incident on hill 192 where are they now incident on hill 192 where are they now
But the longer I was over there, the more I became convinced that it was the other way around that countedthat because we might not be around much longer, we had to take extra care how we behaved. 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. The Sergeant had made his announcement with a straight face, leaving his men to interpret it as they would. He had a wild mannerhe couldnt stand still, and his eyes looked every which way. 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. Sometimes you have your disagreements, and sometimes you dont voice them, you keep them to yourself.. 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. It was the way I felt, he said. Im talking about a murder. 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. I gave her crackers and beef stew and water. You Are Here: ross dress for less throw blankets apprentissage des lettres de l'alphabet incident on hill 192 where are they now. What if he refused to arrange an introduction for me? Below was a valley with a winding stream, and along its banks were paddy fields with neat little dikes around them. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories, Like their predecessors in all wars, American veterans of the Vietnamese campaign who are coming home to civilian life have their heads filled with memories that may last the rest of their days, for, no matter how far from the front a man may have spent his time as a soldier, he will remember it as a special time, when, fleetingly, his daily existence appeared to approach the heroic. 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. Rafe was the man closest to Clark and Maoonly a few metres awayand because he was, his testimony concerning the events that now took place carried special weight with the court. It was based on an actual incident known as "the incident on Hill 192" which occurred in 1966. Do you consider yourself braver than Eriksson?. It repeated itself in waves, broken only, Eriksson assumed, by Maos need to summon fresh breath. He felt that way, he explained, because out in the field, in territory that could turn hostile at any moment, the men in the patrol would be very much on their own, and this would be so even if a high-ranking officer were in charge. Asked by the prosecutor why he thought Eriksson had stayed out of the hootch, Manuel answered, Eriksson was different. It was adduced that even before Meserve left for Vietnam he was regarded as an exemplary soldier, since he had been selected to march in President Johnsons inaugural paradean honor limited to two hundred men with unblemished records. Daylight was coming on fast, and he wanted the girl in the light as little as possible, Eriksson told me. The Sergeant was the first man to enter the hootch, and soon, Eriksson told me, a high, piercing moan of pain and despair came from the girl. Conscience was one thing that crossed over from civilian life to war, he said. She had stopped whimpering, and there was even a little look of trust in her eyes. Seeing him made me think at once of two questions I would have liked to ask him or his sergeant. 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. This sentence was first commuted to 20 years, then reduced to eight, which made him eligible for parole after half that time. Panting, she finally reached the soldiers, indicating to them that the scarf was Maos and that she would like her daughter to have it; the womans cheeks were wet and her manner was imploring. Meserve said nothing to Rafe; nor did he say anything to any of the others when, as the mission unfolded, they committed similar derelictions. The image is that of a Vietnamese peasant girl, two or three years younger than he was, whom he met, so to speak, on November 18, 1966, in a remote hamlet in the Central Highlands, a few miles west of the South China Sea. As the others clustered around it, Eriksson withdrew to the fringes of the circle, made uncomfortable by everyones purposeful curiosity. I thought again of letting her go, but what would I tell Meserve when he got back? 1970. 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. The incident on Hill 192 is the name the United States Army called [1] the kidnapping, gang rape, and murder of Phan Thi Mao, a young Vietnamese woman [2] on November 19, 1966 [1] by an American squad during the Vietnam War. Meserve was now an ally, he and his second-in-command apparently having arrived at a meeting of minds while the others were filling the patrols canteens. By the time I got out of jail, he told Eriksson, I was saying to myself, Whats happened is the way things are, so why try to buck the system? And take it from me, Eriksson, its even more hopeless to try to buck it in the middle of a wartheres more of a system then than ever. Ordinarily, he conjectured, the promise of such generous support would have cheered Meserve, but Maos presence seemed to confuse matters. I had to give one small child mouth-to-mouth respiration and bring her back to life. It turned out to be a letter of commendation. may have rescued him from Meserve. The experts findings established conclusively that Mao had been stabbed three times, in the rib cage and the neck, and that her skull presented a crushed appearance, showing the shattering effects of two high-velocity-missile wounds. Classifying her racial stock as Mongoloid, Professor Furue placed Maos age at between eighteen and twenty and her height at five feet four and a half inchessomewhat greater than Eriksson had estimated it to be in talking with me. 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. Related period. We couldnt have gone very far, I realized, but it was going to be dark soon and we might find a hideout somewhere in the brush. 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. The court record attests that it was in the midst of this encircling racket that Meserve chose to initiate radio contact with Lieutenant Reilly, the burden of the Sergeants message being that he wanted to report one V.C., K.I.A. Under cross-examination at Meserves court-martial, Reilly, appearing as a defense witness, testified, Sergeant Meserve called me up and informed me in the middle of the fire fight that a girl was fleeing up the side of the mountain, and I informed him to get the girl. 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. PNP Change of Command Ceremony and Retirement Honors for - Facebook 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.. Like most rural women, she was dressed in loose-fitting black pajamas. The judges had ordered that the incarcerated Rafe be given a new trial, which, like Manuels, was held at Fort Leavenworth. Eriksson had never laid eyes on the chaplain before. Throughout each trial, Eriksson said, the exponents of military law strove diligently to apply judicial rules largely borrowed from civilian law, as though they were seeking to re-create a semblance of civilian life. . 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. It could keep them from believing that life was so valuableanyones life, I mean, even their own. Reporting another of Locs answers at the trial, the court interpreter stated, She said her sister have gold tooth, right side in lower jaw.. Incident Hill 192 by Daniel Lang - AbeBooks He also remembers that she was wearing dusty earrings made of bluish glass; he noticed the trinkets because they gave off a dull glint one bright afternoon when he was assigned to stand guard over her. Ending the first of his brooding silences, Eriksson said, From one day to the next, you could see for yourself changes coming over guys on our sidedecent fellows, who wouldnt dream of calling an Oriental a gook or a slopehead back home. Incident on Hill 192 Daniel Lang Published by Secker & Warburg, London, Great Britain, 1970 Seller: Secondhand Books 'n' Things, Ross Creek, Australia Seller Rating: Contact seller Book First Edition Used - Hardcover Condition: Good 44.51 Convert currency 9.15 Shipping From Australia to United Kingdom Quantity: 1 Add to Basket Hardcover. Did you fire your weapon? A: I was in the rear of the column, and didnt have a chance. 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. Interested in "Incident On Hill 192 Where Are They Now" find IP Addresses, Websites, IP Tools, Articles, and other useful resources on IPAddress.com. Books. He was confident, he told me, that he stood a better chance of finding help there than in the confines of the platoon area. The young woman was abducted, not a prostitute. 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. munitions cache on Hill 192. Though 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. After that, wed have to stay out of sight until the third day of the patrols missionthat was the day the patrol was supposed to rendezvous with another unit for fresh supplies. Actually, Eriksson told me, he had once asked Reilly for permission to discuss Maos murder with a chaplain, but the Lieutenant had discouraged the idea. Manuel received a sentence of fifteen years, his punishment for rape. When he stopped asking me questions, he started talking about Meserve and the others, sort of thinking aloud what it was that came over fellows in wartime. 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. Acknowledging the danger in which Eriksson had placed himself, the Lieutenant told him, If I sent you out with that patrol, youd never make it back.. Straggling uphill, he said, they gravitated toward their leader, who stood, unflustered, near the jutting rock formation, surveying the combat situation. Whatever the answers, Captain Vorst saw to it that Eriksson left his command early the following morning, sending the enlisted man seventy miles away to Camp Radcliff, the 1st Cavalry (Airmobile) Division base, near the small city of An Khe. The idea that came most easily to his mind was to continue in police work, in which he had been engaged since his days at Camp Radcliff, but on applying to the State Highway Patrol for a post as motorcycle cop he discovered that this was impracticable. 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. 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.
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