood to try to forget her. De Palma handles this unsettling & disturbing fare with ruthlessness, making it an experience to remember. Manuel admitted to C.I.D. Recurrently, the court records show, witnesses found it deplorable that the defendants should have to fight for their survival in a prisoners dock when they might be far better employed doing that on the battlefield; in their every utterance these witnesses reflected the view that losing soldiers of Meserves calibre could result only in gaining a stronger enemy. incident on hill 192 where are they now. 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. I thought he wanted to destroy living evidence., In the morning, everyone got up shortly after six, and it wasnt long before Maos fate was sealed. 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. And, in fact, Eriksson told me, a C.I.D. It was rustling. The climb took longer than it had the day before, the mens pace slowed by the packs they bore. At the time, Eriksson told me, he had no idea that the Captain had chewed them out. The groups second-in-command was Ralph Clark, a corporal who came from a town near Philadelphia. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. The evidence gained as a result of the two field trips played an important part in the judicial proceedings, Eriksson told me. That leaves three to go.. 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. It was based on an actual incident known as "the incident on Hill 192" which occurred in 1966. In his cell, Reilly went on, he had made plans to shoot various officials at the hospital, but when he was finally released he gave up the idea of vengeance. Just who, I wanted to ask, was the man in Manuels patrol who started the shooting? Lang's article for The New Yorker described the so-called "Incident on Hill 192" that involved the kidnapping, . The men found her feverish and coughing, and Clark was all for rescheduling her death hour to that evening. . When Mao saw me come into the hootch, she thought I was there to rape her, Eriksson said. The four soldiers with whom he was on patrol raped and killed her, abandoning her body in mountain brush. Based on the actual events of the incident on Hill 192 in 1966, we follow . argo parts amazon. Sometimes you hate the enemy so bad. Some Vietnamese people were bringing children out of. 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. incident on hill 192 where are they now. 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. I then heard the girl cry out, but not too loud, Rafe continued. Besides, she was in no condition to reach home or anywhere else. [11], Likewise, Gervase's initial sentence of ten years with hard labor was reduced to eight. Calmly and easily, he told Eriksson about an experience that he had undergone three years earlier, when he drove his wife, also a Negro, to an Alabama hospital to have their first child. He might turn out to be dumb or brave or to have a wonderful stock of jokes. 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. His parents stayed home plenty of Sundays.. Incident on Hill 192 | Imperial War Museums 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. [12][13], Gervase died on March 23, 1981. Plot Additional pictures were taken a week later, when Eriksson led a second pilgrimage to Hill 192. 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. I didnt know Eriksson brought it up. When I got up to the girl, I saw that her head was partially blown away, he testified. Late one afternoon, when he and about twenty other G.I.s putting up a barracks were about to knock off for the day, he saw a fellow-carpenter, Boyd Greenacre, detach himself from the crew to have a talk with a passing chaplain, a blond, long-nosed six-footer wearing a captains bars; the two men, Eriksson could see, were on cordial terms. 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. Thats where she is, he said with certainty. Platoon True Story: How Accurate Is The Vietnam War Movie - Screen Rant [10] At the trial of Thomas, who committed the actual stabbing and shooting, the prosecutor asked the jury to impose a death sentence. 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. 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. Conscience was one thing that crossed over from civilian life to war, he said. Gervase was found guilty on the count of premeditated murder. 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. Sometimes you have your disagreements, and sometimes you dont voice them, you keep them to yourself.. [6] The court, however, sentenced Thomas to life imprisonment with hard labor.