Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veterans

Your relationship with government is simple: government knows everything about you, and you know nothing about government. In practice this means government can do whatever it wants to you before you know it's going to happen. Government policy makers think this is a good way of ensuring citizen compliance. Thus, all of these investigations are retrospective -- they look back at the squirrely shit that government has pulled, and occasionally wring their hands about trying to avoid it happening in the future. Not inspiring reading, but necessary if you are to face the cold reality that Big Brother is more than watching.

Re: Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veter

Postby admin » Mon Jun 06, 2016 4:08 am

Part 2 of 2

Posters have begun to appear in Vietnam and in refugee areas encouraging refugees to return to their villages. The reasons go beyond the urban problems of welfare and overcrowding. Crops are not being planted, and the country's important economic base crop, rice, is in need of labor capital. In addition, security in the countryside requires a population from the urban areas, who can reasonably be expected to support the central government. The final consideration, which would appear to confirm the fact that many refugees will not be returning to their rice fields is related to a political decision made by the United States government in 1968. Reacting in part to increased pressures from voluntary agencies, the press, and Senator Edward Kennedy's Refugees Subcommittee, a decision was made to reclassify refugee camps, which had received all of the assistance required by law, as having been resettled into New Life hamlets. What this meant was that after receiving a cash payment, so many sacks of cement, so many sheets of roofing, and having met communal requirements related to a classroom for every hundred children and one toilet for every twenty families, the refugee camps were delisted. The degree of this type of delisting of refugees can be seen in noting that in the first ten months of 1968, 168,000 refugees were resettled on location, as compared to 86,000 who were listed as having returned to their villages.

The process was guaranteed to reduce the number of refugees. Unfortunately the condition of the refugee, his future and the future of the country were not considered. It would be like if we had a welfare program in the States and we said, "Well, we'll give everyone $100 and after that we'll say that he's not welfare any more." It's just totally unrealistic. One can imagine the tragedy of this measure if similar government measures were to be incorporated into the welfare programs we have for the poor in the United States. The actual location of the refugee camps should also be mentioned as a factor in understanding the social and economic impact of the problem. The most populated areas of the country, the area around Saigon and the Delta area, account for only 20% of the refugees. The northern areas of the country account for the remainder. In part, this relates to the firmer hold by the NLF and North Vietnamese units in that part of the country, and the greater intensity of fighting in the area. Unfortunately, the economic potentiality of the northern area is extremely limited. The topography of the north is mountainous and severe.

And what land that is available for cultivation is highly prized. As the refugees flooded into the secure provincial capitals it became impossible to employ them or to assist them by providing land on which they might farm. In the majority of cases the refugees were placed upon barren, uncultivatable land. To return to the free fire zones was impossible and employment locally was equally impossible. Unemployment rose from a level of .8% before migration began to a post-migration level of 33.4%. Only 2% of the refugees from Phu Yen province continued to earn an income from farming. Among those who were able to find employment, many were forced to accept wages substantially lower than they earned before becoming refugees. In Phu Yen, income levels average 50% lower than pre-migration income levels, the average wage being about thirty cents a day. Thus, the location of refugees was a primary factor leading to high unemployment.

Summing up our knowledge of the refugee family, our profile would suggest that the average refugee is a farmer who sought refuge from indirect or direct allied action and is not stressing a political preference when he migrates. When he arrives in the secure area he will not be able to farm, will face some political hostility, will probably be a child, an old person, or a female, be unemployed, or marginally employed. In addition, the period he will remain in a refugee camp will be an extended one, greater than two years. His chances of being administratively resettled are greater than his chances of returning home. The true economic impact of the refugee problem has not yet been felt in Vietnam. The reason for this is because great volumes of United States dollar support of the government of Vietnam, in a wartime private or indirect report factor, related to United States military factor, related to United States military expenditures and construction and services to well- paid allied forces, is in effect. The pre-war economy of Vietnam was like many Asian countries a two-crop agrarian economy. There were other exports, including some tea. But rubber production from French rubber plantations and rice production from the Mekong Delta were predominant. The effects of the war on South Vietnam's exports cannot be minimized. In 1961 South Vietnam's exports were valued at $76 million. By 1964 the export values were down to $48 million. In '65, again down to $35 million. In '66 down to $20 million. In 1967 a brief increase in exports took place, but was followed by a further decline in exports in '68. Rice became an import in 1965. Where South Vietnam had exported $33 million worth of rice in 1964, it imported $15 million worth in 1969. Rubber production fell from an export dollar value of $43 million in 1961 to $8 million in 1968. As production and exports fell, the dollar deficit expanded and foreign exchange reserves fell.

To function the government of Vietnam became more dependent on the United States. In 1969, the American government was underwriting, directly or indirectly, 60% of the South Vietnamese budget. The form that this aid to South Vietnam took was in indirect and direct aid. Direct aid was generally either food for freedom imports, or support of the costly commercial import program. The commercial import program allows Vietnamese citizens to purchase foreign goods with piasters. The piaster, being inflated by increased government issue of notes, and the absence of domestic articles to buy with monies being generated by American Forces, is thus made valuable. The United States government would use dollars to purchase consumer items and sell the items to the Vietnamese government at favorable exchange rates. The government would then sell the items to the local citizens. The indirect gain offered by the United States was similar to that generated in tourist economics. By waging a war that destroyed the normal source of export income, the economic base was changed radically. The new export item was similar to that offered by college towns or small down-state capitals in the United States. Vietnam was dependent upon GIs spending money on the local economy. If the GIs are to be withdrawn, the economic export item would evaporate and the country would be without any base to support the economy, except monies received through direct aid. Generally, by being dependent upon GIs, as you withdraw the GI (and having done away with the rice and rubber export crops) the Vietnamese economy no longer has anything to have its roots in. And the people who once did the farming, as I pointed out earlier, cannot go back nor can we expect them to go back and get the rice crops and the rubber crops going. I think that when we recognize these factors, these statistics, boring as they are, do point out that the future of Vietnam is in very serious trouble. The people have been uprooted, their culture has been destroyed, the extended family has been severely broken up, we have overcrowding in the cities and tremendous slums. Saigon has grown from a city of 600,000 in 1960 to close to three million today with people living in the streets. There is no future hope, economically, that these people are going to get back on their feet in the immediate future. I suggest that we have a very serious problem in Vietnam that we have not given consideration to. In our rush to get out, in our desire to get out, I ask those of you who think on this to consider, when we do leave, what we are leaving behind and is there anything that we can do? Is there any way that we can get out? I don't think we know what we are doing there or we haven't proven that we have. Is there any way that we can get out and help these people? Is there anything that we can do other than leave this tragedy?

EMENY. When Dr. Spellman was speaking my head started going wild with memories and all the time Jim's been talking I've been writing down things. One of the things I have been thinking about an awful lot lately is the whole concept of genocide. Genocide, it seems to me, is just the ultimate extension of a policy of population control. I think in terms of three kinds of levels of control. There's physical, there's economic, and then there's psyochological and political. We've heard a lot about physical control in all the stories we've heard and I can tell you just examples of my own, but I won't now. Economic control: there has been a 300% inflation in the last four years. But there is the psychology or the political, and in Vietnam there is an incredible will to live. This is, I guess, what I would like to talk a little bit about. We think of Vietnam in terms of the Vietnam that we have experienced, which is the Vietnam of maybe ten years, twelve years ago. Well, we've been there for longer than that. But we've been actively involved for ten or twelve years. But the history of Vietnam, the history that the Vietnamese know, is a history of 4,000 years or more. That whole history is a history of struggle. A struggle for suvival, and most of it a struggle for survival against outside people, outside invaders. Home for me was a Buddhist orphanage and there was a song that kids in the orphanage sang. Kids all over Vietnam sing it, you know, five year old kids, which sums up their history in a nutshel. It goes like this: "A thousand years as slaves to the Chinese, a hundred years a colony of France, twenty years of this war. The inheritance that the mother gives on to her child is the inheritance of the sad Vietnam." And it goes on. But that's one side of the history; the other side is this incredible will to live, which is summed up in another song that I would just like to read the translation from. This is a song by a young many who lives in Saigon, who is in prison for writing songs like this, because in South Vietnam today it is illegal to be for peace. Literally, it's illegal. But his song goes like this:

From the untilled rice fields today, we still sing together these words, even though a thousand lives are hard and sad, still life carries joy. From two exhausted dry hands, pray that effort still rises one more hour. Though today the rice fields are untilled, we still move one step towards tomorrow. Our ruined wasteland, our dry bare earth. Earth bears ardent flowers, our future is here. Our earth is sick, our earth is wretched, our earth is in rags, our earth sits. Our earth gives us life, our homeland carries us, our earth gives us death, to our homeland we return. Tomorrow our land will stretch out fragrant with the smell of new rice. Tomorrow flowers will grow, red lips will smile. Tomorrow the country will grow green with the color of the river in the hills, because today our people are determined to live


And this is what's happening in Vietnam, also.

Dr. Spellman talked about self-employment and creativity. This is really evident in Vietnam. As I said, home for me as a Buddhist orphanage. And the kids ran the orphanage. I was sort of attached to the staff you might say; but learning more from the kids than from anybody else. There were two nuns on the staff and two other young fellows; there were three older women who did most of the cooking. But everything was done by the children. The older people were there as advisors. And anybody who has spent any time in Vietnam can see what people of all ages, but especially the children, do make with our leavings. There are, I don't know, how many rings made out of American metal floating around. All kinds of things are made with leftovers of American goods. This kind of creativity is everywhere. Dr. Spellman talked about self-employment and creativity. This is really evident in Vietnam. As I said, home for me was a Buddhist orphanage. And the kids ran the orphanage. I was sort of attached to the staff you might say; but learning more from the kids than from anybody else. There were two nuns on the staff and two other young fellows; there were three older women who did most of the cooking. But everything was done by the children. The older people were there as advisers. And anybody who has spent any time in Vietnam can see what people of all ages, but especially the children, do make with our leavings. There are I don't know how many rings made out of American metal floating around. All kinds of things are made with leftovers of American goods. This kind of creativity is everywhere. There's poetry everywhere, and the people are encouraged in this kind of creativity. But an extension of this is the awareness, total awareness, that our own survival is in us. For Vietnam that means that their survival is in their own history--their seed for survival, their strength for survival--is in their own history, in their own culture and it's going back to that. It's in that they get the strength to keep going. So you see what things are very central to the culture of Vietnam: the whole concept of the family, and the central object in the home of the Vietnamese is the altar, the family altar. Now when the people are made refugees, everything's taken and they can't take the altar with them because it's usually a permanent structure. But when they go, they'll build a new one. I'm sorry that I don't have slides of these here. I have pictures and anyone who's interested in looking can see afterwards. But I have here a picture taken in Hue, shortly after Tet, and the house is completely destroyed, but the family is moving back. The first thing they do is set a chair in the corner and put the family altar on it. And another one of the camps just south of the demilitarized zone where again there are no materials, nothing to make anything out of. The first thing they do is to build the family altar with the only available materials, which happen to be ammunition boxes supported on mortar tubes. It's this kind of creativity in maintaining their own culture that the Vietnamese keep insisting is their own survival. And it comes out in all their songs; it comes out in the poetry; it comes out in the daily way of living.

CRAVEN. I was on a delegation of students that went to Vietnam. From the time we arrived in Vietnam till the time we left, I must very honestly say that I had the most incredible human experience that I have ever had. Before our plane landed in North Vietnam we had been flying over Laos, and much of the landscape in Laos looked very barren. In some places you could see the results of the American bombing, and parts of Laos looked like the surface of the moon. It was reported that there are between 800 and 1,200 bombing sorties flown every single day. But as our plane descended beneath the clouds over North Vietnam, we were all very struck with the lush vegetation and with the whole fertility of the land. And as we came closer to the ground, we saw peasants and water buffalo working the fields in the kind of sight that I've never seen before, and nobody in our delegation had ever even conceived of before. We arrived at the airport and were met by 75 Vietnamese who were holding flowers. When we came to the airport, we were embraced very warmly. During the time that we were in Vietnam this became a very kind of commonplace occurrence. The Vietnamese themselves expressed tremendous solidarity and tremendous love for one another. And it is not an uncommon sight, in the streets of Hanoi, to see people walking down the street, young girls, or even soldiers, women and men, embracing each other, holding each other's hands--all of them always very happy. At the airport, we went into a side room, and we met the group that was hosting us; a group called the Committee for Solidarity with the American People. We had several toasts; we were introduced to each other, and we were told roughly what our itinerary would be for our stay in Vietnam. We were asked to make any requests for things that we would like to do. We were asked to mention any kinds of people that we would like to see, and what particular interest we might have where we could understand better how similar kinds of people live and work in Vietnam. We got into our bus to go to our hotel in Hanoi and, as we traveled on the road to the Long Binh Bridge, we saw the shells of a bombed train depot and an old factory, as well as the millions of Vietnamese who were riding their bicycles, or riding in water buffalo or horse carts, with whatever goods they might be taking to the market in Hanoi. When we got to the river right outside of Hanoi, we found that the Vietnamese were repairing the Long Binh Bridge. We had to go over a floating bridge that the Vietnamese have become very skillful at assembling and disassembling, as they repair the bridges which have been destroyed by American bombers.

It took us about an hour and a half to get across the bridge, waiting for a long time as traffic went one way. Finally we crossed the river to Hanoi in sort of single file, with the water buffalo carts, the people walking, the people on their bicycles and the people on their pony carts. It was just incredible to see the patience of everybody just moving right across that river on this floating bridge. We arrived in Hanoi and went to our hotel; we were very well accommodated. Almost embarrassingly well accommodated, compared to the way we knew the Vietnamese live. Vietnam is very obviously a poor country. It is very obviously a very strong country. The people are not poor to the extent that there is any kind of poverty, to the extent that there is any kind of hunger, or to the extent that there is any kind of poverty that is shown through people not having sufficient clothing to wear. The first night we were in Vietnam we were taken to see the Vietnamese circus, which is right on the outskirts of Hanoi. And it was just an incredible, incredible thing. The circus was under a big top, and there were magicians and clowns and acrobats, and all the kinds of things that you would expect to see at a circus. There was also an anti-American imperialism skit. It was just so incredible in the way that it did not show hostility to the American presence in Vietnam, but showed kind of a humorous insight and humorous perception into the nature of the American presence, and the nature of the Saigon complicity with the Americans. The skit was about a South Vietnamese shoe-shine boy who was sitting on his shoe box waiting for somebody to come along. He was sitting next to a sign that said "Yankee Go Home." Well, an American soldier came by, saw the sign and was immediately outraged. He started to harass the shoe-shine boy. He asked for his papers, began kicking him around, and as the soldier turned to look at the papers, the shoe-shine boy took his shoe-shine brush and hit him over the head and knocked him out. Well, the shoe-shine boy then saw a Saigon troop coming and was very afraid. So he put the American soldier in his shoe-shine box with the top half of his body inside the box and his feet hanging outside. Then he sat on the box with his own feet curled underneath him so that it looked like the feet of the American soldier were his own legs. The Saigon troop came, saw the "Yankee Go Home" sign, was immediately afraid that an American soldier would see him not doing anything about it, so he began to harass the shoe-shine boy. He then tied a rope round his legs to haul him away from the place. Well, the shoe-shine boy had put something over on the Saigon puppet.

That was perfectly clear. And as the skit ended, the Saigon puppet was hauling the shoe-shine box away with the American soldier lying in the box and the shoe-shine boy was sort of scampering off. The American soldier came to consciousness and you can imagine what happened then. I think it's significant to show this kind of feeling among the North Vietnamese people. I think it's significant to show the kind of impression that I got from the Vietnamese, going there not knowing what to expect and being so warmly received. The Vietnamese will tell you time and again, almost everywhere you go, that they always distinguish between the American people and the American government. And they knew that they are not at war with the American people, they know that there are no people on the face of the whole earth that would wage the kind of war against their country that is currently being waged. Often before breakfast a couple of us would walk in the streets of Hanoi. By the time we would get to the market place, there would be as many as two or three hundred small children who would have followed us and come around us by that point, who would sing songs and whistle. And they would find somebody that could speak English and they would say that they were singing the songs for their American friends. At one point, I was walking in Hanoi and I heard one of the young children whistling an American movie theme. I really can't remember the name of it, but he was very proud of the fact that he knew it. One day during our stay in Vietnam, we visited a place called the Revolution Museum, which is in Hanoi. This museum traces the entire history of Vietnamese struggle against foreign aggression and depicts, through various paintings and pictures, significant hallmarks of Vietnamese history. The Vietnamese will tell you that they have spent three-quarters of their entire history under foreign domination, but they have never been unsuccessful in expelling the aggressor. They will tell you about the French having been there for eighty years. About the French being overthrown by the Japanese, the Japanese being overthrown by the Vietnamese, the French coming back nine months later. The French being overthrown by the Vietnamese and the Americans coming only a year later. They will tell you of how in the twelfth century Kubla Khan had defeated and conquered all of Asia and most of Europe, and had never been defeated, but that when he came to Vietnam he was defeated for his first time.

They will tell you how he made three successive attacks on Vietnam, and on the third attack the Vietnamese ambushed him and defeated him so badly that his entire naval fleet was completely destroyed. They have these paintings in their Revolution Museum; one of the ambush of Kubla Khan's ships coming into the Haiphong River and another which they explain as the Mongolian troops standing on the shore really not knowing what to do next. They will explain to you that the Vietnamese then gave the Mongolians their entire naval fleet to transport them back to Mongolia. Also, at the Revolution Museum, we were shown a restaging of the entire battle of Dien Bien Phu. We sat in a room where there was a pit, that was about the size of the middle section of this room, which had a whole land scale of the battleground of Dien Bien Phu, with the valley in the middle, the mountains surrounding it, and the French fortress right in the middle. Through a narration they show you how the Vietnamese progressed and advanced against the French fortress, and, through colored lights on the ground, they will show the various advances, the couple of setbacks, and the renewed advances against the French fortress. Finally, when the Vietnamese conquered the French fortress in the last moments of the monologue, the French flag on top of the French fortress is electronically lowered, and the Vietnamese flag is raised. We also were able to visit the art museum in Hanoi. The Vietnamese are very proud of their art.

They have a long tradition of art, music, and of very beautiful poetry. A third of their museum is devoted exclusively to discussion and portrayal of the minority groups that live in North Vietnam. They have the costumes, the dress, the houses and the architecture of these minority groups and different representations of their culture. It is interesting to compare how the North Vietnamese perceive their minority groups as compared to the South Vietnamese, especially the South Vietnamese Christians, the South Vietnamese ruling class. The South Vietnamese have been noted for their systematic racism; their systematic oppression of their minority groups--Montagnards--and the Cambodians who are from the same kind of ethnic extraction as these groups. On the other hand, in North Vietnam, the minority groups have been consciously incorporated and made an active part of the society. In the colleges, where education is a very valued and a very treasured thing, the minority groups constitute a greater proportion of the percentage of college students than they actually constitute as a proportion of the society. Everywhere you go in North Vietnam, you can see the effects of the destruction. I don't think it's really necessary to elaborate too much on that. It's very interesting how the Vietnamese have dealt with the situation of aerial bombardment.

Many of the schools and many of the hospitals which have been destroyed by American bombs have been rebuilt. You will see great craters in many of the fields where bombs have been dropped. These craters create a problem with drainage from the rice paddies, from the fields. Unless they are filled up, there can be no crops grown in these fields. Where the craters have been too big for the Vietnamese to be able to refill, they have filled them with water and made them into fish breeding ponds. The Vietnamese have also adapted to the situation of bombardment and war by being able to totally decentralize their entire country. Every province is self- sufficient and any province, when it is cut off from the rest of the country during bombardment, can be sufficient medically, can provide enough food for its people, and can begin immediately, when something is destroyed, to rebuild it. The Vietnamese talked of their leprosy research and treatment center that was at Nui An in southern North Vietnam. They talked of how this leprosy treatment center was the most sophisticated leprosy research treatment center in all of Southeast Asia. They tell you that during the air war, between 1964 and 1968, this leprosarium was bombed by American planes on thirty-nine different occasions. All of the 160 buildings making up this leprosy center were destroyed; 117 lepers and medical workers were killed; all of the research documents and records were destroyed. This gives you some idea of the kinds of setbacks in terms of production, in terms of accomplishment, that the Vietnamese have had to suffer. North Vietnam is very different from South Vietnam in that they have been able to advance, in that they have been able to solve the problems of starvation. They have been able to solve these problems by increasing production and developing more sophisticated facilities. Yet the air war destroyed almost all of this. The Vietnamese will tell you, as Nixon again makes threats against North Vietnam to renew bombing, that what seems to be happening is that the facilities they have rebuilt are again being threatened and will again be destroyed. The Vietnamese dealt with had a very astute kind of insight into the situation in America. They would talk about the recent Senate elections. They talked about what they felt to be the significance of the GM strike, for example. They talked of the anti-war movement with great love and with very great confidence. They talked about their American friends they read about. They talked about the books that they had read by American authors, and the kinds of cultural accomplishments that they saw as being significant in this country.

When we met with a group of musicians, artists, and poets in Vietnam, they described to us in great length, how before their revolution their culture and their society had been undergoing a period of decadence. They talked about how the Vietnamese, when they tried to represent in their art, for example, love, found that they could represent only a very desperate kind of love. They talked about the sort of preoccupations represented in their art, with the use of opium, and that much of the art and much of the music had to do with opium dreams and opium experiences. They will tell you how, after the revolution, there was a resurgence of feeling; there was a resurgence of spirit. The people felt a renewed capacity to express their feeling for one another, to pull together as a people, to begin working toward the kind of solidarity that now exists in Vietnam. Our delegation during this meeting presented to the Vietnamese a copy of the screenplay SATYRICON. We told them that many of us felt that this movie, and this play, represented the same kind of decadence that existed in a great society--Rome during its fall--and that we experience many of these same kinds of conditions in this country. About a week later, as we were getting ready to leave, about five or six Vietnamese came to me and told me that they had read the entire screenplay from Satyricon. They asked me to sort of graphically portray the various scenes. There was one movie in Hanoi when we were there that dealt with the battle between the American Indians and the American Cavalry, in which the Cavalry was totally wiped out. One day we were going to the coast, to a place called Ha Long Bay. This is a tremendous bay right on the Gulf of Tonkin where there are 6,000 mountain islands with monkeys, caves, grottos, and all kinds of things. We were crossing the river near Haiphong on a ferry boat with our Vietnamese friends. Our buses had been put on the ferry. One of the Vietnamese took out his pipe and offered us some Thoc La which is what the Vietnamese smoke as a kind of tobacco. It is very strong kind of tobacco. It gives the Vietnamese people the sensation of being kind of stoned. He brought out the pipe and we sort of smoked the pipe. We were going across this river and one of the Vietnamese friends pointed down the river to the cliffs where Kubla Khan had been wiped out and said, "You know this is where it was. We're very proud of those cliffs."

As we were going along, just sort of sitting there watching the river, just enjoying the beauty of the countryside, a man named Mr. Xuan Oanh, who was one of the leading musical composers in all of North Vietnam (he wrote and composed the Vietnamese national anthem and was also a member of the Paris delegation) brought out his cassette recorder and started playing the Jefferson Airplane's "Volunteers." So I think you can understand what I mean about the ease with which we were able to relate to the Vietnamese. We were able to feel so much at home in this country. When we would greet each other in the morning or when we would say goodnight, we would always embrace and there would always be a very genuine feeling of love between us. We saw that the Vietnamese had been pulled together by the kind of progress they have been struggling to make together, and the kind of suffering they have had to suffer together. They feel not at all desperate. They feel very determined to deal with the renewed threats that are being made against their country, to deal with the suffering that is being leveled against their South Vietnamese brothers and sisters. We understood very clearly that they have a great deal of confidence in the American people to be able to stop the kind of technology, the kind of death machine that comes from the air. But they will continue to resist until the American people stop it once and for all.

EMENY. One thing they say about Thoc La is that, after a long morning, you sit down (Thoc La you smoke through a water pipe) and you take one long, slow drag. It knocks me flat on my back. What they say is, they take one long, slow drag and they can do seven more rounds on that field.

MODERATOR. I'd just like to add a brief statement, to corroborate the kind of information we've been given. From my experiences as a Civil Affairs Officer in Vietnam, I can only testify that all of my civil affairs experiences were either very frustrating or very disastrous. No program ever recommended to me by any of my training or any of the manuals available to me worked. The techniques that I felt were so pertinent to the saving of these people were useless. And I had many months of experience in this frustration. Of all the experiences I had while I was in Vietnam, which include several war crimes, I consider this to be probably the greatest war crime that I committed. If it's not defined as a war crime, then I'll accept whatever kind of definition someone would like to put on it. I will entertain questions from the floor.
QUESTION. I want to address this to the second speaker up there. About two weeks ago in the New York Times it was announced that the United States and Saigon governments were going to evacuate about three million peasants to the southern part of South Vietnam. I want to hear if you have any predictions about how these people are going to react to this plan?

CLARK. I read the same thing that you did. The provinces of the northern half of South Vietnam were traditionally controlled by the Viet Minh. And the population in that area has traditionally been more sympathetic to the NLF than they've ever been to the central government. In my discussions with people I had up there when I was in Quang Tri, they openly stated that they saw the refugees as what they called Viet Cong sympathizers, or VCSs. While the operations near the DMZ were going on, there was 31,000 refugees generated at one point in a short period of time. I think 12,000 were suspected to have gone north, and a great many others of them went back into the area, even though they realized their lives would be threatened in a free fire zone. Basically, the situation is that most of these people cannot be allowed to return to their fields, in the terms of the South Vietnamese government, because if they did, they would go back with very hostile attitudes toward the central government. And if they did grow food, it would be for support, probably, of the NLF. Therefore, by relocating them to the south, there would be greater chance of control by the South Vietnamese government over them. I think that that's what predicated the decision to send them south. Obviously, I think it's a bad idea.

MODERATOR. Jim, do you think there's anything involving the numbers which would change the situation?

CLARK. There's going to be a tremendous tactical problem in trying to move that many people. I just can't imagine their attempting to do it, unless they do it over a very long period of time. I really don't think that it's the solution to the problem that they're facing. I don't think you can win the hearts and minds of people by forcibly transporting them to other areas.

MODERATOR. Jay, do you have a comment?

CRAVEN. I think that that announcement about Melvin Laird is one of the most significant events that has happened in the last several months. And I think there's no question the Vietnamese are not going to want to move to the southernmost provinces of South Vietnam. It's a fact that that kind of dislocation is a very severe war crime. I think what this may indicate is that that entire area is being cleared for an absolute saturation bombing or possible nuclear strike zone. And in fact, by moving all those people out, the only people left can be said to be NLF sympathizers, and thereby a justification could be presented by the administration for just total annihilation of all of central Vietnam.

QUESTION. This may be an unfair question, but I'd like to ask you if you could speculate what would have happened if a Gandhi had arisen in Vietnam, in let's say 1954 or 1955. Would he have had any following, and if so what would be the result?

EMENY. There is a long tradition of nonviolent struggle in Vietnam. This is the tradition that is most active in the cities today, for example. It's totally blacked out here. There is not a central leader. There hasn't arisen a Gandhi, but there have arisen a series of people--in the student leaders, in the Buddhist leaders, in women--a series of people who have led this kind of a nonviolent struggle. There hasn't been anything like the salt marches of Gandhi, but the current situation in South Vietnam is something really extraordinary. About nine months ago the Saigon government started a more intensive campaign of repression than had been before. It was first directed against the students, when they tried to close down and take over the universities. They arrested some of the student leaders. The student leaders went to jail and their prisons are impossible. Everyone knew they were being tortured, as they routinely are, so some students starting fasting in sympathy. Then their mothers started fasting in sympathy. And more joined every day, until the students were released. There have been marches. There are nonviolent forms of struggle going on daily in Vietnam and it is escalated to the point now where on November 7th--again, something that's gone unspoken of in the United States press--there was a meeting in a small pagoda outside Saigon. At this meeting all kinds of organizations were represented in South Vietnam: shoe-shine boys, student groups, women's groups, Buddhists, Catholics, lawyers, doctors, government officials, all levels, ages, everything. And this group formed what they called the People's Front for the Defense of Peace. Now the first demand of the People's Front for the Defense of Peace is that U.S. withdrawal is a precondition to peace in Vietnam, a precondition to any kinds of negotiations for peace in Vietnam. Now this is not the NLF. This is the non-NLF side of the Vietnamese struggle to remain Vietnamese, and much of this is based as a nonviolent struggle.

SPELLMAN. I think the question is a very difficult one. It's not an easy one to answer because you first have to ask whether or not a Gandhi could have arisen in that type of a cultural milieu. Gandhi, as a man, was an extraordinarily rare moral being. I'm not so sure that Buddhism has as strong a tendency toward "ahimsa" which is not, simply not, killing. Gandhi was not so interested in winning. He was not really interested in nonviolence as a tactic, as it has unfortunately become as it has moved into the American political scene. He was interested in nonviolence as an extraordinary kind of moral stamina, and when he had the British, as it were, over a barrel, at the beginning of the Second World War, and could have done many things to obtain independence in India, he said no. Our adversary is in a weak position. It is not proper that we take advantage of that situation. Therefore, he supported the British in the Second World War. Now, he was severely criticized about that. We remember the ultimate triumph of Gandhi, but that triumph was preceded by many very great failures, and those failures of Gandhi were themselves preceded by a great wave of terrorism in India, particularly during the First World War with a large number of terrorist movements. So Gandhi really had that kind of thing on which to base his campaign.

It's unfortunate that nonviolence is so often understood in this society as being a very useful political tactic that you use when you are weaker than your adversary. Gandhi understood it as a form of strength that was much stronger than your adversary. It did not depend on numbers, as demonstrations frequently depend today, using the cultural values of this society. It depended on moral strength, not a righteous bigotry, and on a perspective of truth that men like Gandhi, Tagore and a few others have had, that overrode political concerns. The politics was religion. It wasn't politics under the guise of religion. So I think that to the extent that nonviolence becomes a political tactic, in which the techniques are useful for winning, that that is a mockery and a sham of nonviolence. Nonviolence is an outgoing form of love with certain humor and quipe mixed into it, in which it is the love of your adversary that finally conquered him, not the hatred, not the techniques, and not the tactics. And so I am not sure whether the degree of Christianizing that has taken place in Vietnam would certainly not have supported this kind of thing. Then you have the other problem, and that is the British were on the other side and not the Americans. And I dare say that the British have a far higher sense of moral decency than the American government does, at least if one considers the kinds of things that you find in the British press. Moral indignation is I think a much stronger basis in England than it is in this country.

EMENY. On the other hand, I do have a children's song that I'd really like to read you the translation of again. I guess that's one of the main things I brought away from Vietnam. "The enemy is not people. If we kill people, what brothers will we have left? The enemy's name is cruelty. The enemy's name is no conscience. It's hatred. It's bitterness. A group of phantoms. The enemy is not people; if we kill people, what brothers will we have left? The enemy wears a coat of doctrine, the enemy wears the false front of freedom. It has a deceiving appearance. It sifts our words. It's a germ to separate us. People, people have compassion for the weak, have compassion for the innocent, have compassion for those who pity us. The enemy is not a stranger. It lies inside each one of us. The enemy carries the name of unjust accusation. The enemy is the name of ignorance. It's ambition. It's jealousy. It's jealous hatred. The enemy is in desiring eyes. It's in an arrogant head. In a lonely heart. In a narrow mind. In the dream of conquering. The enemy is no stranger. The enemy lies inside each one of us."

QUESTION. Dr. Spellman, I'd like to ask you a question concerning what you feel to be the root of the problem in Vietnam and a lot of the imperialistic expansion of the Western countries of this world, in particular the United States. I know that you've touched a little bit on the values system, the structure of the values in the United States with reference to technology, industrialization, competition. I know I have my definite views about what is causing many of the Third World revolts, as well as U.S. expansion. I would say that's capitalism. But I wish that you would give us your opinions as to this.

SPELLMAN. That, too, is a difficult question. I do not think that I would feel that it was capitalism. I think that maybe the root lies certainly not solely with the United States. I think that we are dealing with values that extend far beyond the national boundaries. They are cultural values that have a very long heritage. I suppose at the root of this lies concepts such as the idea of truth. Now, we understand things in our society largely from a lineal perspective, and we have the idea that a thing is either right or wrong, good or evil. It is a kind of dualism. And so in order to include something, we must exclude all else. And I think that it is this idea of exclusion, that is one. I think that the idea of evangelism, the crusading, the idea of universalism, which is common both to Christianity and to Islam, is also involved here. I think that our concept of time is also relevant.

Our concept of time is again a lineal concept, and it is only a lineal concept which can give you an idea as progress, which I find a very curious concept. But progress, which is basically a 17th or 18th century development, says that on this line--this beginning and end spectrum--that things continuously improve. So there is a beginning and end, a birth and death, this kind of thing. Now if you contrast that with the Asian concept of time which is cyclical, which deals with the way the seasons operate, so that February 1971 is not much different than February 871 or 1871 B.C., time continues. This gives us the concept of reincarnation and transmigration, that nothing is created or destroyed, not only physically, but also in terms of the spirit of the divine which manifests itself in many ways. We don't accept the multi-dimensionality of life. We don't accept our relationship to all that is living. This again makes a difference in our relationship to nature where we feel that we have the idea of conquest.

Conquest is not simply a political idea. We have the idea of control. You look in telephone directories and see how frequently the word "control" comes. You look at our present orientation in terms of the concept of problems, and you will find very few people who are nowadays able to go through one day without using the word "problem." In other words, the emphasis is on disharmony rather than harmony, and I think that it is the inter-relationship of these kinds of values which lead us to believe that our ideas are good for everyone and even in a discussion (and I don't care how right or left the group is) if someone disagrees, we feel that we have to convince them. So we say, "Well, why do you disagree?" instead of saying, "Very well, you disagree, that's fine." We can't do this.

We feel that we have this tremendous adulation of the scientific values, of objectivity, of impartiality, of nonemotionalism. So we dismiss their arguments by saying, "You are being emotional. You are being subjective. You are being prejudiced about this," instead of saying, "Of course a human being is not a machine. It is inconsistent and illogical and so am I." Much has been made sometimes that Asian society is not individual. It is not; that is true. But it is extremely personal, as you heard from the last statement here. And it is this different value system, which itself forms a kind of unity, but I believe a bankrupt one, that is involved. It is like language. We have this opposition to age. The newest, the most recent, is the best. No matter what my argument is, I can prevail over you by saying, "Recent research shows" and, immediately, whatever you say is finished. This is very useful for a consumer-oriented society, where you don't have to do your own creative work. So youth becomes a tremendous value in the society and newness. Damn the old. All you have to do is examine our vocabulary on age and you will see that words implying great age, "old-fashioned," "out of date," "obsolete," "archaic," are pejorative words toward age. Again, this is not a value that is sympathetically received in most Asian cultures. It is a large, large question that you pose.

EMENY. Let me just add a couple of things about the Vietnamese language. The word "I" does not exist in Vietnamese language, technically. Everything is termed in terms of a relationship. That goes back to what Dr. Spellman was saying about the sense of individuality. It ties in very much with the way the Vietnamese are themselves, because the survival of Vietnam as a nation is much more important than my own individual survival. It all ties in. It is ecological, thinking in terms of the balance of nature.

QUESTION. I'd like to address this to Dr. Spellman. He referred to Southeast Asia's traditional legal system as free, flexible, and merciful. Would you elaborate on what makes it free, merciful, and flexible?

SPELLMAN. Well, again, I tried to put a kind of a disclaimer at the beginning by indicating that I was not a specialist on Southeast Asia or particularly of Vietnam. I've spent the last fifteen years doing some studies of Asia. I am Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Windsor in Canada. I am in this sense making projections from the traditional legal system as I understand it, of India, and taking this through Burma as Indian influence moved, all the way to Cambodia, and to Indonesia. Now that system was largely based on customary law, rather than traditional law. There is no point in having written legislation where people don't read, for example. The first point about that law is that it is extremely decentralized and much of it is village-operated. Now I have done some work on the ancient political theory in this, and if you're really interested you can look at my book on Political Theory of Ancient India, which was published by the Oxford University Press in 1964.

What I've tried to indicate is that because of the very heavy decentralization of law, first of all, there is no police. The enforcement of law is up to the people. If the law is not reasonable, then through their social behavior, through ostracism, through buying at shops, this kind of thing, people will not enforce the law. Therefore, laws fall, without any legislative process. It has only been very recently that it has been understood that the people make law. In the law books of Manu, the ancient Indian code, it says, "A thousand fools cannot declare what righteousness is, what law should be. One wise man can." There was no concept at this time that the majority makes right, although unfortunately that idea is in our own society. But that, of course, is the very basis of a lynch mob, in which everybody except one man is pretty agreeable as to what is going to be done. Here, you can't afford to enforce the laws which are very rigid. An example is a man in a caste situation who was accused of eating meat in a Hindu situation. When he came up before the Punjaid, before the village elders, he said, "I am accused of eating meat, but so does so-and-so, so does so-and-so, so does so-and-so," all of whom were very reputable people in the village. The decision of the Punjaid was to say, well, the man by accusing all these other people of eating meat is obviously very disturbed about this and we can't accept his testimony so we'll have to dismiss the case.

The Buddhist texts, that is the Indian Buddhist texts in the 3rd century B.C., have a text called the Questions of Melinda in which a question is put to the king about a man who is no [PIECE MISSING]
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Re: Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veter

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Part 1 of 2

13. 25TH INFANTRY DIVISION AND PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE

MODERATOR. We feel that particularly after the actions of the last two days in Indochina, and the reaction of Senator McGovern yesterday to information which we brought out on Sunday about a Marine combat regiment operating in Laos in 1969, that we should open today's panel with someone else who has been in Laos, Ron Podlaski.

PODLASKI. My name is Ron Podlaski. I'm from New York. I was a Sergeant in the United States Army Special Forces. I served in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969. My testimony will consist of cross-border operations into Laos, Cambodia, using Thailand as launch bases for Laotian targets, and our involvement in Laos and Cambodia.

MODERATOR. How many times have you been in Laos?

PODLASKI. I couldn't give you an exact figure of how many times I've been to Laos, but I spent one year in Vietnam and that entire year was devoted to running cross-border operations.

MODERATOR. Would you say a half-dozen times or more?

PODLASKI. I'd say at least that many times, not to mention the times that we attempted to get in and were not successful in infiltrating.

MODERATOR. What was the nature of your sort of group?

PODLASKI. We were running long-range reconnaissance patrols. They consisted of two Americans and four indigenous personnel. Our particular team was Chinese Nungs. We were going into Laos, Cambodia, for intelligence reasons.

MODERATOR. Ron, would you explain what a Nung is?

PODLASKI. Well, Chinese Nungs, our particular team, they came from North Vietnam and their families had fled to the South and they were mostly Catholics. They were mercenary soldiers, is what they were. They were higher paid than the ARVN army and whoever gave them the most money, that's who they fought for.

MODERATOR. Was yours the only team going into Laos?

PODLASKI. Negative. I belonged to C & C North, which was located up around Da Nang, and it was their base camp. We had FOBs in Khe Sanh, Phu Bail, Kontum. There was also C & C South, which had two or three FOBs. I'm not exactly sure. I ran missions for them, TDY, into Cambodia.

MODERATOR. An FOB is a Forward Operating Base?

PODLASKI. Right.

MODERATOR. What do you know about hatchet forces?

PODLASKI. Hatchet forces are company-size, consisting of American advisers with a majority of Vietnamese, possibly Montagnards, possibly Chinese Nungs. They would run company-size operations, cross-border.

MODERATOR. Often?

PODLASKI. My last three months in Vietnam were spent in Kontum, it was the old FOB-2 which was changed to C & C Central (Command Control Central), and they were running hatchet force operations into Laos on quite a heavy basis those last three months.

MODERATOR. Would you explain what C & C North, Central, and South is?

PODLASKI. C & C North stands for Command Control North. It consisted of Special Forces. However, we took commands from Saigon and we had nothing to do with actual Special Forces Command in Nha Trang. We answered to Saigon.

MODERATOR. Where were these operations to take place?

PODLASKI. These operations well, you would launch from different launch sites near the border, and you'd be infiltrated into Laos wherever they felt there was heavy troop movement. We would take pictures, tell the strength of the troops, their morale, their physical fitness, if they were young, if they were hard-core North Vietnamese or if they were just grabbing anybody, and this intelligence was supposedly fed to conventional units. They could cut these people off as they crossed the border into South Vietnam. However, I don't know of any incident where we were ever listened to. Whatever intelligence we would give to them never seemed to be followed through.

MODERATOR. Ron, the President and other members of the government have said we have never had ground forces fighting in Laos.

PODLASKI. Well, all I can say about that is that the administration has been lying. They've been lying to the President and together they've been lying to you people.

MODERATOR. Ron will be available for further questions. We'd like to go along with the combat veterans of the 25 Infantry Division, who will introduce themselves.

KEYS. My name is Sonny Keys. I was in the Third Squadron, Fourth Cavalry of the 25th Division. I'll be talking about forced relocation of civilians and a convoy of approximately fifty trucks filled with American dead, which the Stars and Stripes reported as "light" casualties.

CHILES. My name is David Chiles. I'm a student at Kent State and I live in Atwater, Ohio. I'm going to be discussing some operations in the Iron Triangle, the use of American soldiers as guinea pigs to give a squadron colonel a better body count, and an incident I had with some civilians in Saigon. I believe it was June or July we were sent to the Iron Triangle and we took very heavy casualties. We found these ten graves, or what we took to be graves. One day A-Troop called in and used them as body count. The next day, B-Troop called in and used the same graves as body count. So meanwhile, the people that buried these definitely called them in, so you have ten graves that are worth thirty body counts. Vietnam was a very strange war, for the simple reason that the only way your unit was judged was by the number of bodies in relationship to your casualties.

One instance I remember, we joined with the 4/23 Mechanized Infantry (oh, by the way, I was with the 3/4 Cav. in all of 1967). They were dragging two Viet Cong behind their tracks, which isn't really unusual. They came in at night and we had a rendezvous. At this time two GIs went over and cut the ears off and put them across the track to dry. And then I noticed two GIs were fighting over these bodies, so I went over to take a closer look and there was a lieutenant observing this. One of them had a pair of pliers, and to my dismay, they were fighting over the rights to the gold teeth of the Viet Cong they had killed. This was kind of a status for them, to see who got the most gold teeth. As I said, we had taken very heavy casualties. I think the only thing that we found there was about fifty bags of rice. It was from New York City and Houston, Texas, is where this rice had originated from. Around September or October our colonel got this fantastic idea to start running convoys at night, from Cu Chi to Tay Ninh, then from Tay Ninh to Dau Tieng. The sole purpose of this was to be ambushed; this is a mechanized unit at night, when you can hear them miles away. His theory was, our fire power was much more superior than theirs. What he forgot to think about is three Viet Cong with RPG-2s and a well placed mine could kill ten GIs and destroy three or four tracks. Meanwhile, while all this is going on, he's riding around in a helicopter and observing this. Now this went on for two or three months, and I think the division finally told him to get himself together, because we were just getting ripped up.

MODERATOR. I understand you have some slides.

CHILES. Yes, I'm going to show those.

MODERATOR. Could we go through the other two fellows' testimony and then come back to your slides?

ROTTMANN. Just a point of clarification. RPG-2 is a recoilless projectile round, sort of a crude bazooka, that the VC uses, a shoulder-held weapon that will penetrate eight or ten inches or armored plate. One man can fire one projectile.

OSTRENGA. My name's Patrick Ostrenga and I am currently a student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. I was a medic with the 25th Division, Second Battalion, Twelfth Infantry, and attached to "D" Company. My unit operated around Dau Tieng, which is about forty miles north of Saigon. My testimony concerns mistreatment of Vietnamese civilians, mistreatment of prisoners, and murder of Vietnamese civilians.

MODERATOR. Sonny, could you amplify a little on what you were talking about?

KEYS. The relocation of civilians? Okay. We were in an operation in Ho Bo Woods, I believe it was Cedar Falls or Junction City in January of 1967. We came across a village of women, young kids, and old men--no young men. We surrounded the village, then we forced all the civilians out to an open field and we called in a Chinook, a large helicopter. At gunpoint we held these people until the Chinook arrived. Then we forced all of them onto the chopper to be taken to Saigon, I believe, and then we destroyed all of their hootches, we dumped all the rice down in their wells, killed all the fowl and the livestock, and left the place a real scorched earth. Prior to that, in December, we were running convoys day and night for Operation Attleborough up at Tay Ninh. One night we ran approximately fifty trucks back down to Cu Chi. We got there. You could tell that these trucks were heavily laden; they were really weighted down. We got there and my squad leader went over and talked to a lieutenant. He came back and said that the lieutenant had told him that these trucks were weighted down with American bodies. I didn't see inside the trucks, so it is hearsay, but I do know that Stars and Stripes reported about a week later that we had taken light casualties, light casualties and fifty trucks loaded with American dead is more than light casualties.

MODERATOR. Pat, would you amplify a little on your testimony?

OSTRENGA. I was working as a medic in Vietnam and there are quite a few things I can talk about. Well, one of the things I saw was one Vietnamese civilian, a pretty old man, was riding down a road with a bicycle. The lieutenant that was with us took out his M-16 and aimed it at the guy and shot one round and well, killed the guy. We went up to the guy, and he had a South Vietnamese ID card. Common practice in my unit was, if you killed a civilian with an ID card, you take his ID card and tear it up. The lieutenant's comment on this was, "Well, I guess I'm still a pretty good shot." We took some prisoners one time, and one of them was wounded. The guy had a pretty big gash in his arm, some frag from some artillery. I went up to treat him, and as I was putting on the bandage, the guy was pulled away from me and the commanding officer, a captain, told me not to waste anything on the gooks except bullets. And there were also some civilians that were wounded another time from some of our own artillery fire. I tried to treat some of them but I was told not to waste anything on them because they're not worth anything: they're just gooks. It's a very racist war.

MODERATOR. Dave, could you show your slides now and explain them?

CHILES. First, let me explain this slide. The first one's a 45 caliber, the second one's an M-16, the third one's an M-14, which is a NATO round. This is supposedly the largest round to be used as anti-personnel. The large one beside the pack of cigarettes is called a 50 caliber, which is to be used as anti-aircraft.

(Next Slide) This is a Vietnamese that has been hit with a 50 caliber, which is supposed to be used for anti-aircraft, but all our tracks have them, and since the Vietnamese don't have a good Air Force, I could never see the logic behind it.

(Next Slide) This picture was taken by my lieutenant on the way to the Iron Triangle. This isn't my unit; I don't know what unit it is, but it's with the 25th. I just asked them what the reason for burning the village was, and I believe the quote was, "It's a hostile village."

(Next Slide) There's many people back here that for some reason think an armored unit is invincible, and this is one of the reasons for having us run the night convoys to be ambushed. I think the next few slides will show you what a couple of Viet Cong with the RPG and mines can do. This is a track that has been hit by an RPG and burnt up.

(Next Slide) This is an RPG that hit a track. An RPG is a heat round. It looks like a very primitive weapon.

(Next Slide) This is another picture of an armored personnel carrier that has hit a mine and totally destroyed. I believe there was four or five American deaths.

MODERATOR. Thank you.

OSTRENGA. I think something should be mentioned about how in Japan there are many acres covered with totally destroyed APCs that they're just sitting there, waiting to cannibalize. And I've seen this on Okinawa too.

MODERATOR. We're going to take questions from the press at this time for the 25th Infantry Division combat veterans and for Ron Podlaski, who has been in Laos over a half-dozen times, and then we're going into a second part of the panel that of former PIO Information Specialists, many of whom were with the 25th Infantry Division, who will explain what happens to news. Are there any questions from the press to the veterans who have just testified? Are there any questions from the audience?

QUESTION. Mr. Podlaski, when were you in Laos?

PODLASKI. I served in Vietnam from April '68 to April '69. I can't tell you the exact days I was in Laos. It was between '68 and '69. Also it wasn't just Laos, it was Cambodia and Laos; we would go to Thailand and launch from Thailand into Laos with Vietnamese personnel. We would go on these missions, also I forgot to mention, with no American markings, no American dog tags, these are the tags you wear around your neck to identify yourself if you're killed. If we were killed over there we were deserters--not to tie in our government. A lot of teams a lot of times would go out with North Vietnamese uniforms or carrying North Vietnamese weapons: AK-47s. Just so it didn't look as if Americans were involved in this.

QUESTION. What were the various ranks of the American personnel on your missions?

PODLASKI. That's a good question. There were Spec. 4s running teams. There were E-5s running teams. There was one E-7 and he was a very young E-7 and he was killed. He was the last high-ranking NCO that worked on a team. We had one or two lieutenants who went out with teams so they could get an idea of the way operations went. Therefore, they became launch officers. However, any of these officers who had any feelings for the men who went on these missions were relieved of their job.

QUESTION. What kind of information were you trying to get?

PODLASKI. Intelligence on the size, the shape they were in, the type of uniforms they were wearing, did they look well-fed, did they look tired, run down, beat? Were they hard-core veterans, were they young people just from the North, green? What type of weapons they were carrying.

QUESTION. Did you ever engage in combat?

PODLASKI. We were not extracted out of Laos unless we made physical contact, which is, anyone who knows anything about recon--once you're visually compromised your mission is supposedly aborted because you can gain no intelligence if they know you are in the area. When you've only got six men, you can't put up much of a fire fight. However, our policy was, you're in a fire fight or you don't come out.

QUESTION. Did you ever go on any search and destroy missions or do you know of any search and destroy missions into Laos or Cambodia?

PODLASKI. Negative. I didn't go on search and destroy missions. My last three months over there I was changed from recon to hatchet force. And I was scheduled to go out, but, fortunately, I caught malaria and I didn't have to do it.

QUESTION. Did you know about Operation Dewey Canyon? That was a Marine operation, but it was during the time you were there.

PODLASKI. I know about it like the public knows about it but...

QUESTION. You didn't know about Operation Dewey Canyon when you were in Vietnam?

PODLASKI. Negative. The only reason I am aware of it is because I have a cousin who doesn't walk today because of it.

QUESTION. Were there any special instructions about keeping your operations in Cambodia and Laos a secret?

PODLASKI. Yes there were.

QUESTION. Like what?

PODLASKI. We were told any information we gave on these operations--we were forced to sign papers before we left Vietnam--We were told that if we didn't sign these papers we wouldn't leave Vietnam. Telling us that we were subject to a ten thousand dollar fine and ten years in prison if we mentioned these operations. However, I think it's more important that the public knows, because, man, you've been lied to long enough!

MODERATOR. Ron will be available for further questioning. We'd like to move along. I'm sorry, there's another question right there.

QUESTION. Did you, was there a unit with you? I know there's one at C & C Central called the Earth Angels. Code name Earth Angels.

PODLASKI. I was in C & C Central my last three months in Vietnam and I went TDY to C & C Central a few times and I'm not familiar with that at all.

QUESTION. Was there ever a unit within C & C Central or C & C North that was more or less separate from the rest and engaged in, you know, assassination type operations?

PODLASKI. I have heard of these. It was not C & C North that had these type operations. I heard of them and I know they existed but for me to comment on them would be strictly hearsay.

QUESTION. Well, what did you hear?

PODLASKI. Well, that there are Americans working on special operations that are assassination teams.

QUESTION. Within C & C?

PODLASKI. Well, not in C & C North or C & C Central. It was in another area and I really don't like to comment on something that I don't know for sure. Because I wasn't involved in this, I heard about it. I know it exists; but I have no proof.

MODERATOR. We'll have to take this one more question.

QUESTION. Yes, this paper here says that Eugene Keys participated in operations in Cambodia back in December of '66. Can you comment on that?

KEYS. There is a town north of Cu Chi on Route 1 called Go Dau Ha. Now any time we ran a convoy, we would place an APC at a crossroads to make sure that the convoys went north to Cu Chi instead of crossing the bridge. We were told that this river was a border. Now, according to the map, it is not the border. I've talked to other people who have been there since I wrote that down. And they say it's not the border, so obviously they were just giving us a line.

MODERATOR. We'd like to move along to a panel on information specialists and on press censorship. Larry Rottmann.

ROTTMANN. My name is Larry Rottmann. I served as Assistant Information Officer for the 25th Infantry Division, based at Cu Chi, Vietnam from June 5th, 1967 till March 9th, 1968. My duties were to be officer in charge of the division newspaper, Tropic Lightning News, the Lightning Two Five monthly news magazine, and the Lightning Two Five ARVN radio program. I was also in charge of division press releases including photos, officer in charge of visiting newsmen including television network crews, and a frequent briefer of the division staff on all civilian news media and information matters. I'd like to introduce the rest of the members of the information panel: Mike McCusker, who was information specialist with the Marines; Larry Craig, who was information specialist at Brigade level in the 25th Division; Vernon Shibla, who was an information specialist on the Brigade level; Alex Primm, who was an information specialist at the 1st Logistical Command Headquarters. Those men will identify themselves and give you a little background. Mike, do you want to start out?

MCCUSKER. My name is Mike McCusker. I was a Sergeant in the Marine Corps and I served in Vietnam in 1966 and '67 with the 1st Marine Division as what they call an Infantry Combat Correspondent. This meant that I went out with every unit of the Infantry that was stationed, generally in Chu Lai, but I ended up all over the I Corps with almost every Marine infantry unit and also reconnaissance unit because I was also reconnaissance qualified. These things that the men from the 25th told you were covered up. None of these instances were generally reported. Most of the stories that we wrote generally appeared in such publications as Stars and Stripes, a paper we had in I Corps area called Sea Tiger, various other military news services, and the civilian press. They appeared in ways that we did not even write them. Information in them was either deleted or added. Quite often what we had written, what we had seen, what we had covered, just didn't come out in the stories. It was something entirely different. The general policy of being an Informational Services man (that's what the Marine Corps calls its reporters, the Informational Services Office). The only thing we had to do with information, I believe, is to cover it up, disguise it, or deny it. Some of the things that we could not write about, and if we did write about them they were always redlined from our stories, were the amount of American dead. Now they'd always go into light casualties, medium casualties, or heavy casualties. However, heavy casualties were never reported upon because when they got to Da Nang--and if they mention casualties in the Da Nang press center, if a platoon went out and got wiped out, they would measure platoon by battalion strength and that would, of course, be light casualties. And play those little games. Every Vietnamese dead was naturally a Viet Cong dead; even six month old babies, 99 year old men and women. If they are dead, they are Viet Cong, which is a misnomer, at any rate.

We could never really write about the Vietnamese life style, or how the Vietnamese viewed their life in their universe, because it's so contrary to how we viewed Vietnam and the purpose of Vietnam. And the dichotomy would be very apparent in any story. We could not write of taking souvenirs--souvenirs that we witnessed being taken such as ears and teeth. You can't help but notice it because it happens all the time and if you did write of it, it would be redlined and, of course, you'd be on the carpet if your Information Services Office could find you out on the field. You could not write of villages being burned, of crops destroyed. You could not write of defoliation, of the use of tear gas. The use of tear gas on at least three occasions--I witnessed tear gas pumped into caves and people running out and shot down as they run out of those caves. When the story of tear gas being used in 7th Marines in 1965 was exploded, through Colonel _____ _____ the regimental commander at the time said it was only for humane purposes. And I witnessed a few of those humane purposes and I did write it in the story, infuriated, and it was redlined. The use of napalm; you can't even use the term napalm any more. It's called incindergel, like Jello. You could not write of women guerrillas, women prisoners; especially the deaths of women, children, old men and women. You could not write of H & I fire which is harassment and interdiction. This was supposedly to keep the Viet Cong on their toes. What they would do is just throw rounds out in every direction every night. It didn't matter where. There was no set plan, just throw them out. Anything in the way, that's a shame. Also free fire zones; a setup. Free fire zones essentially means anything within that zone is dead. Anything moving is fair game. We could not write of these things. One particular instance of the free fire zone was a village that was supposedly pacified and I had to cover it for the division. This colonel went in with a bunch of newsmen--into this one particular village. The medical team that had preceded him has a chow team and they had set up hot chow. They passed out the Band Aids and the Kool-Aid and they only gave medical supplies enough for two days in any particular village because they figured if they gave these medical supplies to a village lasting longer than two days, the NLF would get to those supplies and use them. So, therefore, though the medical teams might not visit a particular village for a period of a month, maybe, they would only leave supplies for two days.

MCCUSKER.The villagers definitely needed medical help essentially because, as I testified yesterday, they systematically destroyed most of any village dispensary, or hospital, or anything that looked like it. We could not write, at the time I was there, of what was called Puff the Magic Dragon--DC-3s with Miniguns. I forgot how many rounds they can throw out a minute. Around 4,000 I believe it is...6,000? They can cover an entire football field in about a minute and it just destroys, chops down everything in sight. We could not write of those, could not write, especially, of the torture of prisoners. My witnessing of the torture of prisoners was generally on the field level whenever any particular outfit, whether it be squad size, company size, or battalion size, swept into a village on a search and destroy mission and captured prisoners. Which means any Vietnamese hanging around the village, or any Vietnamese flushed out of the bush, if he wasn't shot first. And they had field torture techniques: determining who was going to go into the more refined tortures which involved somewhat the same type. In the field it was the use of dogs after tying a suspect, who was any particular villager, to a tree and let the dog start yapping at his face, snapping at him. Field phones were wired to genitals, to ears, to nose. Threatenings were done with the knife, dunking in wells, dunking in rivers and streams. And we could write of none of these and if you did write of these, they would be redlined. We could not write of recon fire missions. As I said before I was reconnaissance qualified and jump qualified. So I was the only man in recon trusted to go out with them--the only reporter-photographer the recon trusted because I knew their business. And recon was a little bit different than what I'd been trained to do. Generally in Vietnam you would take a few helicopters, land in an area, move out on top of a hill and call in arty strikes or air strikes in a particular given area. One particular time I watched a herd of elephants get hit by arty and several villages. Could never write of this. Could never write of how it was done and what the rationale for it was. Now this redlining of stories was a very complex thing. I was out in the field--way the _____ out in the field and I tried getting so far out that nobody from the division could find me. All they would ever see of me was stories I sent back. Whatever story I wrote would go to an NCO, the staff NCO, generally. I was an NCO at the time; that's a noncommissioned officer.

The story would go to a lifer who was called the Press Chief. The Press Chief would then make his cuts and additions. From the Press Chief it could go to the Section Chief and he would add or delete what he thought, then to the Information Officer himself, in the division, and he would do what he was going to do with it. Then it would be passed up to Da Nang for the Press Center at Da Nang for 3rd MAF, Third Marine Amphibious Forces Press Center in Da Nang. It would go through a whole battery of NCOs and officers up to a colonel before it was released to the press. And by the time it was released to the press, as I've said, it was hardly recognizable. Now I say this because ironically the Marine Corps gave me its top three writing awards for the year '66-'67, which was the first year of its Vietnamese Correspondent Awards. And I was rather bemused at the fact that I got the _____ things. However, when they discovered that I was a Benedict Arnold, discovered it officially, I guess, the next year I understand there was a caucus to try and take my awards away from me because I didn't deserve them. What we would do sometimes to counter all this thing that came down was to find a few trusted Fourth Estaters, civilian pressmen, or television crews, take them to places where we were not supposed to take them, or try to tip off, as I said, trusted civilian reporters. Because that was rather hot. Had a lot of rednecks in there and if you gave them some info, they would report it to your CO and you were on the carpet. Television crews the same way. Policy in the Marine Corps was that anything that happened to the Marines--if there was any blunder or any slaughter because of shortsightedness or any mistake that cost Marine Corps lives, any military blunder--it was to be hidden, not to be shown and if information did leak out, then it would be claimed as a great victory. In the meantime such things as My Lai would never be reported. If a village were destroyed, the body count could stand as is, but suddenly you would find that there was a great big action around it. You know, one _____ of a fire fight. Really, from my end, that's essentially all I have to report for censorship.

MODERATOR. Next will be Larry Craig who was with the 25th Infantry Division's 1st Brigade, as a Brigade level Information Specialist. Now in the Army the information specialists begin at battalion level. There's supposed to be a brigade information specialist--that's an enlisted man who collects the news; an information officer for each brigade.

In reality, in Vietnam, anyway, the information officer was usually the commanding officer of the unit and the next stage up from battalion was brigade and this is where Larry worked. Larry, do you want to tell us a little bit about your experiences?

CRAIG. Yes. I was in Cu Chi, Vietnam during 1966 and 1967 and as Larry says, I've worked as a Public Information Office Specialist. And, generally, I think what I have to talk about is what I perceived my job to be there and what it actually turned out to be. It was an overall cover-up of what was actually going on in the division operation.

During the time that I was there with the 25th Division every news release that came out of our information office-- this was at Brigade level and at Headquarters level with the division--made it appear that we were really winning the war; that we were doing a fantastic job.

So while people like Dave with the 3/4 Cavalry were out getting their tracks blown up by one or two Viet Cong, we would write stories about these glorious victories which didn't take place. And generally, what I saw were how the figures were turned around on body counts. One particular time I was with the 3/4 Cavalry where three of our men got killed.

Our men killed one young Vietnamese who was actually a prisoner at the time that he was killed, laying in the grass in front of us. We counted graves in an old cemetery that day so the story that came out of our office was 17 Viet Cong killed. What actually had happened was two or three Vietnamese had killed three of our men and if there had been a large force there, they left. But it was just contact with two or three.

But, overall, this is what my job was: to go out on these missions where nothing happened except that we might kill a few civilians, if we found them, and pretend that we were really winning some battles when, actually, it was Americans being killed.

MODERATOR. Larry, you mentioned you had trouble sort of perceiving what your job was at first. Did you ever write what you consider to be a truly objective news story? In other words, one based on the facts?

CRAIG. To me there was never any question about anyone wanting me to write what I saw in the field. The job of our newspaper was to build morale in the field and as a public information office our job was to propagandize the American people.

And this is what we would do. We would write propaganda, and at times I would go to the field and write a story that was personally related to what we saw taking place, but what was actually happening was that our people were being killed as they alienated the Vietnamese people in the villages that we went through on search and destroy missions. That was never what we would write about.

One particular mission near Dau Tieng we lost, I think, about five men that day, but we happened to find some rice. Well, this was a big cache, fine. So we made it into a real victory. We didn't see the Vietnamese Communists who shot at us. They left. They killed several of our men and left. We found some rice.

Well, the story that I wrote, which is the kind of job that I had, was that we had a very successful mission. I didn't mention that the rice was marked. I think it was from Houston, Texas. This wasn't allowed. Any of the rice caches that we found was generally rice that had been diverted from Saigon to the Viet Cong. This is generally the kind of work that I did.

MODERATOR. You mentioned that there was never any question in your mind that that was policy. How did you come to the realization that that was the kind of thing you were supposed to do, the slanted story? I mean, did somebody say, "Larry, I hereby order you not to write a..."

CRAIG. Generally, it was more subtle than that. But one time in particular an order came down from division headquarters and I was at the Division Public Information Office when (I believe it was the information officer) a Major _____ told us that we had to write stories about cooperation between American infantrymen and the ARVN, the South Vietnamese infantrymen. Well, this was nonexistent.

The ARVN in our area weren't respected; there was no good feelings between the American infantrymen and the South Vietnamese and yet this was an order that came down--that we were to make them look good in the way of cooperation.

One thing that I did see, I was walking with an American unit along a river. A South Vietnamese unit was operating on the other side of the river. One of their armored personnel carriers hit a mine. Probably two fellows at least got killed. Our side cheered. This was nice. We were happy for ARVNs having their track blown up. But the order that came down was that we were to write about how well we got along and how well the ARVNs were doing and how we cooperated with them.

MODERATOR. That order came from the division information officer, field grade officers, is that right?

CRAIG. He was a major, yes.

MODERATOR. Okay, then, the next person is Vernon Shibla who was with the 25th Infantry Division and worked in the division information office underneath the aforementioned major. Vern.

SHIBLA. I was in Vietnam with the 25th from April '66 to April '67. And I mainly was a photographer for the division and I wrote a few stories, fabrications, or whatever you want to call them. Larry and I worked together in fact, thinking things up to make us look good. There's various things that we couldn't photograph such as flamethrowers burning villages, which we saw.

We couldn't photograph flechette rounds or canisters, which are tiny darts fired out of howitzers at point blank range when you come under attack by Vietnamese. In fact, there was a battle that was written up in Time magazine but we won it: even Time magazine said we won it, so we must have--in which 900 Vietnamese were killed by the flechette rounds which is totally against the Geneva Convention. But then, it doesn't matter, I guess.

Another thing we couldn't photograph or write about was shotguns which are carried extensively in Vietnam because they seem to do a better job than the M-16. They don't jam as easy. We couldn't photograph Americans wounded. We couldn't photograph dead. We couldn't photograph civilians injured or dead.

On Operation Wahiwa during 1966, I think it was the end of May, we were in a place called the Ho Bo Woods, and we came under fire when we landed and that was suppressed. We were walking along and having recon by fire which means the first unit in the company fires indiscriminately in the tree lines and hedgerows.

Well, we heard crying coming from a little house that had been partially destroyed by a previous aerial bombing mission from the Air Force, and we snuck up on the house very carefully and there was a mother and a baby sitting inside. The mother was crying and the baby was sitting there with his intestines hanging out. One of our bullets had creased its stomach. And it wasn't crying or anything and the sergeant asked the interpreter, you know, to tell her that, well, it's her fault. She shouldn't be there because we dropped leaflets and told her to get out. It was only her country, you know. So, they did evacuate her, as far as I know, to a medical battalion. We couldn't photograph or write about that kind of thing.

There were battles, like the battle at Phu Hoa Dong where the 4/9 was just about annihilated which was never played up very big. There was a battle in Tay Ninh Province, Operation Attleborough in which a general was relieved of duty on the spot by General Westmoreland. The General was named General _____ and we called him General Death for Sure. And he was relieved of duty for having his company almost wiped out. It was wiped out down to a Spec. 4 level and a Spec. 4 was given a silver star and...that kind of thing. But the general was relieved and nobody knew about it because he did such a bad job.

I've had photographs come back from MACOI which is Military Office of Information in Vietnam, censored, marked "not cleared for release" and what I got back was a photograph of two MPs carrying a Vietnamese prisoner and he had a sandbag over his head and he was not being harmed in any way. There was no harassment. He was in good physical shape. I don't know how he made it, but he sure did. And the note came back across the picture and it says, "Sorry, Vern, we don't treat VCs this way."

So I guess they meant they treated them too good; I never understood it. But we couldn't release the picture. And I had a story killed that I wrote that was told about a Captain _____, who was killed by a mine while leading his company. There was nothing wrong with the story but we couldn't...nobody was killed over there, as far as Americans go. So we couldn't talk about him.

CRAIG. Larry, can I interject a comment about...

MODERATOR. Go right in.

CRAIG. Okay. One of the things that really disturbed me as an information specialist in the army was I realized what my job was and I knew that if I wanted to keep this job that was the only way I could do it--write the kind of stories that the army wanted. I worked for a major and I'd write his kind of propaganda. It was the only way to do it. But I, at that time, was under the impression that America had some sort of a free press and occasionally would attempt to talk to some of the representatives of the press from the States.

One time in particular, I was especially disturbed. This was on April 10, 1967. Three men from our office were killed during an attack. It was an incoming mortar round on the division headquarters. So three of our friends were killed. Vern was in the bunker with the three fellows who were killed when the round came in and it went right into the bunker. His first comment on coming out of the bunker...he was the first one out...was "that _____ Johnson" that's what he had to say. This was the feeling in our office at that time. April 10, 1967. Three of our friends were killed. We were disgusted with Johnson, with the U.S. policy there. This was the office feeling, and this was, to me, a story.

Well, the next day I had the job of bringing news releases from division headquarters into Saigon and distributing them. I went to CBS and told them what had happened and how we wanted to tell about what we felt that day. And how we were so disgusted with the war. These were GIs on duty in a war zone who wanted to tell how they felt. We were disgusted. We wanted to protest. We couldn't through the military. We tried through CBS. Mike Wallace from CBS came out with me on a helicopter. All he wanted to do was a sensational story about no top on the bunker.

Vern and I and others were ready to tell him what we felt about the war and who we were disgusted with. Why we were unhappy with our friends being killed. No hard feelings towards the Communists from that group. It was their mortar that did it, but, as far as we were concerned, the fault was with the U.S. But the press at that time was not interested. That wasn't their kind of story.

So what CBS wanted was a little sensationalism about no top on the bunker and we were pleading with them to tell the story about how we actually felt, protesting the war. But it wasn't wanted.

SHIBLA. Most, most of the press over there, is over there for the same reasons that the generals and lifers are over there. It's not to report the news so much as to further their own careers. And that's what it's all about.

CRAIG. Another story I wrote was regarding an outfit that Dave was with. It was called McCormick's Raiders. This was with the 3/4 Cavalry and a group got together--typists and clerks from the headquarters of the company, the 3/4 Cavalry--who wanted to go out on some combat. Well, they didn't do anything. Maybe Dave should mention a little bit about what they did. But this is something that the media picked up. It was a funny story. McCormick's Raiders and it meant nothing. Well...a TV crew came out and did a big thing on it. Reader's Digest picked it up. They wrote about this group. It was nothing. It had nothing to do with the war. This is what the press in Saigon was looking for.

MODERATOR. Dave, would you just give us a little bit of a rundown on McCormick's Fearsome Raiders?

CHILES. Yeah. This is more like McHale's Army, I guess. These were a ...this was the most...this was the sorriest group I ever saw of people. Well, there were about 20 of them, ranging from cooks, clerks, mechanics and they decided they were going to start going out on operations. And they wouldn't let them go out more than about 100 yards from base camp; they didn't want anything really to happen to them because they couldn't take care of themselves.

So all of a sudden they took up on the story and built it up. How they had been stopping supply routes at night and everything. And the guy from Reader's Digest comes out and does a fabulous story about these great Americans who have such a secure job.

And a film company comes out and wants to do a little film of it. So, at the most we took them a hundred meters from base camp 'cause these people didn't want to go too far anyhow and they were throwing hand grenades and it sounded like a real war was going out there and this guy was, you know, taking all kinds of pictures and was crouched down and talking real soft, like, you know, like it was really a big thing. In reality, if they wanted to go, they should have gone in the Iron Triangle with us instead of 100 yards from base camp, if they wanted to see the war.

CRAIG. We'd write about the funny things and pretend it was a big party over there. This was our job: keep up morale. And yet, this is what the civilian press from Saigon would pick up on. This was the kind of stuff they liked. Just the happy times.

SHIBLA. Well, the civilian press never got out of Saigon, let alone anyplace else.

MCCUSKER. They got to Da Nang.

SHIBLA. Yeah, that's another nice place.

KEYS. I'd like to put in right here that this operation, Operation Attleborough, or General _____ was relieved, is the one where we escorted the trucks back that the lieutenant said were filled with American dead.

MODERATOR. Alex Primm is the next man on the panel here. He was an information specialist with the Headquarters of the 1st Logistical Command at, I believe, at Long Binh, is that right?

PRIMM. That's right, Larry.
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MODERATOR. Why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit about your experience as an Information Specialist in the Information Headquarters?

PRIMM. I was assigned to the headquarters of the 1st Logistical Command which handles the supplies throughout Vietnam. I was there from September 1968 to June 1969. The setup in 1st Logs is pretty much the same as the 25th Division. We had information specialists and an information officer. It was a little different in the sense that we had four support commands located throughout Vietnam and one headquarters at Long Binh.

The way it worked, we received stories that came from the smaller, the support command information officers, and then with these stories we'd rewrite them and then mail them directly, after being cleared, to stateside newspapers--the ones you read here--and the military newspapers, the Stars & Stripes, as well as the unit newspapers in Vietnam. I was the editor of our newspaper. I also did rewriting and I was also a correspondent in the field.

There's one incident that will give the idea of the way the army, or at least the way our unit, handles the news. One time we received a story from our Qui Nhon branch, which is a town about in the middle of Vietnam. This was a story about an army repair team that worked on portable pipelines for oil. The tankers would dock along the coast and then the oil would be piped off the ships and about five miles inland are helicopter bases.

The real problem with these portable pipelines, they could be taken apart easily and they were often sabotaged. First Log had a pipeline repair team whose job it was to find out, when a break occurred, what had caused the break and what they could do about it. They would go out and they didn't know if it was just a Vietnamese mama-san who had taken apart the pipes to get a little oil, or if it was a Viet Cong sabotage team. It could be either. And these guys ran into a lot of bad stuff.

Unlike most units of 1st Log, this unit had quite a few guys killed and wounded. They'd also won a number of decorations which was unusual for a logistics unit. So, it was a good unit to do a story about. And the story came to us about this team, what their job was as I have described it to you and the number of decorations it won. I was told to shorten the story down. I shortened it and played up the fact that these guys had won a number of decorations which is unusual for our unit. I turned it in to our information officer. He gave it back to me and said, "Delete the fact that these guys won awards for heroism. Delete the fact that there have been men killed and delete the fact that there had been wounded."

So the story that I had to turn out was what a great job these guys had done and it made them sound like a bunch of John Wayne heroes, when in actuality, they were having a very tough time. This is the way the information office sometimes works.

MODERATOR. While you were with the 1st Log Command, how did you get the information? I mean, how was it conveyed to you that your job was not to tell, you know, to do straight reporting? How did you come by that?

PRIMM. Well, the reporter doesn't work like a reporter does in the United States for a civilian newspaper. He's given assignments. He doesn't go out and look for them himself. He doesn't have a beat. He's told by an officer what to cover. That's the main way we're told what to do. The information, the stories we write about, aren't news as such. We had to write, sometimes I thought, very trivial stories.

One time I was assigned to do a story on state flags, and find out how guys were displaying their state flags. I went to some units--some of these truck convoys where guys were getting up at four in the morning, driving oil tankers out to the 25th Infantry Division, coming back at eleven at night after having been ambushed often--and asked these guys if they had any state flags. They thought it was just absurd.

Here they were, constantly being shot at, and this stuff wasn't getting in the newspapers. We had to write things for troop morale. It was very rarely did we write anything...well we actually never wrote things that were news and I'm afraid often this information was typed up and given in press releases to the civilian press. And not too often did they come digging for the real stories.

MODERATOR. Well, we've heard a lot about the information officer with the red pencil and that was me. Before I begin my rap here I want to make just a couple of points. One is that just a little while ago during part of the press censorship testimony a film crew from the local television station, which was sitting in the front row, got up and left without...What? It was CBS Network TV. They didn't shoot any pictures of press censorship, which is a form of censorship, I guess.

SHIBLA. Mike Wallace works for CBS.

ROTTMANN. Many times since I've been back, I've been working with veterans groups--speaking. Many times I've been asked, when I talked to groups, "Please hold down the obscenities." And on Sunday night one of the psychiatrists on the panel here expressed some concern about the legitimacy of the hearings because his wife had complained to him about somebody saying _____. You know, I can't relate to that at all.

When you talk about an experience, you relate that experience in the terms of the language of that experience. If you're talking about the street, you use street language. If you're talking about war, you use war language. There is a war language. It's a very deliberately contrived language which allows you to express yourself using a minimum of the English language.

There's a lot of talk nowadays, you know, about war. War is on everybody's lips. The word war. Parents, grandparents, anywhere you go. At a cocktail party. Anywhere you go, it's war this, it's war that. Even the little kids, you know, are hip to the war. They know something's going on and they talk about war. So war is used a lot. And nobody seems to mind. This is what I want to say. If there's anybody in this room who thinks that the word _____ is more obscene than the word "war," you know, then you're more obscene than the word _____.

As I said, I was the red pencil. These other guys are out in the field getting shot at, getting the news, taking pictures. When it came to me, I took out my red pencil and I went to work.

Now as an information officer, I was given a set of orders. These orders were stated either verbally or in writing from officials of the Information Offices in Saigon.

There are three: MACOI (Military Advisory Command Office of Information), MACV (Military Advisory Command, Vietnam) and JUSPAO, which is the Joint United States Public Affairs Office which is attached to the U.S. Embassy. Military censorship concerning matters of military nature usually came from MACOI, MACV or my division chief of staff. Matters concerning foreign policy or overall military planning and activity or Special Forces or CIA activities, fell under the jurisdiction of JUSPAO or the Embassy.

The following is just a partial list of things that I was to red pencil, and I did. You'll recognize some of these from the previous testimony.


• Effectiveness, ineffectiveness or mistakes of the ARVN army Handling, processing, interrogation or treatment of prisoners of war
• Use of shotguns
• Use of flamethrowers or flamethrowers tracks
• Use of lethal, nonlethal gas or gas dispensing methods or gas masks
• Female VC
• Very young VC
• Huey Cobra helicopters
• Information on the size, accuracy and range or effects of the enemy 122mm rocket
• M-16 rifle malfunctions or deficiencies
• Extent of damage and number of U.S. casualties from any enemy attack
• Any story concerning enemy tenacity, courage, or ingenuity
• Marriage of U.S. personnel and Vietnamese nationals
• U.S. soldiers' use of pot or drugs
• Conditions of U.S. military stockades
• Anything about the CIA or CIA sponsored activities
• Project Phoenix
• Air America (CIA airline)
• Anything about U.S. activities in Cambodia or Laos
• B-52 or other bombing errors
• Burning, bulldozing, destruction of Vietnamese hamlets
• Anything about troop morale, pro or con
• Information about captured enemy material of U.S. manufacture
• The NLF
• Napalm
• Enemy armor or helicopters<
• Plus anything else that Saigon felt might be detrimental to U.S. causes

Now, I'll run through the list very lightly and just give you some specific examples. Handling, processing and interrogation of prisoners of war: although there was a POW compound in Cu Chi, standard division policy was to deny its existence, to refuse to take anybody--newsmen or civilians-- to the area where it was located and we, ourselves, were denied access to that compound.

In Vernon's testimony just a few minutes ago, he mentioned the photograph taken by the 25th Infantry Division (taken by himself, for the 25th Infantry Division) of two MPs carrying a Vietnamese suspect (captive, we don't know) who'd been bound and had a sandbag tied over his head. He said it came back stamped "not cleared for release, per MACOI." Here is a Xeroxed copy of that photograph. I'm sorry if you in the back can't see it. It's just a photograph. It shows the two MPs carrying the man. Right across the front is stamped "not cleared for release, per MACOI." Stories about female VC were sometimes cleared and sometimes not.

If the story emphasized the bravery or determination of women guerrillas, it was, of course, killed. If, on the other hand, it made a point of how VC were hurting so bad from U.S. presence that they were forced to recruit women (who supposedly were not as good fighters), the story would pass.

This policy was never well defined, but as a general rule, VC women stories were not to be used. I submitted a story about a woman VC. I'll read you just a bit of the story. It's about an ambushed U.S. unit. "Sweeping the ambush site, the GIs found that two of the dead guerrillas were packing automatic weapons but their real surprise was the enemy point man, who was actually a point girl. She was leading the VC when the ambush was sprung and died with a 45 caliber pistol in her hand. This clash was but one of several in recent weeks which involved female VC. In one case, a U.S. patrol was attacked by a guerrilla unit led by a submachine gun toting girl who one U.S. soldier described as 'very attractive, but a bad shot.'" Across the bottom of this press release it says, "not cleared for release, MACOI." This is a Xeroxed copy of it. Attached to that is a censor sheet from the U.S. Infantry Information Office, United States Army of Vietnam, signed by _____ _____, Chief of the Clearance Branch, PID, and it says "Remarks: Not cleared for release per MACOI."

On occasions, in isolated cases, stories of U.S. killing women has been cleared. But any such story draws a bad light on our forces. A girl killed in an ambush at night doesn't help our image. Agreed she may be dangerous, but the press always doesn't see it that way. Here's a copy of that right here. I'll be glad to show this to anybody after the testimony. Very young VC: general policy here was the same as with VC women. That is, stories emphasizing the courage of young VC were not to be released.

Or stories indicating that U.S. pressure was forcing the enemy in such dire straits as to recruit young VC. This, on occasion, would be cleared. As I said, though, the policy was ambivalent and was never consistent. Here is a picture of a VC who was known to have killed at least five U.S. soldiers. He's 11 years old. Story and photo not cleared for release. Photo was taken by an information specialist. The boy was captured (I'll answer questions later). These are Xeroxes. I'm sorry, for obvious reasons, I don't carry the originals with me.

Information on the size, accuracy or range of the effects of enemy 122mm rockets: During the offensive (Tet offensive) in 1968, the VC began using Chinese built 122mm rockets to bombard U.S. bases in position.

GIs were intimidated by the rocket's long range and terrific power. In February 1968 I submitted a story and a photo of the first intact rocket to be captured by the 25th Division, which is also, as far as we knew, the first rocket ever found in Vietnam. MACV killed the story, and instead, sent a team out to take the rocket back to Saigon "for examination" and here's the photo that accompanied the story. It shows a GI standing with the rocket beside him, and I'm sorry if you can't see it, but the rocket is about a foot taller than he is and bigger around than his neck. M-16 malfunctions and deficiencies: In 1967 rumors of numerous M-16 malfunctions were getting back to the Congress. U.S. Representative Richard Eichord, my representative, launched an investigation of the army's much ballyhooed rifle, even sending a team of experts to Vietnam to question GIs. MACV told all information officers, prior to my arrival, that the M-16 was not a topic of discussion. Newsmen were not to question soldiers about the weapon and no stories about the rifle jamming or malfunctioning were to be written. This was done despite the fact that many GIs hated the M-16, felt they couldn't trust it, and until an order stopped the procedure, many carried other weapons instead. Carbines, .45s, grease guns, etc. At the same time, the army launched an all-out propaganda campaign to make GIs in Vietnam more confident in the M-16. Special classes were held on the weapon. New cleaning procedures were instituted. New lubricating materials were introduced (due in large part to GI pressure) from the use of a commercial lubricant called Dri Slide here in the States. And a whole campaign was initiated to instill the American soldier with confidence in a weapon that he basically mistrusted.

Marriage of U.S. personnel and Vietnamese: It was specific MACV and MACOI and JUSPAO policy that nothing ever be said about American and Vietnamese marriages. I never saw any official written statement on this policy, but it was general knowledge that mixed marriages would be discouraged in every way possible, including the withholding of the information for making the necessary arrangements. GIs would frequently ask us in the information office what the procedures were, since we were information officers. It took me two months to get a clear statement of the procedure from MACV for publication. I have a copy of that here. I won't read it. I'll only read the headline. It said, "Minimum of three months required to marry alien."

In Vietnam, this was the story written. There's an interesting point here. The process takes at least three months. If a GI applied to his CO, and filled out the necessary paperwork, the CO, more likely than not, would hold the application until the GI had less than three months to go and would then forward it to the necessary headquarters. This put the GI, who was really in love with the Vietnamese girl, in a sort of a situation. He could either give up the marriage or he could extend for six months. Spend six more months killing Vietnamese, in order to marry a Vietnamese girl. I think you'll agree that's a truly untenable position.

Anything about CIA, CIA sponsored activities or Air America: Although the headquarters for a large 5th Special Forces Group was located in our area of operation at Tay Ninh and Nui Ba Den (which Ron, on the end of table, talked about) Nui Ba Den being one of the staging points for the mercenaries' snatch teams and hatchet teams, our Information Division Office was forbidden by JUSPAO directive from publicizing or discussing any Special Forces operations or policies. I was ordered that my response to all inquiries-- information of this nature--was "no comment."

Anything about U.S. activities in Cambodia or Laos: Just one instance. The second week of January 1968, elements of the 25th Infantry Division's 1st Brigade (this is January 1968, during Operation Yellow Stone) crossed the Cambodian border and conducted an air assault on objective area near the Cambodian village of Ke Pang Long. This is about six klicks or kilometers inside the Cambodian border. Fourth Battalion, 9th Infantry conducted a helicopter assault on this area and along adjacent Cambodian Highway 22. Rumors of this operation did get to Saigon. Newsmen flew out to our office and by order of my division chief of staff, I didn't know "nothin' about nothin'."

Special Forces groups were operating, as I said, out of Tay Ninh and Nui Ba Den as Ron mentioned, conducting extensive operations, the training and arming of Chinese nationals or Nungs and Cambodian mercenaries inside Cambodia. Regular U.S. Army troops would frequently encounter groups of these mercenaries crossing back and forth over the Cambodian border. They had special IDs which identified them and told anybody who came in contact with them they were not to be bothered. By order of JUSPAO, that's Joint United States Public Affairs Office which is attached to the Embassy staff in Saigon, the very existence of these clandestine groups was denied.

I have here, it's very hard to see, and again I apologize, a photo of a Cambodian mercenary force on a training mission inside Cambodia. According to official MACV and MACOI policy, there is no NLF.

Anything about enemy armor or helicopters: By MACV, MACOI and JUSPAO directive, the enemy armored cars, armored personnel carriers and tanks which were frequently sighted along the Cambodian border in War Zone C, did not exist. The same thing went for enemy helicopters which were based in Cambodia. Rumor had it that they were used as command and control ships by COSVN, Central Office of South Vietnam, and they often carried North Vietnamese and Red Chinese advisers. For this reason, U.S. forces were under orders not to fire on these helicopters when they were sighted. This is an interesting ambiguity, in other words--although they didn't exist--if you saw one, don't shoot at it. Twenty-fifth Infantry Division helicopter crews relished the idea, of course, of bringing down a VC chopper and at least on one occasion they chased one into Cambodia, flying above it and throwing ammo cases and tools at it, trying to bring it down without firing on it.

Anything else that the Army felt might be detrimental to the best interests of the Army: I'll just give you a few small examples. One is a water hole sharing story. Shortly after my arrival in Vietnam I did a story about Nui Ba Den or Black Virgin Mountain, in which I mentioned that U.S. and VC forces shared a common water source, the only spring on the mountain.

Anticipating no problem of release, I used the story before complete clearance procedures had been gone through. The story appeared in the Division newspaper and in our magazine and in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, to whom I sent a copy. I was severely reprimanded from the Division Chief of Staff and MACV officials for letting it be known that the U.S. might in any way cooperate with the VC, like sharing a water hole. I have a lot more but we are running out of time. I just want to do one more thing. Harassment, intimidation and prosecution of GIs who tried to tell their stories: It involves myself and all the members of the panel. As both Information Specialists and soldiers we received frequent threats, written and verbal, in response to attempts to tell the truth.

I have something here I want to show you--a USARV information directive entitled the Colonel's Colonels, datelined Information Office Headquarters, U.S. Army, Republic of Vietnam, December 1967. It says, and I quote, "There are a few military information officers who are out here who are not playing on the team. On occasion these guys have downgraded one or another of the programs of the U.S. which the U.S. is trying so hard to make work in Vietnam.

And these information officers have done their sounding off to the press. Even though we are not thinking disloyal thoughts, out of our mouths tumble disloyal words. To argue your case in the press is not to show the courage of your convictions. It's a betrayal of a trust; it's disloyal to your country." Right here, folks. To ferret out these disloyal information officers, myself included, MACOI sent out Army spies armed with fake press cards to act as reporters.

These guys would show up at our division and say, "Hi, I'm Joe Jones with the New York Times. What do you know that you can't tell me?" This procedure was followed many times, but it got to the point where we knew, generally we thought we knew, who were reporters and who were not. Also MACV and USARV Command Information channels directed a constant barrage of intimidating and threatening instructions at the regular GI in the field about what he could and could not say about the war. Directives made it plain that the Army could and would take all possible action against the GIs who told their own story, even after they were out.

From the Tropic Lighting News, 25th Infantry Division, we have a story from MACV called, "Writing for Stateside Use? Get Your Story Cleared First." It goes on at some length about how you may be asked to write for a civilian newspaper or speak before groups and it says, "basically the thing to remember is all material on military subjects, articles, stories, newspaper columns, essays, drawings and photographs must be cleared by Army authorities before you show it to anyone for publication. The rule has been made because many Army interests involve military security or matters of national interest, and of course no soldier wants to help the enemy. Battlefield photographs are particularly sensitive because the enemy can convert them to use in propaganda. Why, this has actually happened! Incidentally, this same rule applies to speeches you may have prepared for delivery after you are released. When you write or speak, concern yourself with matters about which you have only personal knowledge or for which you are responsible. It's just common sense to avoid getting into any matters involving our country's foreign policy." It's a directive from MACV. You can come up and read it yourself.

MCCUSKER. Can I make a comment, Larry, on...

ROTTMANN. Yeah. Stick it right in there.

MCCUSKER. There's a young Marine, I forgot his name (he wasn't even involved with informational services) but he got fed up one day, so he wrote a story and sent it to his hometown paper. The paper published it. And CID came down on this kid hard and he was held incommunicado for about three weeks around the base area then shipped off to Da Nang for court- martial. I don't know what happened to him. No one seems to have seen or heard of him. It's the same with the young Army newscaster in Saigon, _____ _____, who last year, in January, said that the Army was suppressing news.

They immediately made him a chaplain's assistant and busted him and nobody can find him any more. I'd also like to relate to marriage to Vietnamese. I was engaged to a Vietnamese girl. She was finally killed which made everyone rather happy, I would imagine. The chaplain...ah, you go into so much harassment once you do this, once you try to take out these papers.

You meet cold stares, people shuffle you back and forth, it takes you almost a month before they start to make these papers. Now Larry said it was three months, the Marine Corps told me that it'd be at least six months and I had about four months to do in the Nam--I had about five months, I guess. Chaplains would come and tell me that God did not want me to marry inferiors. Expressed a little differently of course, but that's how it came out.

Officers, staff NCOs, I was visited by them regularly, and essentially it came down to the fact that the military didn't want to pollute the white American bloodstream with any more Asian blood than it is already polluted. Again the remarks were a little bit more sophisticated than that, but that is essentially how it came out.

ROTTMANN. I heard a lot of groans when you heard what the chaplain had told him. At the 173rd Assault Helicopter Company, 25th Infantry Division, Cu Chi, there is a chaplain who prays for the souls of the enemy on Sunday morning and earns flight pay as a door gunner on a helicopter during the rest of the week. This kind of threat that I was talking about, which I mentioned, speeches and everything, this extends also to your mail, to your letters.

While I was in Vietnam, I sent what I called a holiday message from 1st Lieutenant Larry Rottmann. On it there's a small picture of a black medic, a white medic, and a Vietnamese treating a wounded Vietnamese. And there's a little small thing beside it which is a quote from honorably discharged General William Tecumseh Sherman saying, "I am sick and tired of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have never fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation, and destruction. War is cruel and you cannot refine it. War is hell." That quote was taken from the Army Digest, a Department of Defense publication.

For sending that card, I was court-martialed. I'll read you the charges. "This is to inform you that action is being taken by this headquarters to determine your fitness for retention as a reserve officer in the United States Army. Your record indicates that in December '67 you printed and distributed at government expense (the 'at government expense' was--I wrote 'free' on my envelope, which we are allowed to do, so I didn't put a stamp on it. That's the government expense: they paid the postage for the card and they're upset.) a Christmas card depicting a seriously wounded soldier receiving plasma, etc., etc."

This court-martial was finally held last fall at Boston Army Base. I was represented by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) resulting in the dropping of all charges and specifications. This is just to point out to you that they will do that. They pursued me for sending that Christmas card taken from the Army Digest; they pursued me, and spent, I guess, a million dollars, for three years across the country until they finally actually held the court-martial and it was thrown out. That's just to show that they do mean business.

Many people ask us, right, why we haven't spoken up before and I think we have given you the reason. We are ordered not to speak up and if you do speak up, action will be taken against you--sometimes very serious and very harsh action. There is another question in many people's minds here. They say, "Well, why do you talk now? Why do you come here and tell us these things that happened two, three, maybe four, five years ago? What is your motivation behind it? You want to get on the boob tube? You're on some kind of an ego trip? You know, why are you here?"

I'm here, speaking personally, because I can not be here. I'm here because, like, I have nightmares about things that happened to me and my friends. I'm here because my conscience will not let me forget what I want to forget. I didn't want to talk about it when I first got back, you know, I didn't want to talk about it at all. I didn't watch Cronkite.

I went fishing a lot and changed socks two or three times a day and slept on beds and ate cheeseburgers. But after a while, it gets to the point where you have to talk to somebody and when I tried to talk to somebody, even my parents, they didn't want to hear it. They didn't want to know. And that made me realize that no matter how painful it was for me I had to tell them. I mean, they had to know. The fact that they didn't want to know told me they had to know.

So I'm here, not a member of any political group, not as a member of any lobbying group. I'm just here as myself, you know, saying to other people, to other human beings, something that I just have to say. And if you think it's just clearing my conscience, some kind of therapy, you can think what you want. But I got to say it. I'm going to ring off.

I have one little thing I want to read: it's sort of a poem; it's not because I'm a real great poet that I want to read it. But I spent some time getting the fewest possible words to say what I wanted to say:

I was that tiny premature baby born Christmas,
1942 at St. Mary's Hospital. Remember how
you all said I'd never make it? Then there
was the time when I read from the
Bible
When the minister got sick, just before his
sermon.
Remember how you all said, "Hey, you ought to
consider the ministry!"
How about the last second basket I made
That beat Perryville and took us to the State
Tournament?
Remember how you all cheered and said I'd make
the pros someday?
And when I was chosen the best actor in the
college public speaking contest Remember how
proud you were?
You slapped my back and shook my hand.
Then came Basic Training and Advanced Infantry
Training and the Infantry Officers Candidate
School.
Remember how impressed you all were that I
became an Officer?
And then Vietnam, where I did my job.
I got a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, and an
Honorable Discharge. Remember how proud you
were when I came home? But now, I ask why I
had to shoot those little
people?
When I question the policies and the decisions
and the people that made me a killer When I
ask you why you never asked why
You treat me like a stranger.
Hey! Remember me?


MCCUSKER. I'd like to make an addition to that. Like, I didn't know Larry in Vietnam, but I met him in Chicago and we both got gassed together. A lot of us have been doing this for years. Larry has in his hands something I wrote in '67 just after I got out of the service. I was thrown out of Japan for things I was doing within it. We've been saying it for a long, long time, but only now, only in the last few months, have people started to listen. So it's not the matter of waiting so long to say it. It's a matter of people waiting a _____ of a long time to listen.

QUESTION. Mr. Rottmann, do you have any testimony about the body counts, official MACV policy?

ROTTMANN. Yeah, I do. One of the things that I did as an Information Officer was at the end of each day I turned in a thing called a Sit-Rep--a Situation Report. In this report I gave a sort of a rundown of the total division activities of the day, including the number of VC body count. Now, during my tour, there was a standing policy in MACV that VC losses for any given week for the entire campaign in Vietnam were not to fall below 2,000.

Now, it sometimes was kind of hard because if you reported negative contact for a day, in other words, you never saw an enemy and an enemy never saw you, it's kinda hard to come up with your daily allotment of bodies. I have been called back and ordered to dig up bodies and I have asked units to dig up bodies which they rightly interpreted as finding themselves a graveyard or someplace where they put some bodies before or someplace where they happened to know there were some bodies or some water buffaloes or some children or some elephants.

Bodies are bodies. VC bodies are VC bodies and we never fell below our quota and my division was in a constant race. My division commander had a bet with the division commander of the 1st Infantry Division that during the first three months of 1968 our body count would be higher than his body count.

Now, it turned out that it was a tie, believe it or not, but our body count was higher than his body count, if you count the number of GIs killed. Anybody here on the panel can talk about that body count business.

MODERATOR. Question here.

QUESTION. Yeah, during the past few days, we've heard people give testimony to the fact of increasing the body count by digging up graves. Why was it so necessary to go through the actual effort of digging up graves? Why was not simply the number increased? I mean, why? Because when you dig up graves, you already knew the hoax involved. Why could it not just simply be done by words?

ROTTMANN. It was done in both fashions. It was done much more frequently just by inflating it artificially. Audience? Would you repeat the question? I'm sorry. The question was, "There's a lot of talk about digging up graves for bodies. Why didn't they just add on, double the number you had, and not go to the trouble of finding more bodies?"

It has to do with the chain of command and the fact that things get out of hand. If there's an order comes down to dig up bodies, eventually somebody is going to go out and dig up a body. It's inevitable. As it gets down to the lowest level, a sergeant's going to call in some Pfc. and say, "Hey, listen, go out and dig me up some bodies for the morning report?" He does it!

CRAIG. One actual instance that I was in on. We had a body count of 17 and it was a matter of digging up graves. The idea was to dig up a grave and verify that this particular Vietnamese had been killed in that action and had been hastily buried as the Viet Cong left. But, what we actually did was dug in one grave; it looked very old in this case, it was just an old graveyard. The fellow digging got tired of digging so we didn't even get down to any skeletons but we counted all the graves in the old graveyard. So as far as the report that went to Division Headquarters, we had uncovered graves that were new.

QUESTION. I'd like to ask the question if the black GIs in Vietnam were treated to the degrees of harassment that the white GIs were treated when they were trying to marry Vietnamese girls, and also the type of treatment that the black GIs got in regards to the racial tension between the white GIs and the blacks in Vietnam.

MCCUSKER. I was kicked out of Japan for this. Regarding the marriage of Asian girls was equal for black and white. They got the same harassment. The black man might have gotten a _____ of a lot more harassment, but that was probably essentially because he was black and had to add his portion of harassment to the fact he was going to marry an Asian girl, woman. Actually, the one I was going to marry was a girl. She was seventeen, U.S., eighteen, Vietnamese. But, in Japan during the time, well, you're all familiar with it.

During the time of the Detroit uprising in the summer of '67, I was in Japan. Now, overseas, blacks and whites segregate themselves into different sections of town. Each has its own little entertainment area and there's a line and neither crosses each of those lines. Iwakuni had the same thing.

Because of Detroit and the tensions of the summer stateside, most of the blacks and whites on the base at Iwakuni believed it was inevitable that it was going to explode there. And I went and talked to a _____ of a lot of people. I was the base editor of the newspaper and I talked to both blacks and whites, about, I don't know how many, maybe 200, I'm not sure.

And I wrote an editorial which the colonel gave me direct orders not to publish but which I did publish anyway, resulting in 10 MPs taking me to an airplane. However, what I understand is that it helped quell what was going to happen because my premise was that no matter what was going to happen between the blacks and the whites, the Japanese in the country were going to be the ones that suffered the most.

They were going to be caught in the cross fire. And so, I rather angrily pointed that out. And, from what I gather there was no riot. I don't know about the racial tension in Iwakuni right now, but I'm willing to bet it's essentially the same.

Riding on an airplane here I talked with a little woman Marine, Pfc., and she was telling me about Pendleton (Camp Pendleton, California). She was telling me how hot it is at Pendleton, racially, between blacks and whites. No one walks alone on that base.

They walk in packs. Blacks and whites! The tension is so high it's ready to explode--so you can take it from there.

QUESTION. What was the attitude towards civilians and people in the United States who were getting this misleading information about the state of the war? Did you feel contempt for them being so stupid believing it or what?

CRAIG. At that time it was a rather frustrating experience. You just couldn't fight READERS DIGEST. People read it and believed it.

PRIMM. I felt angry at the press, at the civilian press for not sending out reporters who would really go after the facts. It seemed that the civilian reporters were very docile and would accept what the army told them. I was angry and I still am and I don't think the war has been reported accurately.

ROTTMANN. I want to say just one thing, okay? This thing still continues. I mean, maybe most of us in this room have an understanding of it, but the lady who runs the cigar stand downstairs, all she knows about what's going on up here is what she read in the Detroit News, which said that (now, I'm just telling you what she told me) we were alleged veterans, you know, and that we were just phonies. And she's like where it's at, I think, into a large majority of this country because she said, "Look, I don't want to listen to you 'cause you're a Commie." I said, "How do you know?" She said, "I read it in the News." That's what she told me.

QUESTION. It's a point of fact for most of the people in here that the military information service has distorted the news. However, some pretty serious indictments about the civilian press have been made today and I would like to ask if any of the gentlemen of the press, or ladies of the press, sitting in the front, would dare, or care to, respond to the charges of the prostitution of their profession.

PRESS MEMBER. I was in Vietnam as a civilian reporter and I'd like to know if I could testify to some of the reasons why the civilian press has been brought up.

MODERATOR. Sure, come on up. Would you care to give your name?

PRESS MEMBER. I will, man. My name is Lee Elbinger and I was in Vietnam for the month of December of 1967. I was representing Michigan State University News and I had accreditation with MACV. Now, I would like to explain something about what it was like to be a civilian reporter in Vietnam. I would like to corroborate much of what these gentlemen have said and to elaborate upon it. I noticed one thing when I first got to Vietnam as a reporter. I noticed that the first thing the army tried to do was to buy you off and I got a little list of things that they do to buy you off. First they take you to JUSPAO and they give you a briefing and big manual about what you're supposed to do, etc., as a reporter.

Now, if you're a reporter from the United States, or if you have ARVN accreditation, which I also had, which allowed me to go to the ARVN press briefings, you're treated better than the third country nationals. The third country nationals are anyone in that country who is not United States or Vietnamese. And, they don't get these privileges. Some of the privileges are: access to the officer's open mess in Saigon on top of the Rex Hotel.

Let me tell you a little bit about what it's like to go up to the officer's open mess up there; and this is where all the reporters sit around and get drunk with all the officers. There's 20 slot machines up there; there's a swimming pool; there's a bar and a rock band which goes continually; and every Sunday night they have a $2.00 steak dinner while the people in the streets are starving and these people are up there just swimming around and getting drunk, and eating steak. Now, when I got there, I was told that I could send and receive mail with postage rights from APO San Francisco, which I never did because I didn't really trust them. I was given PX rights. I was allowed to go into the PX and buy any item up to the value of $10,000. I was given my MACV press accreditation which allowed me to fly free on any military airplanes, and we could bump off up to 15 GIs. In other words, the press had priority. They came right after the officers, I guess. I was given a beer ration card, a liquor ration card, and a tobacco ration card, which could be used at the PX. None of which I ever used. The reason reporters never left Saigon was because Saigon was the only place in the country that was really very much like America and it was very comfortable just to sit there and to go to the 4:15. Every day at JUSPAO they had these press conferences at 4:15. We called them the 4:15 Follies, and a friend of mine, a Danish correspondent, told me that the Swedish television crew came one day, filmed the entire 45 minute press conference, and showed it on Swedish television as a comedy. I did take advantage of my free flights around the country. I got to Na Trang. I got to Da Nang, and I was in Hue one month before it was destroyed. I was in the press camp in Na Trang and Da Nang, and you were allowed to stay there for $3.00 a night. It had a bar, and it had hot showers in it, which was, you know, really beautiful compared to what the men were getting there. You were supplied with an interpreter and a chauffeured jeep, but I had a little bit of trouble because every time I got in there they started finding out what I was doing and in this case I went to Na Trang twice to investigate a Special Forces captain who murdered his interpreter.

As soon as I got out there, they started finding out what I was doing, suddenly a lot of those privileges which I was supposed to have, were mysteriously cut off. Speaking on the issue of censorship, when I got out to the Special Forces camp, outside of Na Trang, I think it was the 5th Special Forces, I got out there and I had a tape recorder with me. I had a whole list of questions from some people in Saigon to ask the father of the (Vietnamese) interpreter who was killed--given half a helicopter ride as they call it. He was killed by his captain because apparently there was a squabble; somebody said he was stealing something. But, the point of it is, I wanted to interview one of the key witnesses, who I was told both in Na Trang and in Saigon, could speak English. I got to the Special Forces camp and when they found out that I wanted to talk to this man (I knew he was there because they said he was there) they would not allow me to speak to him. They told me he was a truck driver and he didn't speak English and I didn't want to see him. What they did instead was they piled me into a jeep and they took me over to this place where they were displaying all these dead bodies and I was told that these were VC that had been shot the night before. There were two rows of five each of the dead bodies of some Vietnamese people; young girls, old men and young men as well. And I was told that it was official policy (not of our government, I suppose, but of the ARVN forces) to line these bodies up and to leave them there for one full day. I guess it had a psychological effect of terrorizing the villagers. To keep it very brief, I just want to say one more thing about reporting in Vietnam. When I got over there, I was very keen on being objective. I tried very hard to keep emotionalism out of what I was doing. I admitted in all the things that I wrote that I was prejudiced against the war and I tried to have that discounted by just Franz Fanon's book, Wretched of the Earth, where he talked of colonial wars and he talked about imperialism and that when a reporter says, "I'm just being objective. I'm just reporting the facts," in effect he is hiding on the side of the imperialists. So it's a very difficult thing if you're a newspaper reporter and you're trying to be objective and to be coldly unemotional and not get involved as a human being. Chances are you're not telling the full story because I think healthy people have emotions. I finally just had to discard this whole policy of objectivity and I said at the beginning of all my reports "This is a subjective impression." I started giving just surrealistic, subjective impressions, and I felt that that was the best way to report on this atrocity. Thank you.

MCCUSKER. One point to add to that. Every week in our office, and posted to all the GI correspondents, would be a list of civilian reporters whose accreditations were ripped off for one reason or another. And, generally, anybody that ever reported on anything significant in Vietnam had his accreditation taken away from him.

ROTTMANN. Right. An instance of that that just rings a bell in my head, is a story written by Merton Perry, who is Saigon Bureau Chief of Newsweek magazine. It was written in 1967 and it's called "Their Lions, Our Rabbits." It's an expose of the Vietnamization program. It appeared in Newsweek magazine. Merton Perry had his credentials ripped off; was suspended for a short time, I believe, by his headquarters in New York City, I believe. All issues of that magazine of Newsweek were confiscated in Vietnam, including the issues in the PXs around the American bases. So that's just a specific example. Look, don't get us wrong. There were some really great civilian reporters. Don Webster comes to mind, in my experiences, Merton Perry, Peter Arnett. A lot of names came to mind and we began to sense, after a while, of course, who the guys were who were really straight and they would frequently end-run the information officers, either with our cooperation or without our cooperation and sort of go straight to the field and get the story. Some of the press, let me emphasize, some of the press, and many were killed, are doing really great jobs, but we did have a very big problem with apathetic press. I might mention "JUSPAO Joe _____" from the New York Daily News, who never left the Caravelle Hotel in Saigon and who writes the most fantastic "I was there" battle stories you'll ever want to know.

MODERATOR. I'd like to add one last point about press censorship. After my three years in the army when I got out in '65, having resigned a West Point appointment that I got in Vietnam in '63, I went to work for a newspaper in this country to try to find out why what I had seen going on in Vietnam wasn't being reported here because I knew there were some good reporters over there. So I worked for a major newspaper, which I will not name, because it could be any newspaper in this country. Those stories that came in that were best, that were good, were killed by the editors here, who knew more about Vietnam than those of us that had been there. Not only did they kill these stories when little things came about what Johnson was supposedly doing; going out to Asia and having meetings with Ky. They would stick little headlines on a story that mentioned nothing about peace talks, that would say "Johnson in Peace Parley in the Philippines."

QUESTION. I'd like to say that yesterday I was listening to a CBS news photographer who was sitting up here that I don't see any more. He was sitting up here a little while ago. He said that this stuff isn't anything new, that we've been photographing this all along, right from the beginning, and I'm just wondering why the _____ it wasn't on TV.

Also, I'd like to know, I guess apparently all of you people can be prosecuted and imprisoned and I don't know what else for the testimony you've been giving. I'd like to know, who's making these laws and how they're enforced, and that kind of thing.

MODERATOR. There's two questions. One was, the gentleman said he was a CBS news crew and he talked with them briefly and he heard somebody in the crew say that it was old stuff and that they'd seen it before and they'd filmed it before and his question was why wasn't it on TV. The second question was: Are we liable for prosecution for our testimony and if we are indeed liable, whom are we liable to.

ROTTMANN. Some of us are liable. Those of us who had secret clearance [PIECE MISSING]
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Re: Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veter

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Part 1 of 2

14. 82ND AND 101ST AIRBORNE DIVISIONS AND 173RD AIRBORNE BRIGADE

MODERATOR. Will everyone get out their 214s. What we have here right now is testimony of the 101st, the 82nd and the 173rd Airborne units in Vietnam. We also have one Marine that will be testifying with us. The first gentleman that will be testifying on atrocities in Vietnam will be a former E-3, Leffler, Marine.

LEFFLER. My name is Charles Leffler. I live in Detroit and I was formerly with Battalion 226, Golf Company, the 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade in Vietnam. I'm not going to recount any atrocities here because what I would say would just be repetition of what has gone on in the past two days. But I do want to comment on two things which I was involved with in Vietnam. One was in January of 1969. I was in Vietnam from September 1968 to September 1969. In January 1969 we were on a sweep. We were on line through a series of rice paddies and villages in Quang Nam Province, which is just southwest of Da Nang. We'd received a battalion order at that time and the order stated that this order would take effect from that day forward until a rescinding order would come through. It never came through in the next eight months, until after I returned, so the battalion order was always in effect. If while sweeping on line and passing by friendly villages, which we did, you received one round of any sort from a friendly village, the entire battalion was to turn on line and level that village. The exact wording was to kill every man, woman, child, dog and cat in the village.

This was one round from any known friendly village. The second thing I'd like to comment on deals with a speech made by Defense Secretary Melvin Laird two weeks ago. In that speech he stated that our combat troops have not operated outside of Vietnam. Now in the past two and a half days you have heard testimony that combat troops have operated in Cambodia. This was other than the Cambodian operation that I guess was okayed by Secretary Laird. When I arrived in Vietnam at the end of September, my next sixty days were spent with battalion in either the Demilitarized Zone or in North Vietnam. This was an entire 226 Battalion in the DMZ and North Vietnam. When I arrived in country, I spent two days getting supplied and getting all my gear. I was then helicoptered out to where battalion was. I was very new in country, and being only a Pfc., I was never told where this was; we were just helicoptered out. We came to the landing zone and I joined up with my unit, which was 2nd Platoon, Golf Co., 226. The next day we went on a platoon-size patrol. This consisted of about 30 people. I went on this patrol and we went for about four hours in a northerly direction. I did not know where we went since I did not have a map. But after proceeding for about 33,000 meters and crossing a river which I later found out was the Ben Hai River (which runs exactly through the middle of the DMZ) the lieutenant turned to me and said, "Well, Leffler, you have something to write home about now." and I said, "What do you mean, sir?" He said, "We just crossed over into North Vietnam." We spent about the entire afternoon there, looking or checking along this road that they had found, which was covered over by a canopy which the Vietnamese had ingeniously carved so that jets or anybody from the air couldn't see it. We made no contact that day and we came back that evening. About three days later, we went in the same general direction. We again crossed over. This time it was a company patrol and we crossed over again, checked on the road, and again made no contact. We spent about a total of about sixty days in the DMZ, moving around every week--the entire battalion. I would say at least every two days there were patrols anywhere from platoon size to company size into North Vietnam. I can't give any data on the locations since I was only a Pfc. and I was never told. But I was told that we were in North Vietnam. I was pointed out the river which was recognized as the Ben Hai, and if you check a map, the Ben Hai runs through the center of North Vietnam.

MODERATOR. Our next speaker giving testimony will be Fred Bernath, former 1st Lt., 101st MP Co., 101st Airborne Division.

BERNATH. I was the platoon leader of the 2nd MP Platoon which supported the 2nd Brigade of the 101st at LZ Sally. One of our jobs was security of the base. LZ Sally had a garbage dump which was located about 200 yards outside of the perimeter. It wasn't a part of LZ Sally, but it was surrounded by wire and it was open from the hours of about nine in the morning to about five in the evening. There was an NCO who was in charge of the operations out there. This was the area where people from LZ Sally would take their trash. The stuff consisted of sometimes wood, old machine parts, food wastes, and things like that. During the day when it was operating, it was continuously surrounded by Vietnamese women and children. And also prostitutes and people who were interested in dealing narcotics to the GIs. This was the main area where people got to prostitutes or got to dope. But the majority of these people were interested in getting at what we were throwing away. At the end of the day, usually after it closed down, about 200 civilians, mostly women and children, would just swarm over the dump. It was kind of a sorry sight to see, but the brigade XO who was in charge of LZ Sally was interested in keeping these people away from LZ Sally for security reasons, since they were only 200 yards outside of the perimeter. Actually, they had a right to be out there until seven o'clock in the evening, at which point the entire area around Sally became free fire zone. So they called the MP platoon leader, who was my predecessor, and they decided that one way to get rid of the civilians was to try to scare them away. They would drive out there with their jeeps, drive outside the wire of the garbage dump, and start chasing them with their jeeps. When they got them running, they'd take M-79 CS rounds and fire it at them. To my knowledge they never hit anybody with the rounds, but they would completely surround them with CS and scare the _____ out of them. This action started under the command of my predecessor and was continued under me from November '68 through October 1969. Rather than work out a program whereby Vietnamese civilians could obtain access to what we threw away, we just chased them away. It didn't work, 'cause they always came back the next day. But we still did the same thing. There wasn't any other kind of program worked out. The second incident that I have to relate consists of treatment of detainees. Another one of our jobs was to process detainees who were sent in by the infantry companies of the Second Brigade. We lived in the same area as the military intelligence detachment. Our job was to fill out paperwork, guard them and transport them. The MI [Military Intelligence] Detachment interrogated them and classified them. While I was there, we mostly got innocent civilians. I was getting kind of concerned with the fact that we were getting so many civilians, because I considered that just bringing them back from wherever their home area was and putting them through this was a form of harassment.

But in addition to this, the ones who were suspicious for one reason or another, would be given forms of physical harassment. One type which was the most shocking to me, was the shocking of suspicious detainees with a field telephone. You can generate electricity with a field telephone and you can zap somebody with it. I had heard the interrogators talking about this many times when they were sitting around playing cards and drinking at night. And I, in fact, observed it on one occasion. The Military Police platoon leader was there (he was a 1st Lt.), and a Military Intelligence platoon leader (a 1st Lt.). They never said anything about it. It was just kind of tacitly approved.

MODERATOR. Fred, did you treat detainees who were not known to be VC or NVA in the same manner as you treated those who were known to be?

BERNATH. Well, the standard procedure was to treat them all the same way until they were classified. You didn't know who they were until they were interrogated. Some of them would be suspicious because they were confused. They didn't know what was going on and that might be a reason for the interrogator to be suspicious of them because they wouldn't answer questions right away. These people would get the same kind of harassment that someone who was actually suspected of being a VC would get. They couldn't tell, really.

MODERATOR. Before introducing our next former Vietnam war veteran, I'd like for all the vets up at the table to raise the form DD-214, please. Those forms that you see in the middle are the new DD-214s that are being handed out by the Army and the units they are discharging now. The reason I asked these people to show these forms is because a few press releases came out and said that we did not have valid proof that the people up here testifying are Vietnam veterans. I'm sure now that they have no reason to doubt it. The next veteran that will be speaking is Bill Perry, a former Pfc. of the U.S. Army, 101st Airborne.

PERRY. I served in Vietnam from '67 to '68. I wouldn't like to go too far into the horror stories you've been hearing about the last few days, but I would like to relate a few incidents. On March 5, 1968, in the province of Phuc Long, village of Song Be, a platoon of us, twenty-nine of us, were on a search and destroy mission. A few of us, who were considered expendable, were told to walk point.

As we came up out of a bamboo thicket into a clearing, a woman with whom I and one of the other two people had previously had what you might call business transactions with concerning marijuana, informed us of an imminent ambush on the part of the local forces. Myself and two others ran into her home with her. We weren't sure whether she was _____ us or what, but we were scared so we ran into her home. The rest of the platoon came up out of the valley into the clearing and was ambushed. We were isolated pretty well from the rest of the platoon while they were getting shot up. And when an NCO came up to look into the house where we were kind of looking out the door with the woman, the NCO automatically figured that we must be VC prisoners and he shot her up. She had a very young child inside her bomb shelter. Every Vietnamese home has to have a bomb shelter. The ambush actually lasted about two or three minutes, and the platoon got pretty well shot up. For about five hours they called in artillery and air strikes and pretty well demolished the town of Song Be. Finally when enough reinforcements came, they went out to sweep the area. They decided to throw fragmentation, or white phosphorus grenades, inside of each bunker regardless of what was going down in any bunker. We tried to stop them from fragging other bunkers where we could hear screams or moans or whatever, but they were really into it.

There was another incident in mid-July 1968 in the vicinity of Nui Ba Den where we had been in about two days of steady combat. We had found a lot of bodies, some killed by air strikes and some killed by small arms fire. And the military fear, you know, came through once again in their mutilation of bodies. They were very much into cutting patches and numbers on dead bodies in this particular incident. I could go on with more horror stories, but like we all know what happens. You can hear it from the other GIs and when the rest of the people on the panel finish, I'd like to go into a little of what causes people to act this way, why people act this way, and what we can do to combat people acting this way. Thank you.

MODERATOR. Perry, before we go on to the next one, you mentioned something before about an order received by the higher up and crossing across the national borders. Could you mention something on that?

PERRY. It was very well known that we were within two klicks of Cambodia which is about a mile and two-tenths. Very often we went on search and destroy missions directly west as far as 8-10 klicks and back. We were definitely going into Cambodia.

MODERATOR. Did you ever make contact in Cambodia? Did you ever make contact when you crossed the border?

PERRY. No, I didn't.

MODERATOR. Sam Bunge, a former 1st Lt. with the 101st Airborne Division.

BUNGE. I served in Vietnam for one year between July of '68 and June of '69. During that time I had a succession of jobs. First I was a rifle platoon leader, a grunt, for three or four months. Then I was a battalion staff officer and my final five months in country I was in charge of the brigade security platoon. My unit operated in the vicinity of Cu Chi, which is between Saigon and Cambodia. Then we were transferred up to I Corps and operations were conducted west of Phu Bai in the mountains. The incidents I have to recount are just in random order. Camp Evans, which is the next base camp up the country from Sally, also had trash dumps outside the wire. This was standard procedure all over Vietnam because I heard other people complaining about the practice. Civilians would get into our trash dump, too, and we routinely used CS to disperse the civilians. They kept coming back, of course. I observed many instances of H & I (harassing and interdicting fire) which is artillery fire popped out at irregular intervals at indiscriminate targets around the fire base just with the idea of keeping the enemy off guard in case he's coming up.

When I first took over my platoon, we were on a sweep operation and we received a couple of rounds of sniper fire from a village in an area that we knew had a lot of VC. The civilians weren't terribly sympathetic to them or to us. So we went over to the village to check it out, to look for weapons, to see what was in there. We'd been there several times before and after we'd reached the center of the hamlet (it wasn't a very big place) I noticed that a couple of haystacks were on fire in an area that we'd already come through. I asked the squad leader of the third squad back there why that was and he said, "Well, that's SOP." And I said, "No, it's not." He said, "Well, the other lieutenant (referring to my predecessor) said that if we ever get sniper fire from a village we were supposed to burn it down." So after we got the village secure, I called all the squad leaders together and changed the policy. The point here is that in a war like Vietnam where small unit commanders have such autonomy (lieutenants and captains to a large degree run the show) an individual can make a big difference. If a man wants to burn villages, he can do it. Quite a bit later as I said, when I had the security platoon north, we had a problem with civilians in the trash dump. One day we picked up about a dozen kids; they were all boys ranging in age from twelve down to about six. I got an order from the Brigade commander through Headquarters Company commander to hold the kids in the POW cage for 48 hours without food or water to teach them a lesson. I didn't want to do this. I argued a little bit and I said, "You know, prisoners are the responsibility of the MPs. Why don't you give it to them?" We had an MP platoon stationed at Camp Evans, and finally, he admitted that the MPs wouldn't do it because they realized it was illegal too.

So I went away, thought about it for a while, then went back to my company commander, and said, "Sir, I can't do this. It's illegal. How about backing me up? We'll go tell the colonel that we can't do it." And he says, "No, I won't." So I went looking for the brigade executive officer to try to get his backing and I couldn't find him. Finally I decided what I should do. They probably wouldn't check on me, so I just disobeyed the order without telling anybody. When I got up to the cage to tell the platoon to feed 'em, but to be discreet about it, the kids were already eating. So the problem was circumvented. Several times while flying back and forth between the mountains and Camp Evans, I observed an operation on the ground called "Rome Plowing" which I don't think has come out before. A Rome Plow is a very large tractor; the driver sits inside a heavy reinforced cage, and if you can imagine a giant snowplow on the front, it's very similar to clearing snow except that it clears ground. As it drives along, it uproots and pushes aside all vegetation so what you're left with is an area that looks like a bulldozed area. A Rome Plow is good because it can push over trees; it can do a large area in a very short time. This was being used to clear a patch about 500-1,000 meters wide down the base of the mountains so that it would be easy for air observers to detect anybody coming in and out of the mountains.

They wouldn't be hidden by the foliage. A mechanical sort of defoliation rather than the chemical sort. I used, several times, chemical Agent Orange around the perimeter of Camp Evans in an effort to clear the underbrush. They gave us about ten 55-gallon barrels of it, and we sprayed the stuff all around. There were two villages adjacent to the area and we didn't spray these villages intentionally, of course, but we got pretty close. When I was a grunt platoon leader, we were moving across a rice paddy and were reconning by fire in a tree line on the other side. When we got there, there was a village right there, a lady came out and told us that her mother had been wounded by a frag from one of our M-79 rounds. So I told the medic to patch her up and stopped the platoon to provide him with security. It took about fifteen minutes to dress her wound and give her some antibiotic. The whole time the company commander was hassling me about why didn't I just leave her alone and hurry and catch up with the rest of the company. He didn't want me to stay back there. Another time, the company was together and we were moving in on an area to reinforce another company that was in contact. We were back in the staging area waiting for the battalion CO to tell us exactly where to go. I happened to be up talking to the CO and his headquarters group spotted a farmer plowing, or doing something, with a buffalo in his fields-- maybe 500 meters away--a considerable distance.

Some of the EM in the headquarters section got the idea that they'd get some target practice on this individual. My memory is not clear whether the CO participated--I know he actively participated as a spectator and sort of encouraged this--but I can't tell you whether he pulled any triggers himself or not. But they fired on this man. The farmer had been doing nothing hostile, just minding his own business, just walking across the dike or something. But they fired on him single shot with an M-60 machine gun and they were obviously doing it just for sport because they did it shoulder fire, which is extremely inaccurate. If they'd felt it had a military necessity, they would've put the gun down on a bipod and done it accurately. And when they didn't hit the fellow, and evidently he didn't notice because he kept going, they set up the 81 Mike-Mike mortar and popped out a few high explosive rounds at him. He went down and my suspicion is that he went down just to get us to leave him alone, but we never did go and check.

At one point we were going into a village which we had reason to believe had a lot of weapons in it. As a matter of fact, we did find a few weapons. But we didn't find nearly as many as we expected. So we found a grave, an old grave, obviously an old grave, an old tombstone in the red-pitted rock that they make tombstones out of, and the CO said, "Gee, there might be something buried in that grave because the VC sometimes do that. So let's dig down a little bit." We dug down about two feet and obviously the ground hadn't been disturbed for years because it was the same color and the same density that the ground always was. But something had caught the CO's imagination, so he made us keep going and eventually we got down to the casket. He told us to break it open, so we broke it open. There was nothing inside. Evidently, his whole motivation for disinterring this grave and disturbing the corpse was simple morbid curiosity. When I was back with the brigade again, my platoon was given the assignment one month to implant a series of six sensor fields out in the mountains in an uninhabited area. The area was literally uninhabited. I flew over the area many times and there were no traces of anybody ever having lived there. These are electronic devices that you bury in the ground to detect through various means. One means is seismic, one is infrared, and another is magnetic. If anybody passes near them, they send out a signal. A man on the fire base reads the signal and tells the fire direction control center. They fire artillery on the target and what's bad about it is they don't know who it is they're firing on. It's done without any positive identification. You just pick up the impression of somebody out there, check with the infantry TOC to make sure it's nobody friendly, assume it's enemy, and fire 'em up. That's the way these things are intended to be used.

MODERATOR. Okay, Sam, I want you to evaluate this. It was a fact then that the battalion CO gave the order to have the children put into battalion stockade which is directly against American policy. He also gave the order not to feed them, give them water or anything for a period of 48 hours. But the fact is you did give them water and they were put in prison or in that little Connex for that amount of time, right?

BUNGE. Well, no. It turned out that the order wasn't executed as intended. The headquarters company commander, my immediate superior, told me that this was what the colonel wanted, and I pointed out to him in so many words that it's illegal, it's against the law. He said, "Well, you better do it anyway." Then, after my effort at getting the order changed failed, I decided to disobey it. So the kids weren't actually kept 48 hours. We let 'em go after about 36. They spent the night there. The place we kept them in was actually a decent place; it was a plywood building reinforced with wire so they couldn't get out. So, the mistreatment of prisoners was not done, but it was intended to be done.

MODERATOR. By a colonel in brigade headquarters.

BUNGE. Right.

MODERATOR. Okay, the next speaker is Kevin F. Byrne, a former sergeant in the 101st Airborne. Kevin?

BYRNE. I was a sergeant in a Scout Dog Unit in the 1st Brigade of the 101st. I've always worked in a free fire zone, and the policy was if we found any villages, hootches, houses or any animals, we were to destroy the houses and destroy all structures. We would kill water buffaloes, the pigs and we'd cook the chickens. I worked with units of the 1st Brigade and I worked with units of the 2nd Brigade. I worked with ARVNs, Marines, Capteams, proper forces and regional forces and this is a policy of all these units. I was down in Tam Ky area in May, June, July and August of '69. I was with the unit of the 101st. We received fire and we returned fire. It was sniper fire. We went on a sweep, found a hootch and we, you know, burned it down. We found an NVA officer inside and, like, he was immobile. His arms and legs were all torn up. So they drug him out and like before they drug him out, the day like, I call it tunnel rat. You emptied a magazine of .45 ammunition into the officer and we drug him out. It was getting late at night and so rather than calling in the medivac to take this officer back and try to save him, we just lifted him up and stuck a fragmentation grenade underneath him. We went back to our MDP and the next morning came out and, like, I was the first man. I was like a hundred meters from this area. We were going back to see if he was still alive and then maybe call in the medivac. About a hundred meters from where he was, the grenade went off. I got really spooked about this.

We went back; we didn't find the officer, like, you know, we didn't find anything. Just where the house was. The whole company was really spooked about this. They were all mad that they didn't kill him the night before. Kill him or send him in. Like, you know, this guy's running around like he, he really had everybody scared by the way he looked at us. Like he looked really hard. He was all torn up and he was waiting for somebody to try to mess with him. In all the areas I worked whenever my dog would give me an alert, I would request recon by fire. Normally this would be coming from the company commander. And I would request recon by fire. I would always be leading the companies with the first lieutenant behind me. He would just tell the commander that the dog wants a recon by fire and you know he would just let it ride. I'd call for a 60 machine gun or an M-79 up there and there was never any higher ups knowing about this. This was unwritten policy, what they used, because nobody ever questioned a dog handler's judgment. Like I'd develop like a sixth sense where I know danger's gonna come. Usually my dog wouldn't alert me and I'd stop and I'd say, "My dog's got something up here. Just want to get the 60 up here, just to ease my mind." A couple of times my dog would alert me and I'd see a house or like a complex up ahead and I'd tell them, "Recon by fire, get the 79 up here, a 60." 'Cause I don't wanna put my life on the line like that. Going up there acting like John Wayne or anything. Nor do I wanna put the men behind me, their life on the line. So like I felt really responsible if anything happened to them. Like sometimes when I'd call the recon by fire. If it was a long distance, I'd tell them to do it with mortars and they'd radio back to the nearest fire base and have mortars laying in this area where I'd call. And nobody would check out these areas really because like, they didn't want to go out of our planned route. In one spot, in a place called Lanco, near the end of the 101st AO in I Corps, my dog had an alert. We wrote it down as around a thousand meter alert. And on the bridge they didn't have anything that could fire this far. Like I was on a listening post and I was about a klick from the bridge myself. So I radioed back. We had to dump something in this area. So they called a destroyer in off the coast and like it pumped a few rounds in the area where I requested it and nobody checked the area out at all. There is this H & I fire that you've been hearing about in the Phu Loc district. They would have this H & I going out and be laying in certain trails designed at our so-called local VCs trails at night.

MODERATOR. Before I ask you this question, let me explain one thing. My brothers here are giving testimony and we all are extremely uptight because it's no easy thing to sit up here and rap about what happened. In a way we're kind of ashamed of what we did. I'd appreciate it if you'd help them out a bit because they are extremely nervous and I'm extremely nervous. So how about giving them a big hand? Kevin, what was the SOP on prisoners while you were out there? When you took prisoners? When you detained civilians? How were they treated? How were the enemy treated when you captured them?

BYRNE. If we had any prisoners or detainees, we'd round them up and then we'd send them in by chopper. If we were in the lowlands, we'd have the national police, or the white mice, come out and check them out there and then take them to the district headquarters or detention areas. If we had cordons, we'd have the village chief come out and he'd get all the people together. Then we'd have the national police and the interpreters interrogate these people, you know, one by one. Anybody suspicious in any way, anybody new in the area, or anybody that didn't have the proper ID, they'd be taken away by the ARVN police. They'd be taken to district headquarters or to detention areas.

MODERATOR. Charles Stephens, former Pfc., medic with the 101st Airborne Division.

STEPHENS. I served with the 1st Brigade, 3/27, 101st Airborne Division as a medic. I went over in 1965, in December 1965, and I stayed until February '67. When I first got to Phan Rang, our base camp, our battalion commander said we were going to leave Phan Rang--going to Tui Hoa. And we'd be in Tui Hoa anywhere from three weeks to three months. And I believe we were gone about a year and seven days. But before we left he told us, he said, "Don't worry. I know you guys are impatient, but when you get to Tui Hoa there'll be enough VC to go around." Also, the chaplain added that it's better to give than to receive and do unto others before they do unto you. When we got to Tui Hoa the first battle we were in was in Happy Valley. And at Happy Valley we got quite a few of the people from our brigade killed. The very next operation I went on every village we went into we'd recon by fire and in one village, we wounded women and kids going into the village. When we got in there, this was in Tui Hoa, me and another guy were treating two unconscious babies--not babies but like five and six-year old kids and a woman lying in a hammock. I told the lieutenant that these people had to be evacuated because if not evacuated (this lady and these kids had shrapnel and they were unconscious) I said they're gonna die. And he said, "Well, forget it, Doc; we don't have time to stay and wait."

We went up on the hill right above this same village and we fired down on this village the next day while the people were trying to bury their dead, while they were doing their burial ceremony. And they killed another person in the village. The people, they didn't wait to see if the guy was dead or not. They just rolled him over and put him in the hole with the others and covered him up. We went down that same day to get some water and there were two little boys playing on a dike and one sergeant just took his M-16 and shot one boy at the dike. The other boy tried to run. He was almost out of sight when this other guy, a Spec. 4, shot this other little boy off the dike. The little boy was like lying on the ground kicking, so he shot him again to make sure he was dead. Then we went into the village and this papa-san, I don't know if he was a village chief or who he was, but he came up to us, he was telling us, he was making motions that a bird was flying over and the bird took a _____ and a thing went boom-boom. He was saying this was how a lot of the people in the village got hurt. I told the lieutenant and the lieutenant still wouldn't have the people evacuated. So, every operation we went on after that, after our Happy Valley, they didn't believe our body counts. So we had to cut off the right ear of everybody we killed to prove our body count. I guess it was company SOP, or battalion SOP, but nothing was ever said to you. Guys would cut off heads, put them on a stake and stick a guy's _____ in his mouth. At Nan Co. we were at the 95th, I think it was a base camp, a regiment base camp or something, and they say the VC had just left there. We had a guy with us, my senior aid man. He had about two weeks left in country and because we couldn't get resupplied (they didn't want to give away our position) we had to live off the land. There were some chickens in this village and my senior aid man was running through this elephant grass to find the chickens. He tripped a land mine that the VC had left behind. He blew his thighs and everything and the back of his legs up. Well, his leg was just messed up. He went into shock and died anyway because the doctors wouldn't come in to take him out. They were afraid. They had to stay with him that night, but they were afraid to come down. It was cabled from the medivac. I have some money here, this is North Vietnamese money. We took it off a paymaster. It was on the Ho Chi Minh Trail but we were supposed to be in Cambodia. We went ambush there for about two weeks.

MODERATOR. You want to hold that money up and show it to them?

STEPHENS. We had been on an ambush for about two weeks. The first week that we were there we didn't fire at any of the enemy. We just watched them come down, and I guess further down the trail they were being knocked off. I don't know.

But the second week we were told when anything came down this trail, we were to shoot. About two-thirty one morning this lady and a little boy and a dog came walking down this trail (they did this every night) and the lady made some kind of funny sign with a lantern. This particular night a guy met her on a bicycle. She went back to her house alone, but this guy stayed on her trail and a few minutes later some more guys came and joined him. As they were coming down the trail, we knocked them off. They said we were not supposed to use CS gas. We threw CS gas and the whole business. That particular night the password was "pussycat." There was like a big hill behind us where we were supposed to all come up and meet after the ambush. I was left with two Vietnamese ARVNs who were asleep during the ambush. There was an American machine gunner who couldn't get away from the ambush and on the way back up the hill the only thing we could do to keep from getting killed was to sing like "What's New, Pussycat." In Dak To, June '66, I think was the biggest battle fought by the 101st during the time I was over there. There was a captain who called in napalm on his own company and I think he got a big award for it. But he wasn't actually there. He was there when the fighting first started, but when he called in napalm he was in a helicopter with a megaphone telling us, "Get in there and mix it up. You're doing a good job."

When we went up to Dak To, all our companies were overstrength. But after the battle, I think our largest company had ninety-seven people in it. That was including officers and everyone. If you had wounded guys, you'd never leave wounded guys or dead Americans, you'd always take them with you or have them evacuated. But this time I was left with one round of .45 ammunition and I was left with three other guys. One guy had an M-79 with an HE round. Another guy had one magazine of M-16 ammo. We were told to follow a trail, and we had to create our own little war, to make the company commander come back and get us. Then he was going to court-martial us because he said we were cowards. That's about it.
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Re: Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veter

Postby admin » Mon Jun 06, 2016 4:12 am

Part 2 of 2

MODERATOR. Charles, would you describe for us the policy of your unit with regard to the taking and the disposition of prisoners? I think you have something to say about the throwing of prisoners out of helicopters?

STEPHENS. Yes, In Tui Hoa, after Happy Valley, we didn't take any prisoners. If we were on an operation for one week and you caught a prisoner the last day of that operation, that meant you stayed out there a couple of more days because there were more people out there. So you took the guy to the woodside and you knocked him off. I saw on two different occasions these warrant officers come in in helicopters and take the prisoners. Like I was new over there then and I didn't know what they were going to do. I saw them take these prisoners, take them in the helicopter. I would see these guys sitting down watching the sky, laughing, you know, and here comes a guy waving down out of the sky. Then they bring the other two guys down and I guess they'd be saying something, so I imagine they'd be talking to them. I saw that on two different occasions.

MODERATOR. And they were actually pushed out of the helicopter?

STEPHENS. Yes.

MODERATOR. Thank you. Mike, Mike Misiaszek, former Spec. 4, also with the 101st Airborne Division.

MISIASZEK. Right, my name is Mike Misiaszek. I'm from Reading, Pennsylvania. I was with the 101st in the 1st Brigade, Support Element. We rigged up the choppers to fly supplies out to the troops and sometimes we'd go out and hand them out wherever they were. That was the last half. The first half, I was actually just a telephone answerer. I was in Vietnam from the first of December 1968 to the end of January 1970. This was at Camp Eagle and I was also down at Tam Ky after I got fired from my office job. My testimony concerns a whole bunch of things. Most of it's been heard before. I'd just like to elaborate on it for those who may not have been here before. The first thing I'd like to talk about is the destruction of a cemetery. The entire northeast corner of the 101st base camp, Camp Eagle, southwest of Hue, is built on a Vietnamese cemetery. They didn't plow under any graves; they didn't have to. They just built the compound on top of it, which means that there are still graves between some of the buildings. Some of the buildings are on top of old graves which had been plowed under and are all misshapen. I'd like to talk about harassment fire. Where we were sleeping was pretty close to a battery of 8-inch howitzers. These are big guns, man. They go off and they shake the ground. I think the round is as long as this table, maybe. And there's a lot of high explosives in there. They fired these things indiscriminately. They woke us up, they shook the whole place, and several of us got really _____ off. We wanted to find out why they were doing this all the time. This was every night. We talked to a specialist up in the battery, and he said they had orders to fire no less than thirty rounds nightly at a strip west of Camp Eagle. This strip was supposedly a free fire zone. Anybody could have been walking in there, like even some of our own people from other units, but they didn't really seem to care. They just shot this thing up! Another thing I'd like to talk about is the use of some chemical agents. On our perimeter we had CS gas, little canister with tear gas I guess, and what's known as Fugas. I don't know if anyone has brought this up. Fugas is a jelly-like substance. It's flammable, and they put it in barrels. What they do to it is they explode the barrel over an area and this flaming jelly-like substance lands on everything, if it's people or animals or whatever. And you can't get it off. It just burns, and you rub it and it sticks on. You just spread it all around. The only way to stop it is by suffocating it in mud or water. This was not around too often during the dry season, you know. When we were at Tam Ky, we convoyed in August back to Camp Eagle. They put a whole bunch of guys on a truck and we had C-rations. We made a pretty good game out of throwing C-rations at civilians as hard as we could. Then we tried to see if we could maybe get them through the grass huts. Like we would throw them at a grass hut. It would go through and we'd wait and see if someone comes out yelling or something. I'd also like to talk about mad minutes. This was mentioned before. Our mad minutes, for those of you who may not have heard it, were at the perimeter fence. Every once in a while at Camp Eagle, every two months or so, the order would just come down, "Okay guys, get to it." You got a mad minute. And everybody picks up a weapon with both hands, both feet, and they shoot. And they don't care what they shoot at, just as long as it's away from the base area. That's a lot of fun, too. All those sickees.

MODERATOR. Mike, is there the chance that into the areas where you were firing during these mad minutes there were unarmed persons?

MISIASZEK. Absolutely. Sometimes there were. There were maybe cows. I never saw any, but I've heard of some people who were shooting cows.

MODERATOR. Thank you.

PANELIST. I'd also like to talk about fragging. Maybe this really is nothing, but our morale in our company was extremely low. We hated our CO and we were always making up little plots to sneak at him. I decided to take it upon myself to secure a hand grenade that nobody knew about. I had this hidden for the next time he was going to screw me over. I had it in a stream in about five or six plastic bags. Well, I never got the chance because they found it on the police call.

MODERATOR. The next speaker is a former E-4 from the 101st, Jim Umenhofer.

UMENHOFER. The first thing that I'd like to say is we're not here for ourselves, we're here for all our brothers in the human race, and love is what keeps us going, and love is what this thing is all about. I was a radio operator with the second 501st and the 101st. I was an E-4. I was there from November of 1969 until October of 1970--that was about three months ago. In the northern I Corps area it's changed a little bit and the atrocities are just a little different from the atrocities that have been going on that you've been hearing about all week. The policy, which I'm sure has been brought out, the idea we are superior to our enemy or we are superior to the gooks or whatever--this carries over on all levels, even the higher echelon officers. Especially the higher echelon officers are preaching this. The first incidents I'd like to bring up occurred in March. I had seen a man I knew in a hospital. He was in the hospital, he had one arm cut off. He told me that this entire platoon, a platoon consisted of approximately twenty-five men or so, had been wiped out in hand-to-hand combat in the Paris area of operations. My unit, about three or four days later, Alpha Company, was sent into this particular area of operation. They had a mission to move from the top of a hill to a river which was approximately a mile away. Alpha Company was reduced to fifty men through combat. They were then removed and our Bravo Company was sent in there. Our Bravo Company was sitting on this same hill with the same mission and they were reduced to approximately twenty-five active men. They were removed and our Charlie Company was placed on this same hill with the same mission. Our Charlie Company was there for about a half an hour.

Then the CO of that company called up our battalion commander and said he'd like a few slicks, which are the Huey helicopters, to come in and pick up a few men who wanted to reenlist so they could get out of the field. When the battalion commander inquired how many, he said sixty. The battalion commander then flew out to the hill, told the men that he was going to leave them out there for twenty days or as long as it takes for them to start doing what they're supposed to do. What happened was they were out there for approximately a day and then the battalion commander changed plans and they removed them from that hill. We moved on from there. The morale was low. The fact is that we were to beat the enemy. We knew that we were superior to the enemy because we had been told this, and it was relatively hard at this time to believe it, seeing that our entire battalion was almost wiped out. We moved into a Ripcord area of operation and we received many casualties there. Then we moved up into a Gladiator area of operation. This is all approximately in the same area. It is just to the east of the A Shau valley. In the Gladiator area of operation, our troops were deployed around the fire base. The fire base was mortared every night. From there we moved on. I was in the rear part at this time. I witnessed myself truckloads of replacements coming in. There would be eighty replacements in one day, maybe a hundred replacements, coming in to our battalion. The next place we went was Fire Support Base Henderson. Fire Support Base Henderson was quite north of where we had been working. I'm not quite sure of the distance from the DMZ. It was between ten and twenty miles I'm pretty sure. I was told by a major in our tactical operations center that there were 2,300 North Vietnamese soldiers in this area. He was just explaining on the map he wasn't taking me particularly out and pointing at this. However, I worked in the tactical operations center and I observed this as he was pointing it out to the rest of the people. This was a new fire base. Because of the tactics in Vietnam changing (this is all my opinion, however) it was kind of hard to find missions to send the men on. We had no specific mission. So we were building a base camp, as it looked to me, in this North Vietnamese stronghold. It only had two strands of concertina wire around it, which is quite unusual. Two strands of concertina wire can be laid in maybe less than one day. It is just like a preliminary. It really is nothing at all. Now the NVA prisoners were utilized to build this fire support base. That is, these were North Vietnamese soldiers who had been captured, and they were kept on the fire base at night. My Alpha Company was sent to this fire base, and also my recon unit to secure it. Our Alpha Company had eighteen new people sent to it on Henderson.

These eighteen new people were all new in country. They had only been in country four days. They had had no in-country training. Nine of these people were in this battalion less than twenty-four hours and they were dead. Our recon unit was set in an area on this fire base where they had, say, this part of the fire base to secure. There was an ammo dump in this section. Then there was the rest of the main fire base. That night, the night that those replacements went up there, the North Vietnamese got into the fire base. They blew up the ammo dump, thus cutting off our recon team. One hundred percent casualties were received in our recon team, and it was virtually wiped out. All weren't killed, but like I say they did receive one hundred percent casualties. The next day, after it was attacked, one of the Brigade Colonels flew to Fire Support Base Henderson. They were there for approximately a half an hour, and he returned. He was put in for a Silver Star for being at Fire Support Base Henderson. Like I say, it's terribly hard right now up there to find a mission. This is the way it looks to me, and I'm sure these facts actually do point it out to you too. They were striving to prove our superiority. Yet we ended up killing quite a few of them uselessly.

Ripcord in July, I think this was pretty much in the news. Before we tactically moved off of Ripcord, my Delta Company was sitting on a hill, which was Hill 1000, approximately a mile from Fire Support Base Ripcord. They sat on top of this hill for nine nights. They were hit by mortars every night and every night at least one man was wounded or killed. The significance of sitting on this hill for nine nights I also question. And then there was the tactical retreat in July. I myself thought it was because of the Cambodia thing, the moving into Cambodia. There was more intense NVA push in the northern areas. This is the way it looks to me. Like I say I was a radio operator, and a lot of things I never witnessed myself. However, I heard many, many things. In August I was working on a fire support base where I had access to radios from the First Brigade, radios from the Second Brigade, and also radios from an ARVN regiment. I would get calls daily from Fire Support Base Barnett. It was almost a natural thing. At five o'clock I would get a call saying we're receiving mortars on Fire Support Base Barnett. Barnett is about one klick from O'Reilly, which was abandoned. In the north, because of this lack of ability to prove ourselves in the field--it's throwing a backlash in the rear areas also. And not only in the rear areas but out in the field too, where instead of being able to prove yourself by defeating the enemy, it's coming right down to the people right among the American ranks. There were incidents which began to accelerate more.

They were always there, but they began to accelerate around July and on up until I left. A black stabbing a white man; because of this a white man jumped a black brother, started beating him, started kicking him. The brother jumped up, went and got some more brothers, came back, there was almost a big hassle. Nothing ever came out of it. The white dude never had anything done to him at all. Black brothers were in the barracks. They were in the barracks listening to music. Some, I cannot say they were white, however even if they were black, they must have had white thoughts, were throwing in grenades. They threw in two grenades from either door. Two of the brothers were killed and two of them were wounded. In March, a black brother, a good friend of mine, a very good friend of mine, was supposed to move. He was supposed to make a movement and he was supposed to be on a truck at seven o'clock in the morning. Now he didn't make that truck, and this is failure to meet movement. He didn't quite know what was going to happen, nothing ever became of it. However in October (this had happened in March, by the way) they had his trial. He found out about it about a week before. As a result of his trial he was sentenced to two months in LBJ, which is the Long Binh Jail. And I'm sure there's been a few stories about that place. At one time our battalion had fifteen people from it in the Long Binh Jail. The majority of them were black, Mexican, and Puerto Rican. The way I see it, it's still an atrocity. Human beings are harming other human beings, and it's wrong. And that's why we feel that it's got to stop now. When the power of love overcomes the love of power then there will be peace.

MODERATOR. Our next speaker will be a former E-5 of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, Murphy Lloyd. Murphy, let me ask you a question. How did you encourage information from your detainees or from the prisoners that you captured in the field?

LLOYD. Well, first of all we would ask them. If we didn't get the information, or if they said they didn't know any and we figured they were lying, we'd go to torture. The first time I ever saw it used was on Operation Junction City. We were over by the Cambodian border in War Zone C. We had just walked into an ambush, and out of this ambush we had approximately fifteen casualties. Five were killed out of those fifteen. We picked up five or six prisoners, and were flying them back toward our fire support base. We had a lieutenant that had been in country about five days. He said that he was going to conduct the interrogation. We were explaining to him that we had qualified people in the rear to do this, but he told us to shut up, he was a lieutenant. So boom, that ended that. So he asked two or three questions, and all of them kept saying "No bic" or "Mu la" or something.

MODERATOR. Explain what that means.

LLOYD. Either "I'm not going to tell you" or "I don't know." I believe it's "I don't know." So what he did, we were in a Chinook. A Chinook is bigger than a Huey. It has a door that opens in the rear and that's how we went in. Also it has a middle door used to take up cargo. Then he ordered the door opened, the middle door, and without another word, he just pushed one out. And then he said, "Are you going to tell me now?" and he started to put his gun on them. So all this time we're looking at him. We're kind of mad too because we had been out there and some of our friends had been killed or wounded. At the time it really didn't mean anything to us. He pushed out another one. Now the third one he came to, he started to say something in Vietnamese and pointed to one of them on the end. As we found out after searching this fellow, he was a lieutenant in the North Vietnamese Army. On the way in after this, he said if anything was said about this he would make it harder on us. Okay, so he wrote himself up for a medal by detaining and getting information from prisoners and saving us from walking into another ambush, evidently. But he received a Bronze Star with a V device in it for valor. The V stood for valor.

And again, we were in the northern part. We were up by Dak To. This was in May of 1967. A Company of the Second Battalion was annihilated, all but about four or five people. During the time that they were being annihilated up there, we were sitting down ready. Our battalion commander kept asking for word to go up. And the battalion commander of A Company, Second Battalion, kept saying they could hold their own. So about four or five hours after they told us to saddle up and we had to go. They took us in on another side of the hill which was hot. By the time we worked our way to where A Company was of the Second Battalion, all the bodies we found that were American soldiers were shot through the head. I mean you could look at a fellow and tell if he had been wounded in the arm or the leg or the chest, but all the ones we found had a bullet hole right here. And this showed that the NVAs after they had gone through killing, even during the battle, had enough time to go through and make sure that all GIs were dead. But out of this battle four people came out. That was the lieutenant, the CO, the first sergeant, and the FO.

MODERATOR. And the FO's an officer also.

LLOYD. Yes. And about two days after that we found an Indian fellow. He was just wandering around in the jungle. He had been wounded. Evidently it wasn't too serious and he had slipped away. And he ran down to us what had happened. The way it was he don't know how the officers or anybody made out because he figured everybody else was killed too. But that same day these four individuals were transferred to another unit or out of country, which we didn't know. We just knew that they had left the unit that day. When we brought this prisoner back he was back in the fire support base approximately a half an hour. And then after the word got around that the officers had ran, they were gone. We don't know where they went. To this day I don't know. And one time I was on my way home. We were in An Khe and while waiting on our plane, the airstrip was overrun by NVAs. They came through the old An Khe village side. The only ones left back there to defend it was the finance personnel, the clerks, and the cooks, more or less administrative people. So they took all the infantry people that were going home, issued us weapons right quick.

They ran us on out to the airstrip. During this time we had worked our way across the airstrip, and after we got everything organized and we finally took back the airstrip, we started going on little search and destroy missions in old An Khe. We ran into a few NVA that came to us Chieu Hoi and right on the spot where we're taking them prisoner a lieutenant came up. He said, "There's a three-day pass for any body. If you can prove that you've killed an NVA you have a three-day pass to Vuc To." That's the in-country R & R center. And right there at that point I actually with my own eyes saw a first sergeant and a lieutenant fight over who (the prisoners were killed; they were taken and killed right there on the spot) over who killed them. They just started to fight right there. And there's been quite a few incidents like that that I could recall. I have helped in torturing prisoners. One time the village chief came and said that he wanted to take the bodies and put them on display in Sin City where most of the soldiers went for entertainment. So that the rest of the people in the village, Viet Cong, NVA, would see 'em and leave. But he couldn't do this due to the fact that the majority of the bodies that were there that day either had their pinky finger joint cut off or their ears cut off. And at one time (we thought it was showing courage and bravery, or whatever you want to call it) we wore ears. We'd take them and catch them while they were alive; take an ear. The Vietnamese people believe if they die without all of their bodies they won't go to heaven and we would do this to two or three of them to get information from the rest of them.

MODERATOR. Thank you. The next speaker giving testimony will be Michael Erard, former Spec. 5, also with the 173rd Airborne Brigade.

ERARD. I served with the Third Battalion, 503rd Infantry and I had two jobs. I was in the field for about four months as a line doggie transferred into a battalion and I served as the medic liaison with S-5. S-5 is what they call civil affairs to handle the Psy-Op operations, to handle the Chieu Hoi program for the battalion. The Chieu Hoi program is designed to get NVA and VC defectors to come over to our side and the specific instructions given out on a battalion level were that these people were to be treated differently than POWs. If a man, after a contact or during a contact, would raise his hand and say "Chieu Hoi" the Americans were supposed to give that man treatment. He was supposed to be set aside. He was supposed to be given receipts for his weapons.

None of his personal belongings were to be touched. This was the battalion SOP, but it was never carried out on a company level. On my whole tour there our battalion never took a live Chieu Hoi. There were many leaflets dropped. We found Chieu Hoi passes on bodies of dead VC and dead NVA, but we never took a person in. The feeling among the grunts was that they didn't trust the Chieu Hoi.

I went down with an officer to Saigon, to the national Chieu Hoi center to recruit these former NVAs to serve as what we called Kit Carson Scouts. These scouts would serve in a line company. They would serve as the point men on the line companies. For the most part they were mistreated in the battalion. They were not given proper equipment. They were saying, well, a gook doesn't have to have this. A gook doesn't have to have that. He was supposed to have the exact complement that a U.S. soldier had in the field, but he never got it. The soldiers didn't want a Chieu Hoi, a Kit Carson, in their platoon. We had to force company commanders to take a Chieu Hoi into the company.

The second incident, relating specifically as a medic, was an incident in the village of An Quan, which is in Binh Dinh Province, north of Qui Nhon. I was with Charlie Company, 3/503rd, and we had been suffering serious injuries, traumatic amputations, especially from booby traps. On two specific incidents, we had men who were picked up by supposedly a medivac chopper, but the chopper was a slick with guns on it. It had a Red Cross on it, but there was no medic on board; there were no stretchers. In the third incident we had three men who were seriously injured. The gunners from the slick jumped down and started to throw our wounded on board. I had two men in our platoon who went berserk, as it were. They beat up the two gunners on the chopper while the chopper was hovering about two feet above the ground. The pilot wouldn't even land. And it was not a hot LZ. We were not taking fire from anybody. They beat up the gunners because they were mad at the way our wounded were being treated. To add to this, our battalion did not have a medivac chopper of its own. When we wanted medivac, a dust-off, we had to call back to battalion headquarters and they had to call brigade. Then we got a clearance for the dust-off. This was a matter of fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes seems pretty quick over here, but over there it's a long time, specially when you have a man dying of a serious wound. There were numerous accidents around our LZ, LZ Uplift, which is south of Bong Son, in Bin Dinh Province.

We had a friendly village to the south of us. There were two times when Americans fired from the perimeter into this village. Working in S-5 I would go out and be part of the investigating team in which the American government would investigate the accident. Then we would pay them what they called a "solacium payment." Now the solacium payment was a condolence type payment, like you might send flowers to someone's funeral. It in no way implied or implicated us as the perpetrators of this. So we would pay them a certain amount of money for people lost. In one incident there was a woman and five children killed and I think a sum of $500 was paid for this. In another incident, right before I left, a young boy was out tending cattle. An M-79 was fired from the perimeter and he was seriously wounded. We could not take him to an American hospital. We spent about an hour just preparing him for surgery. He was not taken to an American hospital but to a Vietnamese hospital. This was battalion SOP, that you did not take wounded Vietnamese to American facilities. No payment was made and I went all the way to brigade on this. I tried to get payment for the family of this boy who died, but I was not able to follow it through. At the time I left, the S-5 officer there would not listen to me; the brigade S-5 would not listen to me. The last thing that I want to relate was the last mission that I was involved in in Vietnam. Our battalion was in the An Lau Valley in Bin Dinh Province which is west of Bong Son. Our mission was to interdict NVA infiltration down the valley. I was the medic, I was the senior medic on Fire Base Abby. Along these valleys there were small garden plots and graves. In the garden plots were potatoes and small fruit-type gardens, or truck-type gardens. Intelligence said that the NVA were using these gardens as sources of food. In the period of six weeks that I was there, I know of ten civilians, ten unarmed civilians, who were killed tending these gardens. Again, I had access to the TOC and to all the briefings. The battalion CO was upset that there were no weapons found with these people. They were shot while they were working the field and there were no weapons found with the people. It was covered up on the battalion level and these people were reported as VC. In fact, they were old men who were killed working these plots. Again, there were Psy-Op missions and Chieu Hoi passes were dropped in the area. But the fact was that these people were up there to visit graves. The graves were actually in the garden plots. I doubt very much if the people really understood that they weren't supposed to be in the area. The area was not a free fire zone. So prisoners were not taken. In regard to medical treatment of wounded Vietnamese, and this involves not only captured prisoners, but also any Vietnamese, when we went out into the field we were issued a small bottle of serum albumin, about 500 cc's. Our platoon sergeant said, "This is worth $25. Never use it on a gook." There were many occasions where a wounded Vietnamese was sent back or dusted-off with only a bandage to stop the bleeding when the man needed IV fluids to make it. He was not given that aid. We had to account for our bottles of serum albumin just as we had to account for our morphine. We were, we were not allowed to waste it on a Vietnamese.

MODERATOR. Allan Crouse, former E-4, also with the 82nd Airborne Division.

CROUSE. I would like to talk about the policies and the conditions of the people in our areas of operation. We had fire bases twenty, thirty miles north of Saigon and we had one battalion on the border. I was down there from January '69 to December '69. This was about a year after the Tet offensive and conditions were quiet. There was some light contact, but the North Vietnamese, you know, could not stage anything right around this area because it was too much. Peace prevailed around the area and with relatively light security. We were getting work done without harassment from the enemy. We got to know some of the Vietnamese people as human beings. We talked to them, with interpreters, and got to know some of these old papa-sans, trash, as the army says. I mean, these people do have so much intelligence and wisdom that it's just phenomenal. And you learn that they don't really want much materially because they never had anything. All they want is a chance for peace, to live off the land, raise their children peacefully. In the past it's just has been too much. They never knew anything else besides this war. It's just tearing everything up. We cleared about 2,000 acres north of Saigon, about twenty miles north, with many tunnels there, destroying the land.

MODERATOR. Excuse me, Allan, could you get into the dynamiting of villages?

CROUSE. Yes. Actually atrocities were not too prevalent there because the army felt it was close to a populated area and they didn't want any bad news. Just as the other man said, whenever the newsmen were around everything was nice. They went out of their way to keep calm. The army didn't want any atrocities around this area. But we would go through one or two villages where they'd practice their explosives. Just walk into these huts and destroy one or two.

MODERATOR. I will open up the floor right now to the press for questions.

QUESTION. I'd like to ask Bill Perry a question. What do you feel like, you men who go to Vietnam and are subject to such brutality? How do you feel this affects the individual when he comes back to the United States and sees things happening back here? How do you think the average Vietnam veteran that's done all these things, and gone through all these things, feels when he comes back to the States?

PERRY. People say we must stop the war. I feel it's so much more than this. The whole rich man's game has always been fear. They've always been very much into impressing us. Now here's the Empire State Building. Be impressed. Now here is the C-5A or some fantastic jet bomber. Be impressed. You know, be afraid of it. Here is a club. I'll bust your head if you don't stay in line. Be impressed. Be afraid. Competition is another thing that brings about fear. Like ever since we're little children. Come on, stupid, you're thirteen months. Why can't you walk yet? Then there's this fear that's always put into us by the movie people for instance. That all Africans are cannibals and all Indians are savages. Who are the real savages? Who is really creating this climate of fear--this climate of mistrust--this climate which makes us scared to death of the person sitting next to us? Who prevents us from loving each other? The whole fear thing is what's creating atrocities in Selma, atrocities in Phuc Vinh, atrocities in Angola, atrocities in Mozambique, atrocities in Montevideo. It's happening everywhere. We're afraid of ourselves. We're not allowed to love each other.

The whole life style of the Vietnamese people, their whole cultural and social way of life, is nothing but love. It's a kind of love we really lack in this country and a kind of love that we have to build. A kind of opening of ourselves, an honesty ourselves and a love for each other where you know there will be no reason to hurt anyone except perhaps to protect our love. You know, the kind of love which is called primitive or savage. The whole American policy is nothing but what you might call cultural imperialism. It's like a very clever form of racism. They've always been into trying to honkify white people as much as possible. Trying to make you whiter than white. Just taking their whole decadent culture, their whole cold-weather culture, their whole fear culture, their whole money culture, and push their fear, push this hate, push this mistrust, among all of us. It's this kind of thing some of us have felt all of our lives. You know, when I was sixteen years old, I used to hang out on street corners, drink wine with other kids, have a lot of fun, and be free. The cops came along and, bam, put me in jail for sixteen months. Said get a haircut and look like a honky. I got out of jail, you know, and I was being free for a while, having a lot of fun, and you know the Army said come with me. And, you know, bam, they give you a haircut, you look like a honky...and act like a honky. I came out of the Army and for two and a half years I was really having a lot of fun being free. My wife is Oriental; we have two children. We were stopped in New Jersey for possession of rifles and illegal weapons. Like the whole thing happened all over again. You know, they arrested me again cut off my hair.

You're a nigger lover. You're a pig killer. We're going to make you white. You know, cut your hair. You know, the whole thing. Don't be free--you're not allowed to be free. They put the children in the home. The whole thing about what are you doing--_____ to make more gooks? There are Vietnam veterans who have joined the police force and still carry the same racism. Telling my wife things like, "You get your orders from Chairman Mao, don't you?" All this weird paranoid fear they have. Fear that they've had, and we've had, since birth. It's on us to eradicate this fear. It's on us to dig on love, you know, to love each other--to learn how to love. The Vietnamese people dig on preserving their beautiful life style and they won us over by loving us. Loving us to the death of our honky culture. Loving us to the death of holding our white values. Loving us to the death of believing in technology. Loving us to the death of all the phony _____ they have always given us. And this is where it's at--digging on what they've told us are primitive cultures, you know, getting back into the sun, treating each other like real human beings, not competing, but really cooperating, and really loving while doing so. Like it's all we can do. We have to do it. It's just a question of getting it together and doing it.

MODERATOR. I have a release statement here to read to you. "To the brothers of Winter Soldier: Those of us who are still prisoners of the war machine would like to express our solidarity with those of you who have found the courage to expose what we are part of and what we are now facing. Hopefully your actions will move more of our brothers and sisters in uniform to join us in our resistance from within of the system which is responsible for the oppression of peoples around the world. Together we can bring that system to a halt. Keep up the struggle. Signed, The Brothers of the American Servicemen's Union, Selfridge Air Force Base, Michigan."

And the last statem [PIECE MISSING]
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Re: Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veter

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Part 1 of 2

15. 1ST, 4TH, AND 9TH INFANTRY DIVISIONS

MODERATOR. Good afternoon. My name is Wayne Novick. This is going to be the testimony of the 1st, 4th, and 9th Infantry Divisions. I'm the moderator.

DONNER. My name's Don Donner. I'm going to moderate also. We're changing the format somewhat this afternoon. Instead of having each person rap down his basic line--about what happened to him in Vietnam, we're going to try and take wide areas--treatment of GIs, treatment of civilians, treatment of prisoners, H & I fire, the entire realm of free fire zones, what the war has done to us individually and collectively. For each of these sections each of the gentlemen on the panel will be allowed to testify on that one particular section before we move on to the next. We will allow questions from the press, one or two at the end of each section if anybody wishes to ask. Okay, starting here, John, would you like to introduce yourself and work on down.

LYTLE. John Lytle, 6/15 Artillery, 1st Division. I spent--I was in Vietnam in '67, '68, '69. Came back a Spec. 4. I think I was really an E-3, but I ripped my records off so they never knew what I was. My MOS was 13 Echo 20, Artillery Forward Observer.

MCCONNACHIE. My name is Robert McConnachie. I'm 22, I'm from the Sunshine State, Miami, Florida. I was a student before I entered the service. I enlisted in the service. I was a sergeant E-5, I was in the 1st Infantry Division, 2nd/28th, Black Lions, I was an RTO. I was in Vietnam in '67 and '68 and right now I'm a student.

NEWTON. My name is Ron Newton, 24 years old, Portland, Oregon. I was drafted. I was with 704 Maintenance Battalion, 4th Division, Personnel Specialist. Now I'm a student at Portland State University.

HARTNER. My name is John Hartner. I am now a student, I was in graduate school before I was drafted. I served with the 4th Infantry Division in Vietnam. When I first arrived in the country, I worked with the Third Brigade Headquarters Company in the Operating Section. Shortly after I arrived, the Third Brigade was sent home. I then worked in the Intelligence Section in the Second Brigade.

RIPPBERGER. My name is Carl Rippberger. I'm 23. I was a student before I entered the service. I was in Vietnam from May of '67 to May of '68. I was in "K" Troop, 3rd Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. I was a machine gunner for the first few months I was there. Later on I drove an armored cavalry assault vehicle. I'm now a salesman for an electrical distributor.

FARRELL. My name is Mike Farrell, I'm 24. I was a part-time student before I was drafted. I was drafted in April of '66. I got out of the army in January of '68. I was with "A" Company, 2nd/60th, 9th Infantry Division. I was a rifleman for the first three months that I was over there. The remainder of the tour, I was a machine gunner. Right now I'm a student at Oakland Community College here in Detroit.

HENRY. My name is John Henry. I'm 26. I'm a student from Detroit. I was a Spec. 4 in Vietnam in the 9th Infantry Division, same company he was in, 2nd/60th. I was there from March '68 to February of '69. I was an infantryman for nine months, worked on a mortar squad, and the last three months I was a trash man for an Artillery Unit.

SHEPARD. My name is Frank Shepard, Im 23, from Plymouth, Michigan. I was a student before I entered the service. I'm a free spirit now. I was in the 5th Battalion, 60th Infantry in the Headquarters Division, in the Personnel Department. Served in Vietnam from March of '68 to August of '69.

RICE. My name's Bill Rice, I'm from Vineland, New Jersey, I'm 21 years old. I was a machine gunner for "D" Company, 3rd Battalion, 47th Infantry, and then when they were moved out I was transferred to Headquarters, Third Brigade.

HOPKINS. My name is Barry Hopkins, I'm 22 years old from Greensberg, Kansas. I enlisted for the draft in '68 and went to Vietnam in January 1969 to January '70. I was with the 3rd/39th, 9th Division. I was a point man for five months.

MOORE. My name is Scott Moore, I'm 26 years old, I'm from New York City. I was a First Lieutenant in the Infantry. I was a platoon leader for five months and Forward Resupply after that. I served with the 2nd/39th, 9th Infantry Division.

LENIX. My name is Mark Lenix. I'm 24 years of age, I was a lab technician before I went in the service. I was drafted. I was a 1st Lieutenant, served with the 1st/11th Artillery attached to the 2nd/39th Infantry Battalion as Forward Observer.

MODERATOR. We're going to start discussion on H & I fire. Bob, you were an RTO and an FO, Forward Observer, for Artillery working with the Infantry. Could you tell us about H & I fire? Exactly what it is, how it was used, how often, and things like that?

MCCONNACHIE. H & I fire is harassment and interdiction. These guns, 105 howitzers, they shoot mostly at night, to keep the VC on the move. They always got to keep them moving to protect us and the ambushes. I'll give you one instance on H & I fire. The people firing don't know what they're firing them at; they're so stupid. I was in a leper colony, it was called Ben Son. There was a unit of 40-meter Mike-Mikes, they're usually not on jeeps, dusters they're called. This one unit put 46 rounds in this leper colony, killing some civilians. It was a hospital complex. They knew where it was. So I jumped in the ARVN's truck (there were 140 ARVNs at this place and there were only three Americans, a sergeant and two Pfc.s) and the ARVNs took me over where this unit was. There was a captain there and he asked me if I had told his superiors. My superiors were located in Di An which is detonate 5-2. I showed him where we were on the map and he holds his hands in the air and says, "I know where you're at now." You know, he says, "Don't tell my superiors," and I said okay. So I went back to my base camp where I was stationed.

MODERATOR. John, you were also in Artillery, would you care to talk about H & I?

LYTLE. We'd have to get clearance from battalion to shoot 'em. You'd have to call in and get your clearance, get your grids, you'd mark it off on your maps and you'd get everything set up to shoot H & Is. We used to shoot H & Is three times a night anyway. Every time we shot we'd shoot like a hundred rounds, maybe two hundred rounds, of these big shells, you know; 105 howitzer shoots a shell approximately five inches in diameter. It's about this long with a projectile on it and a shell part on it. It'll make you a nice swimming hole when it lands. So maybe three times a night we'd shoot those, you know. At least for six months we did that, I remember. We usually didn't have to get much clearance, you know. If we just wanted to shoot 'em, we would mark off for one of the companies that were out on patrol or something; they'd call in and say there's a little bit of movement (or one of the starlight scopes would pick up some movement) and we'd just throw some shells in. If it happened to be a village, we'd probably just lob some shells in there too. It's no big thing, you know. We didn't worry about it.

MODERATOR. Did you ever notice any results of the H & I fire? Were you ever in the area after H & I fire?

LYTLE. Well, yeah, like I've been around in areas, you know; walked through the villages after we've hit 'em, and they're just totally destroyed, totally. Like, say this building right here would be nothing, you know. You could see the sky, everything would be completely, completely rubble.

MODERATOR. Okay. You say the order came down from battalion on this. How do we know that these people were VC or were not VC?

LYTLE. We were in areas that if there was movement at night, wow, maybe they're trying to get you, so we get them first.

MODERATOR. Okay. John Henry, you also mentioned that you were in an area where H & I fire was SOP. Would you care to comment on it?

HENRY. I was in an Artillery unit for a while. It wasn't where we fired H & Is. But you've got to get clearance from the Vietnamese nationals and the Americans. They set up these fire zones, the H & I fire zones. There are areas like in the Plain of Reeds, which is south of Saigon and a stronghold of VC, where they pretty much own the country and they walk at will at night. Well, you've got to fire a lot of harassing fire. We used to take our mortars out to the field and--well, the VC aren't stupid either.

They get out of the rain. They're not like us; we sleep in the rain around dikes. But the VC, they go to houses and hamlets, rest up for the night, and get food and things. And we used to shell villages at times, like five or six rounds every thirty minutes or so all through the night. On the perimeter of the village, people had a curfew and were supposed to be in. But if some mama-san got up during the middle of the night and had to move her bowels, she was ducking flak, too. We had free fire zones; we had mad minutes, just about throughout the Ninth Division. You know about mad minutes. A mad minute--everybody gets on line, everybody in the company, and you play Machine Gun Murphy. You're told to fire a magazine through your weapon and you just pepper the countryside. Usually you do this about six o'clock at night because you get colors off the tracers. I don't know why.

MODERATOR. John, did you ever use the mad minute in an area or in a fire support base where there was a village close by?

HENRY. Well, there are hootches along the wood line and that's where pockets of VC would collect. So we fired towards the wood line, and where there were hootches, where there was civilian population. But they had thick bunkers, thick bunkers.

MODERATOR. Mark, you were an artillery officer, can you give us anything more on H & I policy and techniques?

LENIX. Well, H & I was to sort of keep the VC off guard. You weren't sure what was there, but if they were, then of course, you just drop artillery on top of them. When I was working with H & I fire, you'd put your arms out and the only clearance you'd have would be from battalion. You'd call them, give them a grid square, and they'd say, "Sure, there's nothing there. Go ahead and shoot." And then, of course, you'd send the order to the guns and the guns would shoot. Well, on one instance that I can remember, there was nobody there and we went ahead and shot. The next day a papa-san brought in his dead wife and wounded baby. There was nobody there.

MODERATOR. Okay, Mike Farrell, we also talked about H & I; would you care to talk?

FARRELL. Yes, I was in a Brigade Medical Center in Tan An. This was a short distance from my base camp. I was trying to get dental aid and I was in the aid station. This was approximately May of '67 and they brought in a woman with a small child. The child was approximately three, four years old, and the child was very badly mutilated. He was bleeding very profusely, you know, and he was in a state of shock. I asked the doctor what had happened to this child and the doctor said that the child was hit by H & I fire. I myself did not see the child being wounded by this H & I fire, but this was the report that the chopper pilots brought in.

MODERATOR. Scott, I just want to get this in here. You were in the same unit as Mark. Can you corroborate the testimony he's given?

MOORE. Right. I was in the same unit for four or five months before Mark got there and H & Is were definitely used. I can remember going through rice paddies on search and destroy missions and finding dead peasants in the middle of the paddies, just lying there. I'm sure they were caused by H & Is.

MODERATOR. Bill, you also were talking about H & I.

RICE. Well, we went out one night when an ambush was set up around this hootch. We had gone through this area several times. We knew the papa-san and everything there. We come up there this one night and started getting a big hassle from him because mortar rounds from our 81s had gone through the roof of his hootch. Another landed outside his hootch and blew his boat up. Fortunately, no one was killed. We used to get a lot of readings. They put out these things called duffle bags and radar. They pick up readings on these and fire on them. I doubt that they had any visual contact with the people they were firing on, but rather picked them up on radar and fired on a radar sight, not knowing who was there.

MODERATOR. That's radar against personnel on the ground?

RICE. Right.

MODERATOR. Is there any way that you would understand for the radar to be used to tell if these troops were friendly or not?

RICE. About the only way you could tell was to call and see if any friendly units were in the area. They'd check with the ARVN, with the American units, and any unit operating around us. If there were no military units there, then they would fire. They'd not check for civilians.

DONNER. I see.

MODERATOR. Just on this radar business, I was in the Infantry also. To tell you how accurate it was, they set up some anti-personnel radar in my base camp and sent my platoon out on a little riff around the NDP. They were picking up VC in between us, on the sides of us, in back of us and in front of us and there was nobody out there but us. So that's how accurate the stuff is.

MODERATOR. Okay. Most of you have agreed that H & I is fairly SOP--standard operating procedure. Does anybody else have any particular story they want to relate on this matter? Okay. For the benefit of the audience, it's my understanding that the entire free fire zone concept, where areas are set aside and anybody there is assumed to be an enemy, H & I fire, firing without warning at anything moving in this area, is against not only the Geneva Convention, but most of the rules on civilized warfare. Do any of the members of the press wish to raise a question on H & I fire to this panel? Okay. Our next topic is going to be treatment of GIs in the service in Vietnam by officers and other GIs. Ron, you were a personnel specialist. Would you like to give us something on this?

NEWTON. As a personnel specialist I had contact with records, of course. I saw enlisted men being used in jobs that were outside of their MOS. I was used in a completely unrelated job, a menial job at tech supply, when I was a personnel specialist, because they were shorthanded. I saw men that were not qualified to go out on guard duty or shore patrols, sent out on patrols. Men who were not qualified with M-16s were sent out on patrols to use the weapons. I myself was issued a Claymore. I never saw one before I got to Vietnam.

I never had any AIT training, OJT (on the job training) and many other people were this way. No jungle training. We were part of an advance party from 4th Infantry Division which I think is the worst Division in Vietnam because it's poorly trained. Besides we shouldn't be over there anyway. But I was part of the advance party. We did not know how to do anything right while we were over there. The first initial months the officers completely harass the men. We were living in pup tents, yet we had to have spit shined boots. And shined buckles. If you didn't obey the commands, if you didn't get into the program, they'd take you out and ship you to the infantry. AIT, for those that don't know, is Advanced Infantry Training. Now, you qualify with your weapons, you learn how to fight. Since I was a personnel specialist, I really didn't know what was coming off when I got over there. And they said, "Okay, you're going on a patrol tonight." "A what? Can I take my typewriter with me or something?"

MODERATOR. Ron, you said you were issued a Claymore and never had any Stateside training on the use of such a weapon. Did you receive training while you were in Vietnam on any weapons that you were required to use or carry?

NEWTON. No. I started out with an M-14 but shortly after we got to Vietnam we got M-16s.

MODERATOR. And you also did not have any training on the M-16?

NEWTON. I had training on the M-14, but I did not have training on the M-16.

MODERATOR. Mark, a lot of people in the States are under the impression that the GI gets the best medical care in the world. I believe you have something that's a little contrary to that. Could you give us that?

LENIX. Right. My Easter of '69 wasn't exactly what I'd call a treat. I was wounded. They decided that I wasn't wounded bad enough to be dusted off, so I waited a period of approximately nine hours while I was laying in a pig sty to be dusted off. When I was dusted off, I was taken to the hospital. I will say the treatment I got was fast, but efficient, it wasn't. I was taken into the operating room and worked on. They completely neglected the wounds on my arms and, of course, I had to say, "I don't think you're finished yet." So they sewed up the wounds on my arms. I was then released to get to a ward. I was put in a ward where there was no medic, no supervisor. I was told by the man laying next to me that I was hemorrhaging. Well, since there was no one in the ward that meant I had to get up and walk back to the operating room and open the door and say, "Doctor, I'm not done." Then they put me back on the table and said, "Oh, I guess you're not!" And they finished it up. Well, that wasn't the end of it. Then they sent me for two weeks' recuperation. As I was recuperating, the wounds were supposed to be healing. Well, they didn't heal, but the doctor gave the orders to take the stitches out without ever looking at me. The stitches came out and the wounds opened back up, but I'd already been released from the hospital so they couldn't treat me again. So they sent me home. When I got back to my unit, I stopped at the hospital in Dong Tam, which was the 9th Med. Battalion Hospital, and they told me that I'd have to be operated on again. I told them that, "No, thank you, brother." I went to the aid station and was worked on by a Spec. 5 who was just a male nurse, but he gave me excellent treatment. The treatment that the army offered me and gave me was no good. I had to seek my own from people within the unit that I knew.

MODERATOR. What was the general attitude of the doctors in the hospital toward yourself and the other people who hadn't been treated properly?

LENIX. Well, I never saw a doctor. He came in one day and took a look at me and said, "All right. Your stitches will come out in three days." And that was the last of it. Three days later the stitches came out. He wasn't there to supervise it; it was a Spec. 4, just an aide, who came and clipped 'em out. As they were coming out, the wounds were opening up and he asked the nurse in the ward, "These wounds are opening, should I take 'em out?" The rest of them came out and the wounds opened back up.

MODERATOR. Is there anybody else on the panel who has any testimony?

FARRELL. Yes. It was April of '67 and I sprained an ankle. The only medical treatment I ever received was an Ace bandage; if you're not familiar with it, it's a big elastic bandage that they use to tape up sore muscles. I could not walk out in the field. But for three months I was out in the field with this foot taped up like this and it was the only remedy they would give me. They wouldn't give me enough time off out on the line to let that foot heal up properly. They'd give me Ace bandages--new ones--each time I'd come out of the field because they'd be ruined by the water and the mud that we were in. And Darvon Compound. If you don't know what Darvons are, they're just little pain pills, mild pain pills, and they're very widely distributed over there. There is another instance of my mistreatment over there. I have very poor vision and I lost my glasses on a night ambush patrol. I only had one pair of glasses remaining and these were sunglasses. I was made to pull guard duty at night on a bunker with sunglasses. I have 20/200 vision in both eyes. As far as I'm concerned that's pretty blind. I couldn't see and then with really dark sunglasses (the type that the army issues you) I was pulling guard duty. For the remainder of my tour--I had to go to the doctor--I couldn't tell them that I couldn't see at night. I had to go get a doctor's note to tell them I had to get a profile that I wasn't supposed to be on guard duty. So seeing as I couldn't pull guard duty and details during the day, they had one remaining chore for me to do while I was waiting for my glasses to come in.

That was to pull KP, which I did. Like I pulled KP every day. I was on permanent KP for a month and a half, two months. Needless to say, everybody knows what KP is like. How do you feel at the end of the day of doing KP all day, day in and day out.

MODERATOR. Right. John, we were talking earlier about sick call, and such, if you'd care to go into that.

HENRY. The army is a very demeaning experience. They have a preset way of thinking about enlisted people, especially draftees. When I was an infantryman, there weren't many ways to get off the line and the thing you wanted to do was get off the line. But they'd save those jobs for the short-timers--building bunkers, filling sand bags, burning... good jobs like that. A lot of people were going on sick call because we were losing a lot of people. I went on sick call and I had to get my slip from the doctor that said I was exempt from going out in the field because I had a split-open toe. The conditions out in the paddies would have just aggravated it. So I got this slip from the doctor, but he said I had to go and see the major who was the battalion CO. He was clearing all people; he was like the second step after you went through the doctor. He looked at my toe, took off the bandage, and said it didn't look that bad. He said that they were obliged to send a certain amount of people out to the field--they had to field so many people from each company--and if I didn't go somebody else would have to go. So what they did, they had the first sergeant going out to the field; they had the mail clerk going out in the field; they had the supply clerk going out to the field; and they had the guy who fixed the radios going out to the field. They couldn't field enough people because too many people were going on sick call.

MODERATOR. Would you consider this going on sick call, in the majority of cases, to be malingering?

HENRY. Well, it's really hard to rap to people who haven't been in the army. If you've never been to Vietnam and you've never been in the situation where you go out every day, you've got a really good chance to die. It was tough when you went on sick call because they gave you a bad time. You had to sit on the porch, not smoke cigarettes, and stand around until sick call started at eight o'clock. You had to be there at 7:30. You had to go to the orderly room and get a pass, which meant you had to miss breakfast. They didn't make it easy to be sick; and it wasn't fun to be sick, either, because they always had something else. Like if you couldn't go out to the field, you could fill sand bags or something. You had to be really sick-sick to stop doing anything.

MODERATOR. Okay. Evidently it was required to have a certain amount of people in the field at all times. If people were sick, documented sick by the doctor, they had to go to a major who was in charge of putting a certain number of people out in the field. If he could not get enough people out in the field, then he could override the doctor's orders, even though the person was classified by the doctor as supposed to be staying in?

HENRY. Well, I can only speak for myself, and the doctor told me that I was borderline. He said that if I went out to the field it might be aggravated, but there weren't any stitches in it. I got a shot for Tetanus and some pills. I was wearing shower shoes and he said that I should keep it dry as much as possible and keep it out in the air. If I went out to the field, I'd have to wear my boots and I'd be wet as long as I was out there. I know of other people who got turned down by the major who had to go back out in the field even though they had crotch rot so bad that it was from genital to toe. We lost a lot of people the first couple of months I was in country. My MOS was mortars and they disbanded the mortar platoon to fill the infantry platoon.

MODERATOR. By lost, you mean a lot of men were ripped off, killed? And they had to fill back up, or what?

HENRY. Yeah, we lost fifty percent. More than fifty percent of our casualties were by booby traps and that's just being unlucky because all it takes is one guy to put his foot in the wrong place and a lot of people get hurt. There's no enemy contact, no direct enemy contact. You're not getting a body count, but they are. I don't think we ever did better than they did against us because they were ingenious, you know.

MODERATOR. Okay. Ron, did you want to say something else?

NEWTON. Yes, I had ulcers while I was over in Vietnam, probably as a direct result of being in Vietnam because I didn't like it at all. At first, I went on sick call a couple of times, complained of a bad stomach, a progressively growing worse stomach. Then they started thinking I was faking because some of the men were faking. But one night I had an attack which started bleeding--bowel movements produced blood. In the morning I couldn't get out of my bunk. The sergeant came in and said, "Get the _____ out of the bunk. Go out and work." And I said, "I can't get up." So he went and got the 1st sergeant and they grabbed me, took me out of the bunk, and I passed out. Then they thought, well, maybe he isn't faking, so they got me on a stretcher, took me over to the hospital, and found out I did have ulcers.

NEWTON. I was in the hospital that time for two weeks. They put me on a bland diet, but at the same time, in the first three days or so, I couldn't get around very much. They wanted me to make my bunk, lay on top of it, and do a few details around the hospital. I refused and that made them a little uptight. They wanted to get me out of there, since I wouldn't play ball. About a month later, I went back the second time with worse ulcers. They finally gave me a different diet in the company so that I could keep working.

But the second time I went back, they shipped me to Qui Nhon where I did finally receive some treatment, some really good treatment and I was able to combat the ulcers. But every time that I tried to go on sick call, since I was one of the troublemakers in the company, they tried to refuse me. Also, I had a dental problem. Some of us lost our toothbrushes while we were over there; they didn't have any more toothbrushes to give us, because we were Advanced Advance Party.

The first month or two we were over there, we didn't have anything. We had a canteen of water, that's it. No toothbrushes whatever. My teeth got progressively worse. Finally, I wanted to go see a dentist because I started getting sores on my teeth, and they said, "No, we can't spare you." It got so bad that I could just lift my gum up, or lift my teeth and say, "Hey, look at that." They finally gave me dental treatment, but now as a result of those _____ people, I'm going to lose my teeth.

MODERATOR. It is very common for whoever is in charge, the sergeant or the officer in charge of allowing people to go to sick call, to put it off for any length of time?

NEWTON. If they can. They'll try to say faking at first. If they see signs of it, they'll put it off some more until they can spare you.

MODERATOR. John Hartner, we were talking earlier about many, many things. One of the most important things which we feel we must talk about on this panel is the treatment of both civilians and suspected (meaning civilian) VC. Would you care to go into that?

HARTNER. First, I want to tell you a little bit about the way we ran our operations. We, of course, like everybody else in Vietnam, ran our operations under the free fire zone concept. This is where the Vietnamese clear, with military personnel, a certain area that they are going to work. I'm talking about our American troops. The result of this clearance is that anything then in this area is considered enemy. In the area that we worked in, which was the Central Highland area, there are a lot of Montagnards. The Montagnards, of course, were not consulted. The Montagnards are hated by the Vietnamese, and they couldn't care less whether they lived or died. When I was working in the Intelligence Section of the 2nd Brigade, our average reports, daily reports, consisted of individuals who were fired upon that had no weapon whatsoever. These were primarily Montagnard farmers and hunters just moving around doing their daily chores. But our troops were under orders to fire on these individuals.

I have an example that I'd like to read right now. I'd say that approximately 60 percent of all our reports consisted of this type of material. "On the 24th of July, 1970, 1 Bravo, 1st 22nd, Bravo Romeo 583818, observed two individuals ten meters to the west, wearing blue shirts, black trousers, no weapons. They employed small arms resulting in one enemy KIA; the other fled north. Artillery was employed. They swept with negative findings." This was an everyday occurrence, or more than everyday--several times a day, depending on how many individuals our troops ran into. Every once in a while, we'd be assigned an Air Cav. Troop. I have another example of the same thing. This time, however, there were four NVA soldiers with this Montagnard village. "On the 24th of July, 1970, Bravo, 17th Cav. at Bravo Romeo 2902656, observed 15 to 20 individuals. They received an unknown number of small arms, ground to air fire with negative hits." That means that a couple of the NVA took their rifles and they fired at the gunships expended, resulting in six enemy KIA. "Five minutes later they observed an unknown number of individuals in a bunker and hut complex." This was a Montagnard village. "They employed artillery and an air strike resulting in ten enemy KIA. Thirty minutes later they observed 15 individuals running south along the ridge line." These were individuals who were now fleeing the village. "Artillery was employed again resulting in 10 more KIA. An hour and a half later, they observed 30 to 40 enemy moving south into a wood line. Artillery and an air strike was again employed resulting in 14 more KIA. Thirty minutes after that they observed 12 individuals. Gunships once again expended resulting in 8 enemy KIA." If the count was correct, a total of 48 people died that day. There were only four weapons discovered among these people. It was a Montagnard village.

MODERATOR. For those of you who were not here yesterday, we had a chopper pilot testifying and he mentioned that the way he was told to distinguish between VC, NVA and civilians was that if he was up in the air and he saw somebody down on the ground who was running, that was a VC. If he was up in the air and he saw somebody on the ground standing still and waving at him, that was a well-trained VC. In any case, take care of them both.

You mentioned earlier a conversation which you had. Would you like to talk about that, too?

HARTNER. This is an example of an officer's attitude who flew some of these missions. He was an intelligence officer, working for the 3rd Brigade. One night he was talking to two Specialists bragging about the mission that he had been on that day, how good it had felt to kill one of the individuals. At that time I was standing around the back side of the wall of the TOC, posting maps, and the conversation went like this: The officer is talking now to the two Specialists: "I promise you that I will personally kill two dinks tomorrow. I'll bet you that I'll kill two dinks tomorrow." This time I walked around. I said, "Sir, what do you consider a dink? Any Vietnamese?" His answer: "Anything over three months old." My response: "Sir, you are really... sorry." The officer then spoke: "It doesn't make any difference if they have a weapon or _____ this big. I killed a woman once, and it was really funny."

MODERATOR. Most of us can testify that in many, many cases this is the general attitude of not only the officers but ourselves. Carl, would you like to go into those first two slides you have?

RIPPBERGER. The first two slides you're going to see were the burning of a village. Our armored column moved it. It was in June or July of '67. It moved into a village. The people obviously heard us coming and fled the village in fear of what would happen if they were still there when we got there. We made a thorough search of the village. We found no weapons and nothing to suspect that these people were Viet Cong. Orders came down to burn the village anyway. It was a small farming village of maybe 10-15 hootches.

MODERATOR. This is a picture of the village itself burning, is that correct?

RIPPBERGER. Right. This is one of the hootches burning. All the people's belongings, everything they owned were in these hootches.

MODERATOR. Carl, was there any warning given to these people before moving in, or did you just move into the village and say we're going to burn it?

RIPPBERGER. No, we were on search and destroy and we were just driving through. The helicopter spotted this small farming village and as we moved in the tanks and armored cavalry assault vehicles were very loud. They can be heard for miles and the people left before we got there. We found no weapons or anything there.

MODERATOR. Do you have any knowledge of where the people went to, both when you were coming in and after you had left their village destroyed?

RIPPBERGER. I don't know where the people would have gone, other than into the jungle waiting for us to leave.

MODERATOR. Scott and Mark, since you were both in the same unit, I believe you both have testimony related to burning of villages which you can both corroborate. Can we hear some of that, please?

LENIX. Well, in the burning of villages and of individual hootches along stream banks or in wood lines, if there was no one there, then apparently they must be VC and were afraid of you. If they were there, then the civilians were of course mistreated and their houses were burned anyway. It was standard procedure that if you swept through a village and happened to see anything that you wanted, you just took it for the simple reason that the people couldn't stop you, because if they did, then they'd die. So, it was a terrible relationship. It was the Lord and the Peasant. We weren't serving the people at all, other than ripping them off and burning them out of their homes. This isn't an isolated incident.

I myself have burned a whole lot of villages. It doesn't happen just once, it happens every day, and that's the thing that's so terrible. When you think about it, it's like having someone come to your home, set it on fire, say I'm sorry but I like your stereo, and I'm going to take it. There's nothing you can do, because if you say no, they'll shoot you down. And this goes on all the time. I think Scott can testify to this, as Scott and I served in the same unit.

MOORE. It did happen a lot. The battalion commander at this time frowned upon it. However, the platoon leaders and company commanders, when he was out of the way or was not in the areas with the chopper, burned a lot of places. As Mark said, you just go into a place, walk into these hootches, take what you want and walk out. The people didn't say anything because you had a gun and they didn't.

FARRELL. I also can elaborate a little further on that. I can give you a specific date where an order like this came down. Easter of 1967 we had a mission, a search and destroy. It was to destroy every man-made object that we came to, until we reached our objective from the place where we were inserted by helicopters until we reached our objective where we would be airlifted out back to our base camp. And upon landing, we were told that all the gunners on the helicopters were going to open up fire on the wood line to suppress fire. We landed right next to the wood line and there was a young woman with a child running down a path. She wasn't in the wood line; she wasn't an enemy. She had her baby and she was running away from the soldiers. A gunner opened up. Luckily, he didn't hit her, but I saw the bullets inches away from her, just missing her.

Whether he did it on purpose, I don't know. I do know that he did open fire on this woman who was completely defenseless, was not an enemy, didn't have a weapon, just had a baby in her arms, and I say again this was on Easter Sunday. You know, it's sort of symbolic that Easter Sunday, if you're Christian, you know, it's supposed to be the birth of Christ and we're destroying everything in the name of the United States.

MODERATOR. John Henry? In my unit we had many civilians who raided our trash dumps for wood to build houses and such. Do you want to talk about any of that?

HENRY. When I was trashmaster, 1/11 Artillery, my entire job consisted of making a run to the trash dump once a day and going to My Tho with Special Service people for lunch. We used to make our dump run about 11:30 in the morning so we'd have the rest of the afternoon to go to the pool. There are two kinds of life in Vietnam: there's the good life and then there's the infantry life. And I was an infantryman for nine months and it was a bad life. We used to make our run about lunchtime and the Vietnamese used to climb over the brim to get the boxes from the artillery canisters and the plastic wrapping before it went into the fire. Well, they had some MPs up there at the gate watching the trash trucks come in so you couldn't run dope out. They didn't do anything with the people for a long time. The people were just running amuck.

Then they issued a few MPs BB guns and put them inside the dump. They were posted every so far and they'd shoot the people with the BB guns as they came over the brim. Well, to the MPs it ended up to be a joke. You'd be shooting a fat old mama-san in the ass and she'd be screaming, but you weren't really bugging the people. So they got some ARVNs and gave them BB guns to shoot their own people. BB guns--I don't know --that's kind of insulting right there. Most of the people in Vietnam are poor people who aren't making a lot of money off the war. They make a little money--they know some Americans and get some soap and some cigarettes. But the peasant--he doesn't live too well.

When we would come in from the field, we would have to pull bunker guard in the daytime, to get out of details. These kids would come into the dump around the berm and try to take cans and anything that they could use. They issued us M-79s with CS gas and they told us to shoot close to them. We'd shoot maybe around eight or nine rounds of M-79 CS, and chase them the way, way back to the wood line. We wouldn't be aiming close to them, we'd be aiming right at them.

MOORE. We did the same thing in 239. In fact, I've participated in that myself. Shooting at kids and civilians in garbage dumps with the M-79. You remember, Mark, when that happened. I saw brutalization of civilians. We were on an S & D, search and destroy, mission one time, outside of Ra Kiem early in '68 and we were about, I'd say, 2 miles outside of Ra Kiem. All of a sudden a water buffalo charged the point, and the guy machine gunned the water buffalo. It so happened that an ARVN squad was in front of us and they thought they were being ambushed. They hadn't seen us, so they started firing at us, and a small fire fight broke out. Well, in the middle of the fire fight (the fire fight stopped after a few minutes) a civilian was hit, I think in the chest. He was on a bicycle when he was hit, and we had about two klicks to go back to Ra Kiem, so instead of calling in a dust-off, we just threw him over the bicycle. He was still alive, and he went back that way, on the bicycle, bleeding. I don't know what happened to him. I think he died, but I don't know.

MODERATOR. Scott, I think this might fit in here. You were talking to me before about inflated Medcap counts. Could you explain exactly what a Medcap is, and explain how the inflated count would harm the civilians?

MOORE. Medcap is an idea. It's supposedly treating the Vietnamese civilians for wounds received by H & I fire or for diseases they have or things along this line. I should first explain that in the 9th Division there was a tremendous competition among the colonels, not only in this particular area which we're talking about, but also body count and combat effectiveness which we talked about before. Pressure was put on me as a platoon leader to make sure I got a lot of people out into the field. And they didn't care how I got them out there. If I didn't get them out, all sorts of things were threatened. So I sent men out who had jungle rot and this sort of thing. Pressure was put on the battalion doctor. As a matter of fact, everything had to be approved by the major, the executive officer, and if the battalion doctor had too many people on sick call, pressure was put on him. So it's a circle. I think Mark can get into the Medcap Program. He was on more Medcaps than I was.

LENIX. Well, the Medcap Program was supposed to be part of a pacification plan that the United States was to carry out in Vietnam. And it was trying to win the people, of course, by being nice to them and treating them. I was still on the line as a combat troop, and we'd go in to give the doctor and his team of people security. When you go into a village for a Medcap, you didn't need the security because anybody who was there wasn't going to mess with you. They knew you were bringing them good things. But the thing is, the people didn't get treated. Not like they say. You'd have Medcaps where there'd be 10 people and out of the 10 people you'd give away ten bars of soap and three candy bars. And then you'd go back to the battalion, and the colonel would want to know, "Well, how'd we do on the Medcap today, boys? Did we get to treat a lot of people?" "Sure, we treated a lot of people, sir. We treated 50 people. We treated a lot of bad feet and a lot of little babies that were sick. We gave a lot of injections." And you did nothing. You threw soap out, then everybody sat down and ate bananas and ripped off the people. Then you'd leave, and that was the pacification program. So no matter what you hear, it's not the truth.

MODERATOR. Mark or Scott, what was the attitude of the medical personnel towards the civilians while on a Medcap?

MOORE. I guess Mark pointed out that they didn't really care. Some of them did; it depended on the individual. But the general attitude was to get as many people treated so it would look good on the Medcap chart which they had. I was with the 2/39. The other battalions were competing to see who could treat more people and I remember the S-5 officers standing up at briefings and saying, "Well, you treated 60 people," and the colonel would say, "Well, 2/60th treated 85. Let's get the count up." So he'd go back and sometimes read Playboy magazine and come back and report 85. Sometimes they never got treated.

MODERATOR. Bob, you told me about an incident where a little kid was killed. Could you go into that in more detail?

MCCONNACHIE. When I was out in the field outside of Lai Khe with the infantry, we were moved north, so some of us had to go by slicks, which are helicopters, and some by trucks, or jeeps, to Quan Loi, to resupply the people who left before us. On the way up to Quan Loi, we were on Highway 13, you go through villages and you see little kids with their hands out, begging. Well, at first I saw GIs tossing the cans out to them, C-ration cans. Then all of a sudden I saw they were coming pretty fast at the children, and I saw two or three of them killed right there, stoned with C-ration cans. We were stopped by the MPs; he just warned us, so we kept on with our convoy and nothing was said about the kids.

MODERATOR. Were there any officers present?

MCCONNACHIE. Yes, there was a 1st lieutenant present when we were going to Quan Loi.

MODERATOR. Did he say anything?

MCCONNACHIE. No, he just looked away and kept on walking towards his jeep when the MPs were talking to us.

MODERATOR. Okay, and besides the MP's warning, was there any other action taken?

MCCONNACHIE. No, there wasn't.

MODERATOR. Yes, John?

HENRY. There was a certain craziness among the people in Vietnam, when they were in Vietnam. When I was there, you'd be on back of a deuce and a half, and you'd throw smoke bombs into busses. All the people would be running. There are a lot of games you play with the people. The Army kind of fosters this gaming. Most houses have shrines, Buddhist shrines, and on patrol, you'd go in and rip off knick-knacks to send home, you know. I've got some Buddhist prayer beads at home that I saw ripped off by another guy who gave them to me, and I tried to give them back to a Buddhist, but I'm afraid you don't do things like that.

MODERATOR. Scott and Mark, I just want to ask you, since you both were officers, and I guess you were a lot closer to the general attitude of the officers during these incidents? You know you were shocked, did you do anything, and if not, why not?

MOORE. Well, I think it was a matter of the training I'd received when I went through Officer Candidate School at Benning and I was a Tactical Officer after that. And like, I was gung ho and just in a weird mentality. When I think back on it, it is difficult to believe I felt like that once. But to me, at that time, there was no humaneness. These people were subhuman, and well, they were, the expression is "gook." There was just this inhumane attitude in general. So usually, at least the way I saw it nothing very much was said about it.

LENIX. To go along with what Scott said about the mistreatment of civilians and personnel, that happened all the time and nothing was said about it. I was also an officer, and if it was to be reported, apparently it should have been reported by myself. But my attitude at that time was that they were subhumans and it didn't make any difference what happened to them because I didn't want to be there anyway. I just wanted to get home and get it over with. And if it would make it a little easier for me, well, then, I'd make it easier on myself.

I have an incident that I'd like to relate. On the first operation that I was on, in-country, we went into a village called Five Fingers. It was a typical cordon and search which means you surround the village and then you sweep through it. And hopefully, when you're sweeping, if anybody's running from you, they're going to run into the surrounding troops on the other side and then they'd get wiped out. We received fire as we walked into the village. We took no casualties, but we did end up with a body count. No weapons were found, so apparently they were civilians.

The next day, in the morning, they rounded up the entire village, all of them, and marched them out. They were all prisoners of war, all of them. Men, women, children, made no difference. We filled two deuce and a halfs. They had to walk maybe 5,000 meters to the vehicles. From the vehicles they were transported to our forward base where they were interrogated. Then they were just relocated, man, just moved away. The next day we went back into the village. We were to finish it off. There was burning and things going on and one of the things that was picked up were two Hondas that were confiscated by the troops. As these were confiscated, one was sold on the road immediately to another civilian who just happened to be passing by and the guy turned the motorcycle into Vietnamese piasters. So he had ready cash.

The other one was taken down the road a short way, was repaired at a Honda repair shop, and then was just taken with the troops. They used it at the base. Not only were they confiscated, but the part that was bad, was that it was reported on the battalion board as a VC platoon, a VC transportation platoon that had been captured. Then of course the colonel brought this up when he was with his contemporaries, people of his same rank. "Yeah, well, my battalion got a transportation platoon yesterday, man. We got it on the board. Look, doesn't that look nice?" And what had happened was that we ripped off two motorcycles.

MODERATOR. You say when these people were relocated, they were put into deuce and a halfs; they were taken for interrogation. Were they allowed to take any of their belongings with them?

LENIX. Right, and the next day, like I say, we went through the village and tore everything apart. You know, tore walls out of hootches, just ripped everything apart looking for weapons or whatever. But we found nothing. They just set a torch to whatever you wanted to burn.

MODERATOR. Mike, would you like to speak?

FARRELL. Yeah, about the brutalizing effect that war has on people and that the Army helps to foster. Our platoon sergeant told us (I'm going to gentle down the language, I'm not going to say it the way he said it), he said, "If there's a woman in a hootch, lift up her dress, you know, and tell by her sex; if it's a male, kill him; and if it's a female, rape her." You know, like this man, this was his third war. He's rather proud of the fact that he was in his third war. Served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. I think he had irrational conduct because we were slightly rebellious about all the work we had to do plus the ambush patrols we had to go on at night. There was a lot of complaining. This was in a forward area, the village of Bam U Thanh. We're out there in close march drill in Vietnam. This was his punishment to us because we were grumbling. In that same village where we were marching, we got fired upon. I could just go on, and on, on. A spotter pilot flies one of these little planes around for the artillery.

It's like a Piper Cub; it's a single engine plane and its top speed is about 90-100 miles an hour. They'd also call in the jets and they monitor where the jets were dropping their bombs, and they'd get body counts from them. They see pieces of arms, bodies, flying in the air and then they'd get a body count off of that. Here's a man flying around, 100 feet, 200 feet, 300 feet in the air, and he's counting bodies that are reported back to the news. Really it's a joke. I myself really never had anything accurate as a body count from our company sweeping through an area and really killing somebody.

MODERATOR. By the way, Mike, earlier we were talking to John Henry about the dumps. I believe that you mentioned to me that you had seen a child on the dumps who was permanently lamed. Could you go into that a bit?

FARRELL. We threw CS gas at them in the dumps. At our battalion base camp the supply sergeant said that if any of them gooks come over by the garbage dump, to fire over their heads. So like I just didn't do it. The fellow I was with was firing over their heads; he fired over a couple of children's heads. Another time, I was on sick call, and there was a young child, a Vietnamese child in there. I'd say school age, about 6, 7. He had a mutilated limb. I really don't remember whether it was his arm or his leg, but he was hit by a bullet from an M-16. I asked the medic that used to be attached to our company what happened to that child. He said he was down at the dump and he was hit; the sergeant shot at him. Chasing him away and he hit him. I asked him, "Did anything come of it?" and he said, "No."

MODERATOR. Bill Rice.

RICE. The psychology used, especially in the 9th Division, was that they take C-ration cans and make booby traps out of them. They tried to psych people's minds out that these people are always out to get you.

MODERATOR. We're going to end this segment right here. Does the press have any questions on treatment of civilians? Scott, did you want to say something?

LENIX. No, I did. In November '68, in an area called the Wagon Wheel just northwest of Saigon, while on a routine search and destroy mission, gunships which were providing security and cover for us in case we had any contact were circling overhead. Well, no contact was made, and the gunships got bored. So they made a gun run on a hootch, with miniguns and rockets. When they left the area, we found one dead baby, which was a young child, very young, in its mother's arms, and we found a baby girl about three years old, also dead.

Because these people were bored; they were just sick of flying around doing nothing. When it was reported to the battalion, the only reprimand was to put the two bodies on the body count board and just add them up with the rest of the dead people. There was no reprimand; there was nothing. We tried to call the gunship off, but there was nothing you could do. He just made his run, dropped his ordnance, and left. And there they were, man. The mother was, of course, hysterical. How would you like it if someone came in and shot your baby? And there was nothing we could do, man, we just watched it. And nothing happened. I have no idea what happened to the helicopter pilot, or to anyone in the gunship. It was gone. Things like this happen, I'm sure, more than once, because if I saw it, I'm sure a lot of veterans who aren't here saw it.

And this is why we have to stop the war. Because not only are we killing our brothers in the Armed Forces, and brothers on the other side, but we're killing innocent people, man, innocent civilians, who are just standing by and happen to be at the place at that time and for no other reason than that, wind up dead.
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Re: Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veter

Postby admin » Mon Jun 06, 2016 4:16 am

Part 2 of 2

MODERATOR. This is much, this is exactly the sort of thing that John was talking of at first. John was at the other end of the whole thing. He was the person who got the reports on how many people were killed, how many weapons were found, who was a VC, who apparently were civilians, and how they were all lumped together. John, do you have something to say?

HENRY. In my unit there was a bounty posted for a body count because we went dry for a long time. We were pulling blocking forces and things and we were offered a fifth of liquor for the first man who got the first body. If you're E-6 or under, you can't buy alcohol in Vietnam. It doesn't matter if you are 53 years old, you can't do it, not in a PX. If you're a 19 year old lieutenant, you can. The incentive, the programs that they build to talk you into killing people...My friend Frank here was in a unit that exemplifies this. We had a brigade commander called Colonel _____ _____, who issued Recondo pins. These were glory badges, and if you hadn't tasted your first blood, you couldn't pin one on. He stood up there on a little hill, and let us all take the pledge. All of us pinned on one of our Recondo pins, if we promised, you know...had to promise. Frank's unit was even more ridiculous, I think, more absurd, not ridiculous. It does certain things to your head, and I think it would be a really opportune time for him to expose that.

MODERATOR. One moment, please, does any member of the press have questions?

QUESTION. Does any member of the panel remember a General _____?

PANELIST. Commander of the 9th Division?

QUESTION. Right...do you remember appetizing tales about him?

PANELIST. Right, I was in three parades that he had.

MODERATOR. Hold on a second, please. It's against the policy of the Winter Soldier to name any names of any officers or NCOs because we are trying to avoid scapegoating. That is one of the main premises, so once this man has been named let's just hold back on any tales about him specifically. If it had been mentioned "just a general" that would have been one thing, but we are not going to do anything by scapegoating; we don't want these people to just jump on them; we want the government policy changed; we don't want them scapegoating more Calleys.

QUESTION. My question was for Mike. General _____ is well known for having gone above and beyond the call of duty with regards to obtaining high body counts and things like that. According to another witness who's not here he called his command ship the Gookmobile. My intent was not to scapegoat General _____, but to see if there was anything further informational about this rather outstanding officer.

MODERATOR. Okay, we're going to be getting into inflated body counts; the entire question of how do you up the morale of the men in the field, how do you get them to kill. Frank, we were talking at considerable length earlier about a special award which was issued--would you care to tell the rest of the people about that?

SHEPARD. Well, as you were mentioning, there are many ways to build up your body count. In our particular unit, as John mentioned, he had the Recondo badge. We had this badge known as the Sat Cong badge. This badge, translated into English, means "Kill Cong." This represents one Viet Cong--or civilian, whatever it may be, because there's really no way of telling. It represents one life. These badges were given when someone could prove that he had killed a Viet Cong, or Vietnamese. There are many ways of doing this. One is to have somebody verify that you did in fact see him kill a Vietnamese. Another way is--and this a common way--to cut off the ear of the dead Vietnamese and bring it in. You could exchange it for one of these badges. The badges were created on a battalion level; I have the order here that created this badge, and the sick individual that signed it.

MODERATOR. I tell you, Frank, on the "sick individual" let's just say a captain in the infantry.

SHEPARD. All right. This is a disposition form. It's an official Army form dated 28 June '69. It reads as follows: "Any member of this battalion who personally kills a Viet Cong will be presented a Sat Cong badge--Kill Viet Cong--for his gallant accomplishment. The Sat Cong badge will only be given to those individuals who have accomplished the above-mentioned feat. There will be no honorary presentations. Furthermore, only personnel who have personally killed a Viet Cong may wear the Sat Cong badge. Company commanders will draw Sat Cong badges from the executive officer, and will maintain all control." And also, explaining more about the badge, this is what is known as a Chieu Hoi leaflet. On one side, it's in Vietnamese; on the other side it's translated into English. This is used for two purposes: It's to build up the morale of the soldier, make him want to kill, and it's also to scare the hell out of the Viet Cong. It's entitled Viet Cong/NVA Beward. It says: "You are now located in the area of operations of the Cong-Killer 5th Battalion, 60th Infantry. Each member of this elite American unit is a trained killer, dedicated to the annihilation of every VC-NVA. The proof of this dedication is the Cong badge he proudly wears proclaiming he has personally killed a VC-NVA. We don't rest; we will hunt you with our helicopters, track you down with our radar, search above and below the water with boats, bombard you with artillery and air strikes. There are no havens here. You are not safe nor are you welcome here. Rally to the government of Vietnam now, or face the fact that you will soon join your ancestors. Signed, Cong-Killer 5th Battalion, 60th Infantry."

MODERATOR. That's sort of interesting, the "you are not safe nor are you welcome here"--this was in Vietnam, was it not?

SHEPARD. Yes, it's their country.

MODERATOR. Okay, Frank, in talking about this, how do we know that these people were VC-NVA, rather than normal peasants?

SHEPARD. There's no possible way, really, to tell. As for myself, I never witnessed anyone cutting off an ear, for example, and bringing it in; I don't know that these were Viet Cong. It just seems that if you have something like this you're going to get instances where people take civilians to get one of these badges. This was considered quite an honor, in fact, to have one of these badges. It was, it now seems rather sick, but over there it was the accepted thing that you were a real man if you had one. Some of them put oak leaf clusters on the bottom if they killed more than one. Like I say, it's sick.

MODERATOR. Frank, the bottom line reads, "rally to the government of Vietnam now." Was this used as a Chieu Hoi pass, and if it was, or if it wasn't, were other Chieu Hoi passes accepted by your unit?

SHEPARD. No, there were the standard Chieu Hoi passes that are issued to all units; this was not considered a Chieu Hoi leaflet; this was more or less a threat. Now, if you were a civilian, imagine reading this in your village. This was dropped over populated areas. You can imagine reading this in your area. You'd be in fear for your life; afraid someone would take your ear and get one of these badges. If you collected so many badges, if you killed so many, you would get an R & R, or a pass. Get to go to Saigon, something like that. It was just part of the way to build up the body count.

MODERATOR. Okay, Frank, what was the purpose of these Sat Cong badges? For what were they designed--to up the morale, to up the body count, or what?

SHEPARD. Yes, up the body count, up the morale, make the men want to kill. As it said in the leaflet, it was, you know, "trained killers." The unit is full of trained killers.

MODERATOR. Another interesting thing that was brought out, these badges were made up at the local Vietnamese laundry.

SHEPARD. Cost the taxpayers 11 cents apiece.

MODERATOR. Eleven cents apiece?

SHEPARD. All it is really, if you can't see it that well, it's just a cloth; it's regular OD [olive drab], really and it had the letters "Sat Cong" labeled on it, in hand, you know, or in a sewing machine. It's covered with plastic, and the ring at the top is to hang it over your button. They wear these to the field. Covered with plastic so the rain and the mud won't get at it. And people can see that you're a killer.

MODERATOR. Okay, do you have any evidence for the press that this actually did take place, other than your saying so?

SHEPARD. Yes, I do. I have two letters from the Defense Department admitting that the Sat Cong badge was initiated in my unit. They say the practice was discontinued after this letter was written. As I say, they do admit that it did happen. There's no question in their mind that it did happen. They pretend that they don't know the purpose for it, but as I say, I have the orders that were issued. I know the purpose for it, and everybody that was there knows the purpose for it. They say they can't do anything about this; they couldn't prosecute the individuals, as they indicated they would if they could, because the commanding officer and the brigade commander were killed in a helicopter crash. Well, that's kind of funny. In the Calley case they say that they can't prosecute the higher officers because it's an individual thing, and there they turn it around. It's another inconsistency.

MODERATOR. If they wish to take action, then somebody has signed their name to this, and there is a live personnel.

SHEPARD. Yes, I believe he's responsible for it. I think he was, he was taught in the Army that the reward system is a good system, and you should be given something to spur your men on to kill, and want to kill. I think this just came out of his own mind; I think it's sort of an isolated instance. But it is, of course, part of our general policy.

MODERATOR. Thank you very much. Scott, you and I talked about upping the body count before. Could you tell us some of the ways in which this is done, and some of the reasons for it?

MOORE. As I explained before, with our battalion, and the 9th Division in general, there was this tremendous competition between the colonels. Vietnam is not a land war; as you gained land in other wars, your efficiency report would go up; in this war, it's based on body count. The more people you kill, the better efficiency report, officer's efficiency report, you get. So what happened here is a case of the colonels going into competition, and making up more bodies than they really had. And this was, of course, passed on down to the company commanders, platoon leaders, and the squad leaders. So, _____, we were reporting stuff, water buffalo in some cases, and shadows.

I remember one time I called artillery into a wood line, where I received sniper fire, and didn't check the wood line, and called in a three body count; this went on all the time. Other fire fights, the count would be 80, 90, and personally I only saw two, three bodies. So it's a totally inflated system. What's happened is, the American public's been lied to. The Army's stated that we've got a kill ratio of one to thirteen, and yes, it's one to thirteen, because of this inflation. But it's a lot of bull.

LENIX. Going along with what Scott said, I was involved in an action on January 6th, where Alpha Company, 2nd/39th was ambushed. The ambush was effective; Alpha Company lost a lot of people. It turned out to be more than my company Bravo Company, which went to help them. Quite a few battalions were trying to get everyone out. Well, in the process, there were air strikes, artillery all night. We had spooky overhead kicking out flares with miniguns. The area was saturated. I imagine the expenditure in dollars would run into a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand dollars worth of ordnance was expended. And we had lost twelve lives. Well, in order to justify this, they had to do something, so the next day we swept the area. I personally swept a large area with my company, and saw no bodies, none whatsoever.

But the next day, or when the next issue of the paper came out, there was a body count of a hundred and one, and it was telling what a great victory it was for 2/39 to have been able to produce these bodies. There were none--no bodies at all. So there's where your thirteen to one comes from. I saw twelve of ours, but I didn't see thirteen of theirs--I didn't see any of theirs. So I really don't think we're gaining anything in the war, except losing people. Because we found nothing. There was no evidence that a conflict had even taken place; there was no evidence of a fire fight. Nothing.

But we got a hundred and one bodies. And a hundred and one bodies from just mud and dirt is really I think a fantastic story to tell. But it doesn't happen just once, because as Scott has said, it's happened many times. And I'm sure everyone down the line could tell you two, three, five, ten occasions when they were with a unit, got absolutely nothing, and the body count was six, three, two. You'd be on an LZ and they'd say, "What's your body count today?" You'd say, "Nothing." And they'd say, "Well, we need bodies."

So everyone would face the outside, shoot a magazine, and then you'd just call in and say, "Well we got six." And you'd never move from where you were; you'd just shoot your weapon and call them in and say, "Well, we got six," and then you'd fly out. And this is what the higher echelon people wanted to hear. They didn't care what you were doing, or how you were getting it; they wanted bodies, and that's where civilians came in also.

MODERATOR. Mark or Scott? John has testified that there were rewards offered in his unit for bodies. Was this practiced in your unit either on the company or a higher level?

MOORE. No, it was mostly a pat on the back, this sort of thing. As I remember, the sniper units in our unit, for so many killed, I've forgotten the exact number, they received an award or decoration like a Bronze Star or a Silver Star, depending on how high the kill was. And a lot of snipers would go out at night and shoot a few rounds, or usually not shoot a few rounds because of security problems, but they'd come back and say they shot two or three people, and then of course that would add up.

MODERATOR. Okay, back to John Hartner again. John was in Operations at Headquarters for the 4th Division. He's brought back quite a bit of information, very interesting information, I might add. One thing which I think would be very worthwhile for all of us to hear, it's a bit lengthy, but I'll run through it fast, is the total take, I guess you'd call it, for the 4th Division's entire Cambodian operation. These are the official figures which were turned in to the 4th Division. Later on, if you want, you can check them against whatever the newspapers said. For the total entire 4th Division:

Killed in action: 81
Detainees: 5
Starlight scope: 1
AK-47s: 25
Rifles (SKS, Carbines, etc.: ) 9
Pistols: 5
Grenades: 236
Piasters (money): 39, 840
Crossbows: 10
75mm recoilless rifle (Chicom): 1
120mm rounds: 3
M-79 LAAWS: 2
SAs (small arms): 4,153
60mm rounds: 27
82mm mortar rounds: 46
B-40 rounds (B-40 rockets were used much the same as the bazooka in the U.S. Army): 6
Pounds of TNT: 45
Pounds of medical supplies : 770
Pounds of corn: 300
Pounds of rice: 21,288
Pounds of salt: 361
Pounds of potatoes: 920
Sewing machine: 1


This was for the entire Cambodia excursion for the 4th Division. This is the thing which is saving our boys in Vietnam by going after them in a neighboring country. Against the Geneva Convention.

MODERATOR. Is there anyone else on the panel who has anything on this?

PANELIST. We never really had that much incentive for body counts. But this is slightly related. You know, everybody likes souvenirs. That's sort of like an American pastime. I went to visit a friend. There was a Connex--it's a metal box that they ship goods over to Vietnam in, and they're big enough for a man to walk in. On top of it was a set of ears drying in the sun. This was right behind the battalion TOC, which is Tactical Operations Center. They could not help but see a set of ears on Connex, you know, drying in the sun. I thought at first that it was revolting, but after a while I thought, you know, hey man, maybe I want a souvenir. One of these days when I come across a body I'll get myself a finger or an ear. When I went over there, it was a revolting idea. But then, you know, once you did kill a body, you could bring back the souvenir that you did kill it.

MODERATOR. Are there any questions from the press?

QUESTION. In reference to the incidents of the higher-ups coming over and asking for the body counts, your having none, and turning around and shooting into the air and then reporting--do you have any opinion as to why you were asked to go to the trouble of expending that ammunition? In other words, why did not the higher-ups simply choose a number out of the blue sky? Why were you asked to participate?

LENIX. It's very simple. You key the mike on your radio, and say, "In contact." In the background you have, of course, small arms fire. Then about ten minutes later you call in and say, "We got six." So, he knows you're playing the game; and you know you're playing the game; but, it's the game. And therefore he's convinced they must have got them; he heard the small arms fire. He's convinced and apparently that frees his spirit.

QUESTION. Is there a dynamic going on in which the officer, the higher-up, tries to implicate the rank and file men such that both of them are in the game?

LENIX. Right.

MODERATOR. Are there any other questions from the press?

QUESTION. How big is the 4th Division?

HARTNER. Well, I couldn't tell you right now in numbers; at that time it consisted of two brigades. If you look on that sheet of paper, I believe we had six battalions or seven battalions. Of course, the size would fluctuate constantly, too, within each of your battalions. There were six battalions: in each of your battalions you had your supporting companies, such as artillery, maintenance crews, headquarters companies, etc. and then you had usually four infantry companies ranging between a hundred and fifty and a hundred men each.

MODERATOR. Are there any other questions?

QUESTION. I have a question to the guy in the light shirt on the badges. What did the Viet Cong do when they caught a man who had a Sat Cong badge?

SHEPARD. That's a good question. I'm afraid you'd have to ask them. But I would imagine it would anger them somewhat. They could see that he had this thing that represented the life of one of their comrades. If he were wearing a badge saying that he had killed an American, I imagine it would upset you. I don't know if he would be treated too kindly, but I don't recall that situation.

MODERATOR. Perhaps we'd better also ask, how you came by the badge?

SHEPARD. Well, I have sticky fingers by nature, so I confiscated this one from battalion headquarters. This is an unauthorized badge, by the way, so, no commander has the authority to create this, so, I'll pay the government back their 11 cents any time they're ready.

MODERATOR. Okay, the question from the floor was, how does a GI who has been trained through his life to believe that the Vietnamese are people, and that we're defending their freedom, and all this other _____ that the government puts out, how do you take him and turn him into a killer, and how does he justify that? Well, I can answer for myself. First of all, you're never really taught that the Vietnamese are human beings, not in the Army and not out. It's the whole racist policy of the government. You're not taught that blacks are human beings; you're not taught that Indians are human beings; you're not taught that Vietnamese are human beings. You're not taught that anybody except a white American is a human being. And this is basically what happens. So when you get into the Army, all they have to really do is teach you how to use a gun.

DONNER. It could probably be answered very simply. The quickest answer which I think would be most truthful, is how many Japs did John Wayne kill last night?

MODERATOR. I think there was one more question.

QUESTION. Is there any way of determining what percentage of the body count actually represents bodies?

LYTLE. They used to report body counts, after H & Is, or after a battle, or something like that. If it looked like in the Starlight Scope that there was maybe ten people moving, we'd fire out there. Then if there wasn't any movement, we'd say, "Okay, we got ten," or something like that. And this would just add up, each night, from each battalion and you'd end up getting like 40 or 50 body counts per day, without sometimes ever seeing any bodies.

MODERATOR. I'd like to answer that also. In my unit, I was with the 1/26th Infantry, First Infantry Division, in the entire year I was there, my platoon actually killed maybe five VC. We turned in a body count of close to a hundred from my platoon alone. And I know the other platoons were doing the same thing. So that's how accurate it is.

MOORE. I think in my time on the line in Vietnam I saw in a combat situation maybe 35 dead enemy and that's it. And before I left the battalion, the body count over a seven month period was a thousand, two hundred.

QUESTION. Do any members of the panel have any information on lowering of American body count? In other words, covering up how many are truly dead. I know this question was got into quite a bit this morning with the Airborne units.

LYTLE. I know of one instance. We haven't been able to prove anything about this, but there was one battle we fought for about a day. I was told that we lost a company of men. It was never reported back here in the States. There was never any report of it. It kind of seems strange to me.

QUESTION. You wouldn't have any idea about the total number of Americans killed there. The figure is approximately around 50,000.

LYTLE. I don't know. I really don't, I can't tell you.

HENRY. When I was in Vietnam there were 11 support people for every infantryman over there and the casualty rate was running, I'd say from my own experience, like five to one--five infantry people for every one support person. When you get blanket statistics on your local news in black letters and you see 800 Americans dead you're thinking in terms of 500,000 GIs and that's not the way it is. You have got to divide that number by 11 and subtract a few. I remember when we were supposed to be deescalating, one of the many times, and my mother wrote to me how good it was becoming. Well they don't report by division or by brigade. You can't check. Now I'm sure the Army wouldn't falsify people, KIAs, but they might spread it over a month or something. Like it doesn't really matter to you whether your son dies last Thursday or the week before. The only point is that you're going to get your letters back that you wrote him, they'll make sure of that, and you'll get a flag and an honor guard and more than likely a Silver Star or a Bronze Star. It all depends what his rank was. It's pretty cold-blooded, the whole thing. You just got to accept that. I imagine they're telling you how many people are really dead, but I'm sure they're not telling you, like, in a meaningful way--who is dying. When I was in the 9th Division we got some people from I Corps because they were not having much contact and they put them down in the Delta in the 9th Division. You don't hear about that either.

MODERATOR. I think that what we're trying to say is that the total number which is reported may be correct. I would have my doubts on that. It's too easy to mail out 400 letters saying your son died and report 200 in the press. Carl, you have a number of slides. Would you care to go through them, numbers 3 through 7, and talk about them?

RIPPBERGER. This first slide here shows a prisoner of war. He was being interrogated. The way they tried to get him to talk is by making him stand in front of a pile of Viet Cong bodies that we had picked up and stare at them.

(Next Slide) The same POW was forced to sit probably from 6 to 8 hours by this pile of bodies in the hot sun.

MODERATOR. Carl, how long had those bodies been there? One day or what?

RIPPBERGER. They were killed at approximately three in the morning and they were not taken away until three or four in the afternoon. This is a shot of five or six GIs going through the bodies looking for souvenirs. In this picture there is a lieutenant and a captain overlooking what's going on.

(Next Slide) This was earlier in the day. This fellow here, he could not speak Vietnamese and periodically he walked up to the prisoners and hit them. A few times he kicked them. This went on quite a while till they moved these young kids here into the pile of bodies. This is a shot of our interrogator. The M-16 has an open flash suppressor at the end and three prongs which are about a half inch long. He took them and forced them into this prisoner's nose and he twisted them. It's extremely painful.

MODERATOR. I believe that's the last slide. Earlier you said something about these people being forced to sit by the bodies. Is that what you meant?

RIPPBERGER. Right, we took our POWs and forced them to sit and look at the bodies. This went on for hours.

MODERATOR. Officers were present at all times, right?

RIPPBERGER. Yes, field grade officers were present all day long, they were flying in and out. This was a major fire fight. This happened on June 19, 1967.

MODERATOR. For the benefit of people who don't know the military, field grade is major and above. What was their attitude?

RIPPBERGER. Nobody seemed to care. They were extremely happy that we had a body count. That's how they got their medals. I might add that some of the officers after this fire fight received medals for flying over in a helicopter. Bronze Stars and Silver Stars and medals of this type. During the fire fight they were nowhere near the area. They received medals anyway.

MODERATOR. Was this one isolated incident or did this happen numerous times?

RIPPBERGER. No, this happened often. Any time we saw any action things like this went on.

MODERATOR. Mark, I believe you have something to say about mistreatment of prisoners.

LENIX. Right. Well, as has been mentioned before, making the prisoners extremely uncomfortable was just sort of the accepted rule. We were on an operation in the early part of '69 where we encountered three VC. One was KIA. He was killed in the contact and another was wounded. His wound was too serious to be treated by the medic, but not so serious he'd have died if we could have got him dusted off. He was laying there and the medic said, "I can't do anything for him, we're going to need a dust off." Well, apparently the commanding officer decided that a dust off wasn't necessary and had one of the Chieu Hois or one of our Tiger Scouts, who were Vietnamese, interrogate the man. He was laying on the ground on his back and apparently was in shock. The Tiger Scout muttered a few words in Vietnamese and then shot him through the joint of the elbow. It was a grotesque scene. His arm just sort of flopped around on the ground and he had to be in shock because there was no expression of pain. He had no expression on his face at all. He shot him a few more times and then eventually he just put the muzzle of his weapon to his head and blew him away. I don't believe that the Geneva Convention regards this as fair treatment of prisoners.

RICE. We had very little contact with prisoners, actually our company never ran into too many of them. On occasions we took detainees. Whether they were Viet Cong or not was not determined at the time. Officers would take them and with the Tiger Scout perform interrogations, field interrogations. Sometimes including beatings. Other times the favorite trick--especially in the Delta where you have a lot of water, you just take him down to the water and dunk him a few times until he starts talking. Just hold him down longer each time, until he talks. That was the main way to get information from people. Now these were not confirmed VC. These could have been civilians, because a lot of them were shipped out on a helicopter later on to detainee centers.

MODERATOR. We were talking earlier about a VC who had been wounded. Do you want to try and relate the story as best you can.

RICE. Right. Our company was sweeping northeast of the city of Jon Trong in Jon Trong District in Cam Hoa Province. When we came across this paddy, our point element broke into this paddy which was being worked by the farmers. There were old men and women with water buffalo and children working in the field. They commenced to yelling "La De" which means "Come here" in Vietnamese and the people started running when they saw the Americans. At this time someone noticed a young man, of approximately military age, taking off down a paddy dike. The point element opened up on him and finally brought him down. He received a gunshot wound in the head.

MODERATOR. May I ask, was he carrying a weapon?

RICE. No, he was not. The only thing he had was a transistor radio. We came up to him and found the transistor. I do not know whether he had an ID card or not. Our medic went up to him and started treating him. At this time we were ordered on up the road. I got about ten feet up the road and another member of my platoon said one of the sergeants had slit his throat.

MODERATOR. Okay, this again is almost hearsay evidence, but the medic did leave the body? Did it just stay there, or what?

RICE. No, the medic left the body. We left the body laying on the dike, and went on.

MODERATOR. So in other words, the person was abandoned, even if his throat was not slit.

RICE. This is true.

MODERATOR. Okay, what happened? This is sort of interesting. I remember on the Cambodian invasion one sewing machine was captured. Did the transistor radio get recorded as captured?

RICE. The transistor radio wound up in our hootch where we used to listen to it.

MODERATOR. Ron, you were speaking to me yesterday about a POW compound. Could you elaborate on that?

NEWTON. Just vaguely. I saw it only once. We usually don't keep any prisoners in a support outfit. They set one up for a while and transported them in. I was there very early in 1966, but I only saw one incident where prisoners would try to put their fingers through the wire. Something anybody would do. They would put their fingers through the wire and guys would take the butts of their rifles and smash them. Just like you see in the movies, just like John Wayne again. That's probably the only incident I could recall. I saw one beating at the same time. I don't know any details about it. I just saw the physical aspects of this beating.

MODERATOR. This POW compound, was it just a wired-in area without any shelter at all?

NEWTON. Yes. I think it was temporary. I don't think they were supposed to be kept there. I don't know how long it existed. I only saw it once.

MODERATOR. Bill Rice, could I ask you one more question about that incident of the farmer, or VC, one of the two, whichever it was. Was there an officer present with your group?

RICE. Yes, it was a company operation. We had lieutenants and a captain.

MODERATOR. Thank you. John Henry, you and I talked a bit about the interrogation of prisoners. Do you want to go into that, please?

HENRY. When he was talking about holding people down under water until they talked, I've seen that. I've seen LRRPs interrogate prisoners, knock out teeth, and then hold them under water. But pretty soon a chopper comes in and takes them to wherever the final disposition of them is made. But the point is, you don't know if these people are VC or just civilians. You're so indoctrinated that women and children are a lot of times more dangerous than old men and old women, which is why I think so many women and children get killed, just because of the poop that's handed down when you first get to country.

MODERATOR. Mike Farrell, we also talked about this a little bit. You mentioned one instance of a sergeant working with a POW. Would you like to talk about it?

FARRELL. I didn't see this. This is again "alleged." Here's another instance. We were out in the field and we came across a woman in a hootch. She was by herself. It was an older woman and she didn't want to leave her house. They wanted to take her with us to detain her. She was treated in a very humiliating way. She was dragged by a GI and her blouse was ripped open. She wasn't wearing anything underneath and one person went up there and made an attempt to cover her up. But then, as they were crossing a bridge, the woman jumped. It was right on the edge of a mangrove swamp. There was a stream there; they were crossing the bridge and the woman jumped into the water. She was never seen again. Nobody in our unit ever saw her again, so she could have drowned, she could have swam under water, she could have gone anywhere.

MODERATOR. Barry, we were talking earlier about an operation your unit went on where quite a few prisoners were mistreated.

HOPKINS. Yes, I think it was in April. I don't remember the province. It was pretty close to our fire base--Fire Base Moore. They reported that they had seen six VC. They eagle-flighted men in there and we started coming in on these hootches. It was wide open and there were a lot of hootches. We started going to each one and there were about five or six VC in each one. They were all real young, like about 18, 19 years old. We got 32 prisoners. They reported that there were that many and just a few more that were killed by the helicopters and our own men. I think they divided them up so we could have those evenly. There was more VC there than what they thought. The major came in and he and I witnessed one of my friends chasing one of these kids. He stabbed him and the kid just didn't want to die. So he took him in the moat and drowned him and it took a long time to drown him. He just didn't want to die. I couldn't dig going out, walking all that ways, and bringing in all these prisoners like these other guys. I just stuck around where the major was and was helping tag all the prisoners that they brought up. We used wire and string, wrote a number on it, and tied it around their necks to tag them. We had six women that we brought in. Some of my friends were really messing around with these women. When they jumped off the helicopter when we brought them into camp, there were newsmen there. They were filming this.

MODERATOR. On the operation bringing them back there was quite a bit of mistreatment, but unfortunately, your friend, when they did get back, mistreated a prisoner in front of newsmen's cameras, right?

HOPKINS. Yes, to me, this was sort of just like My Lai. He was caught, and for that he was prosecuted. There was a lot of mistreatment. We stood there and watched these leeches on these people's backs. They would suck out enough blood (they would be about five inches long) and these young guys would just fall over and nothing was done.

MODERATOR. No medical attention was given to them?

HOPKINS. None at all, and the major was standing right there. He observed us tying these tags around their necks and a lot of the mishandling of the women and the young men.

MODERATOR. Are there any questions on treatment of POWs?

QUESTION. Yes, I'd like to know, you said that when this guy was caught, he was shipped out or something like this. At any other time was there any reprimand for mistreatment of prisoners? Who was the one by and what type would it be?

HOPKINS. No, this man was the only one that I could recall, and I don't think that it ever got out of our battalion. The colonel and the major worked it out, his papers were drawn up, and he was just sent to another company. He was still in the 9th Division, but other than that nothing else was done to him. They just wanted to get him out.

PANELIST. It's kind of a rampant depersonalization of humanity, you know.

QUESTION. What exactly is a dust off? What would they do with the bodies of the dead VC? What kind of burial do they give them?

MODERATOR. A dust off is a medivac. It's a chopper which comes in (a helicopter) to rescue (not exactly rescue) to pick up wounded personnel and to take them back to back areas for treatment. what do they do with the dead bodies of VC? Okay, what does the trashman have to say?

HENRY. They just leave them there and they rot. Then the people come and bury them. The same people who rebuild all the bunkers that we blow up.

MODERATOR. I think this is a perfect lead-in to our next session. Basically, what has Vietnam done to ourselves. Carl, you have another picture and I think it is very applicable.

RIPPBERGER. The next slide is a slide of myself. I'm extremely shameful of it. I'm going to show it to you so you can see this sadistic state of mind that my government put me into. I'm showing it in hope that none of you people that have never been involved ever let this happen to you. Don't ever let your government do this to you. Okay--that's me. I'm holding a dead body--smiling. It's on the back of my armored cavalry assault vehicle. It's there because everyone in our platoon took two bodies and put them on the back ramp, drove them through a village for show, and dumped them off at the edge of the village.

MODERATOR. Does anybody else have anything particularly they want to add to this?

FARRELL. Yes, the brutalizing effect it has on yourself. We were out on eagle flights. This is just where a small unit of men go out on helicopters. They are set down, they sweep a couple of thousand meters, and they are picked up from their objective to go to another area. You just go out for a day; the object of it is to try and catch the Viet Cong by a series of quick movements like jumping--leapfrogging. We'd been in contact all day, no matter where we went. We didn't produce very good results. Choppers finally came in to pick us up to take us back. I was sitting on the helicopter. I was the machine gunner at the time. I was sitting in the door of the helicopter and then all of a sudden I felt the crew chief kick me out of the helicopter. You know--unload, unload. I looked over and see one helicopter with its blade starting to slow down, so I figured that it had been shot down. As soon as I got off the helicopter, I got out from underneath the blades and I noticed there was a farmer in the distance, about four or five hundred meters, riding his water buffalo back from the field. I jumped off the helicopter and opened up at him with my machine gun. He was just a civilian farmer and I shot at him. But thank God I missed him. It was just the severe frustration of being shot at all day.

MODERATOR. Part of the reason for the attitude of Americans is sort of a racial thing. We are seeing it right now. We don't understand Vietnam. We think they're less than we are. We don't understand their personnel; we don't understand their customs; we don't understand their entire culture. Ron, would you like to talk about it?

NEWTON. I arrived in Vietnam in '66 in the summer months just before the monsoons. The first night we were there we were going on convoy because we were trying to get the 4th Division through to Dragon Mountain Base Camp near Pleiku. This has already been mentioned, but I'd like to add to it. I saw C-rations being thrown. I threw C-rations. I'm not proud of it. I saw people pointing weapons at people just trying to scare them a little bit. I saw people locking up and loading. Finally we put up base camp, talking about the women we were going to mess with and the people we were going to kill. Support is really boring. You don't get to kill anybody out there; you just get to support, whatever. Now this is '66, mind you. I was in a tearoom, a bar, in Pleiku one afternoon.

I saw an officer complaining about a watered drink. He picked up the Vietnamese girl that he thought had watered the drink, grabbed her by the neck, and lifted her up. He was about 6 foot or more. Lifted her up, raised back, and slapped her hard. And you know what? They carried her out of that room. I don't know what happened to her. But everybody sat back down and started drinking. You know, nothing was thought about it. This happened all the time, abuse of the people. It was like we were uncaged animals. We were bored...bored and we wanted to do something, you know. It's like the guy coming to the big city and he wants to do something. We were able to create inflation in Pleiku. As an analogy, it would be like you trying to purchase a regular $100 apartment for $300. Now that's beyond my means. I think it's beyond a lot of people's means. These people could not purchase apartments. They couldn't buy food any more because we were paying whatever the people wanted. The prices just kept going, going, going. Finally the general put Pleiku off limits because of the inflation, because we were driving the women to prostitution so they could feed their kids. We were driving all the people to corrupt activities just to keep alive. We were driving these people. And this is racism. We were the supreme race. These people were nothing.

MODERATOR. One question which has often been asked, "If this is the way we feel about the war, then why are we here now rather than before we went?"

NEWTON. I was a hawk.

MODERATOR. John, you and I have talked about his to some considerable depth. You have just been over recently (in Vietnam). You mentioned being in some of the Moratorium-Mobilization things. Would you care to read that letter for us?

HARTNER. I'm different from some of the people on this panel, in that I was very against the war before I went to Vietnam. I marched in the two Moratoriums of '69. The night before I left my home, I wrote a letter to my Senator, that's James Pearson of Kansas. "It is very difficult to write a letter so extremely important to me, and I hope to my country, because I'm afraid some mistake might be made in its interpretation. For several years now, our involvement in Vietnam has been a prime concern of mine as it should be for all. I have spent considerable time studying the history of our involvement, the development of our policies concerning this problem, and its current trends. My conclusions, Sir, is that we have made a horrible mistake; a mistake that has cost not just billions of tax dollars, but what is most important, is that it has cost thousands of lives, both American and Vietnamese. Since life is the most precious gift that God has given us, it seems to me that before a country requires a man to face the possibility of death, it should give him a very clear and definite reason. This, I believe, our administration has failed to do. So often, I have wished that I could approach our President, and ask him to please give me the answers to several questions, which I believe are so important. I've wanted to ask him why the elections were never held, the Geneva Conference set up; why we fired at Tonkin Gulf; why it appears that the military industrial complex has so much power in the government policy; why we believe that the number of lives sacrificed has been worth it; why we believe that our democratic ideal is so right for the Vietnamese people. Since I have already stated my opinion concerning our involvement, I'm sure you understand the answers I hold to these questions and others like them. This is also very important to me, because I do love my country. I love the freedom it has given me. It has allowed my family to grow happily. It has allowed me to receive the type of education I desire, and to choose the profession I wish to engage in. It has allowed my mother to raise her family in a joyful environment, and it has allowed my father to speak freely to his congregation. These are only a few of the reasons I have for respecting, loving and wishing to spend the rest of my life in this country. There is, however, a conflict, for you see this country which has allowed me to hold and express my opinions publicly has now placed me in a situation where I could be tried and jailed for these beliefs; in a few days, I will be leaving for Vietnam and I'm going not because in any way I believe what we are doing is right there, but because this is what my government is now requiring me to do in order to spend the rest of my life here. But I must also stand up for what I believe in and for this reason, unless in some way or by someone I can be shown that what I believe in is wrong, then I will not be able to participate in any offensive actions. So this freedom of belief may lead to a restriction of my physical freedom. I urge you, Sir, to please do all within your power to aid in ending this confusion. Peace means so very much. Thank you for your time."

MODERATOR. I think that's what we're trying to say here today. Peace means so very much.
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Re: Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veter

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16. AMERICAL DIVISION

MODERATOR. The Americal Division was formed in 1967 out of three separate brigades. It's stationed in I Corps area, with its headquarters in Chu Lai. My name is Barry Romo. I'm a former 1st Lieutenant with the 196th Light Infantry Brigade, and also the 11th Infantry Brigade. I was commissioned when I was 19 years old and served as a Battalion S-2, which is an intelligence officer, and as an infantry platoon leader. During this discussion we are not going to dwell on the atrocities that were committed by my unit or by Americans in Vietnam. That has been rehashed. We will give a short testimony about some of the things we did see and try to go into the reasons behind them. When I arrived in country, one of the first things I saw was the pacification program, which consisted of moving or forcing villagers to leave their homes and bringing them to the coast so as to deny them to the Communists. These people were forced out of their homes. I saw the use of artillery fire against civilian targets because of the possibility of VC with no regard taken for the Vietnamese. I saw rice stolen from Vietnamese because it was considered too much for them to have. I saw also a general racist attitude by most Americans towards the Vietnamese.

BEZANSON. My name is William Bezanson. I was a Pfc. in the 11th Infantry Brigade in Vietnam. I was also with the 123rd Aviation Battalion. We supported such actions as My Lai, the Quang Nai Valley. Quang Nai Valley had many incidents of villages being wiped out because the North Vietnamese may use them for food, but we're not here to dwell on these subjects today. The reasons for all these things taking place are the reason we're up here today. There's been enough rehashing of incidents such as My Lai. To me, the greatest guilt that any man can suffer is that he died without a good reason. And to me, Vietnam is not a good enough reason. Not when we're destroying the Vietnamese land, property and populace. We're destroying the very moral fiber of this country at the same time. And those of us that do put our principles above personal ambition are labeled Communists by the very people that sent us over there. I've got a quote here from a John Birch magazine entitled American Opinion and the man that makes the quote is General Scott. He is the author of God Is My Copilot. And he says, "Our threat is not from abroad. It's not from outside the gate. It's right here in the midst of our homes. The danger is internal and the solution can only be internal. Every American must once again accept the responsibility for what is done in his name. We are still the strongest nation on earth and once enough Americans raise their voices to be heard nothing can defeat us." That's why we're here today. These people that run around here waving flags, trying to disrupt our meeting, all we're trying to do is, we're asking you to give us enough respect. We lost friends, arms, legs, and sometimes lives in Vietnam because you sent us over there. We're only asking that you give us enough respect to listen to us.

PALOSAARI. I was with the Americal Division, 198th Infantry Brigade, 1/6 Infantry. I served from October 1967 to September 1968. And, for the first, maybe, three months, I was rather inactive as far as any enemy contact. I mean we had, you know, light sniper fire, this sort of thing, but nothing really big. And then one time we were coming up. You know, walking down the trail, you know. It was really not much of any mission, except just to see what was out there, you know. And if there was anything to be had, to get it. And we had come across two Viet Cong by a well, drinking water. We had fired at them and they naturally, you know, taken off. Ran. And we never did get them. And there was a small hootch nearby with a bunker. And I did not see this personally, but later on the guys were bragging about it, some of the other men. They had, in Vietnamese, yelled down the bunker, "Is anyone there?" And, simultaneously, while yelling this, they dropped a grenade in. I went up to the bunker later. There was a, I think, what was a little boy and a little girl killed and there was an old lady in there. And the feelings that I had were rather mixed. I was, you know, rather shocked, you know, because they were bragging about this, and thought it was rather humorous. But, at the same time, it seemed to be more or less something that was socially acceptable. We weren't really, you know, concerned that, you know, these, these were little kids. But that, what we were concerned with is, that they had slanted eyes and were Vietnamese and that was enough to justify it. It's just, you know, well, that's war. I wrote a friend of mine that was also in the army in Vietnam at that time. And I told him about this incident. And I'd like to read you his reply and show you that, you know, this was not only a feeling among our company, among myself, but universally a feeling of the men, Americans, over there. What he said was, "You guys are killing off kids, huh? Ain't no big thing. They're the same- same. I hate all these gooks, VC or not." And that pretty well exemplifies how Americans feel. It's rather unfortunate. I really feel ashamed of myself. I find it embarrassing to admit that I am a Vietnam veteran. And this was only, you know, one of many sorts of incidents. It was nothing as huge as My Lai or maybe nothing as drastic as torture, or anything like that. They probably died instantly. But it was still three human lives. Another type of thing that goes on, is, we were in a valley and I think we had nicknamed it AK Valley, after the AK-47 because we were getting, every once in a while, sniper fire. And you can tell when it's an AK-47 because it makes kind of like a popping sound when it fires. It's like a crack. And we had CIDGs working with us.

CIDGs are Civilian Independent Defense Group. And they had spotted (they were like our point men, more or less) an NVA, presumably carrying a weapon, I guess it must have been. And they had fired on him. They had blown off the top of his head. And then one of the CIDG had cut off one of his ears. And I understand, that according to Buddhism, unless your body is complete, you cannot go wherever it is that the Buddhists go to after they die. So, they had done this. And as we walked by, you know, everyone thought it was, you know, kind of cool, to see this head there that was, you know, half gone to begin with and have the ear sliced off and there it was just like a, you know, it was flat--with a small hole left in the side of the head. This feeling that we had that it was, you know, a rather humorous incident, or, you know, looked upon as being a good thing, and we were really men because, not that the CIDG had done this, but because, you know, it was an act that we would have liked to have perpetrated ourselves, I think. It's something, you know, it's, it's more or less condoned over there. And the feelings that you have are the policies of the military--that this is really, you know, a thing to be manly about. Another, not the same sort of incident, but this is more dealing with lack of medical attention of a Vietnamese peasant.

We had come across rice paddies and someone had said that they had seen two VC in the rice paddy carrying weapons. And I was an M-79 man at the time, and they called all M-79s up front, so naturally I go up front and they told me this. And they had fired at them. There was two big boulders in this rice paddy and these two VC were supposed to be behind this boulder. So I lop M-79s behind the boulder and we went back there later on to see, you know, if anything, you know, if there'd be anything there. So, when we get back there, all we found was a Vietnamese peasant farmer with a sickle in his hand--or it lay next to him; his thigh was broken by an M-16 bullet and his spine was hit with shrapnel from the M-79. He had passed out in the sun. We, we waited for about two hours for a medivac to come out and pick him up. When the chopper came, it wasn't a medivac, it was just a regular chopper. He had just been laying there in the sun and he had passed out in the sun. And I'm not even sure if they gave him morphine. I know they wrapped his leg up. And that was about the extent of any medical attention that he got while we were with him. I need some water.

WEBER. I'm, I'm Jim Weber. I was formerly a sergeant and I was also in Ron's platoon. And I can kind of verify what he's saying in case anyone kind of doubts it. A lot of stuff happened like that. Especially things about the medical attention, things like that. I was in two different battalions. I was in the 1st of the 6th and the 1st of the 46th. In the 1st of the 46th there was one--I say an example; like, I say, we can go on all day rapping about war atrocities. Okay, anyhow, right? Now, we had surrounded this village and went into it on the north side. We had taken one Vietnamese suspect, a Viet Cong suspect, you know, kept him with us. About 15 minutes later we found another one that was hiding in a bunker underneath these hootches. And I have a lot of pictures and things here that we didn't have time to get blown up that I can verify this with. Okay, now here's the picture that I want to show you, it's a picture of a GI holding up a head. Okay, now, this was when I was with the 1/46th Battalion. This happened in December of '67, west of Chu Lai. Other isolated examples. We had moved into a village. We had confiscated approximately 25 pounds of rice. We rounded up approximately 40 civilians in the village. It was decided that there was too much rice in the village for 40 people. We left them with five pounds of rice. One woman was complaining about it and she kept saying that she wanted back her rice. The officer in charge, you know, hit her over the head with a rifle for complaining. He was complaining because she was too close to him, you know, and she smelled and everything like that.

BEITZEL. My name is John Beitzel. I'm 21. I served in the 11th Brigade, 4/21 Infantry. I served as a sergeant and as squad leader. Worked in Quang Ngai Province. I worked around My Lai and Duc Pho. I've witnessed the mutilation of bodies. This consisted of cutting off ears and plucking out teeth for souvenirs. I have pictures of this that I've showed to the press at other times. Don't have them with me today. I've witnessed electrical torture many times with not only VC suspects and prisoners, but also detainees. I've witnessed the relocation of villagers. One particular operation was a three-day operation where we took all the villagers out of the village, put them in a barbed wire compound, interrogated them.

Tortured some of them. Beat some of them. And then we had supplies brought in. Bangelore torpedoes, all types of explosives--to just level the hill and just get rid of anything; make it look like there was never a hill there. My CO once fired at a group of kids merely because they came up to our hill to collect C-rations. We were also ordered to fire gas grenades at them. There was a big pressure for body count. We had a very low body count in our company and we had a lot of pressure come down from the battalion commander to the company commander, down on to us. We were given new incentives to get a higher body count such as a six-pack of beer or a case of soda. And sometimes, a three-day pass, you know, for the amount of body count we had. Common things in my company were throwing grenades into civilian bunkers. We once threw a white phosphorus grenade. And a lot of times I never thought people were in these bunkers, but an old man came out when we threw this white phosphorus grenade in and he was all singed and burned. We...everywhere we went we would recon by fire if we felt...if we felt it necessary. We'd innumerable amount of free fire zones. We shot at anything on high ground. And in this particular area where I was at, the mountains and the high ground was very close to the beach. Was only a few miles between the beach and the high ground and there was a lot of hills, isolated hills, all over the place.

We shot anything or anybody that went up on these hills. Because they were free fire zones. Burning villages was very common. It was mentioned on an earlier panel that villagers would leave and that we suspected that they left because they were VC and they didn't want to be captured. So we would burn their hill. Whenever we received sniper fire we would return it, no matter where it came from. If it was a hill with people on it or not. I was in Vietnam from January '69 to January '70. We were ordered to go out on a patrol, a regular patrol that we go on all the time--during a cease-fire. We were very perturbed at this because we wanted to take the time off to write letters home. In one incident, we were working with another company and our battalion was nearby. Both companies were on the same radio frequency. Over the radio, the other company told us to pass on to our higher command that they had a body count of thirteen. So we passed it on up. (They were too far to have radio contact.) So we passed it on up. Then later, one of our platoons went into the village and they said we can confirm the body count of that company. They said there's nine women, three children and one baby.

BEZANSON. John, could you give us any reason as to why this happened? Was this an individual thing or is it a company policy, any of the torture of prisoners or the...

BEITZEL. Well, as far as torturing the prisoners, this happened as...I've seen a major there during torturing of prisoners. We also had electrical field phones in our battalion base camp in the headquarters TOC Room that's what they call the headquarters. There was torture going on in there so I'm as sure...I'm sure everyone from battalion commander on down knew of it; so I can presume from this, it was policy. These things I'm telling about--about burning the villages, free fire zones, reconning by fire--they were all common. They weren't isolated. We did them wherever we went.

WINGRODSKI. My name is Curtis Wingrodski. I was a Spec. 4 in the Americal Division, 11th Brigade, 59th Scout Dog and I, I, don't know what to say. I've listened--I've been here for three days listening to, you know, people come up here and tell whatever war stories they have and whatnot. And, as I said, I worked for Scout Dog and I worked with different companies of different battalions in our area. And I got to rap with the guys and, I just know that, we learned somewhere along the line, that a dink was less than a person. And these things go on. They really happen. I don't know how to...man, I can't talk. I can't tell you people...incidents or whatever you want to hear. I'm just here because it goes on and on and somebody's got to do something. Here I am, you know.

KEYES. I was a Spec. 4 when I was assigned to "E" Troop, 1st Cav., Americal Division. I guess the worst thing I really saw over there was mistreatment of civilians. Now, most of this went on when we had convoys running from Duc Pho to Sai Wen. Such things as tear-gassing villages, throwing spent 50 caliber rounds at civilians. Sometimes, another instance, where children were with split skulls from a thrown 50 caliber round. You can kill them just throwing them. Running down hootches. Doing things in rice paddies. Destroying their crops. The worst thing I ever really saw was when we're on a mission. We're taking some grunts out on a beachhead. And there were some fishermen out on the ocean and a couple of our sergeants thought it would be a good sport to use them as target practice. So they swung their 50 calibers around and they just shot the _____ out of them, for no reason, I guess. And, I'm no better. Lots of times on mine sweep, we'd pass a lake, also running from Duc Pho to Sai Wen, and there'd be fishermen in this lake and since we had nothing better to do, we'd fire M-79 rounds at them, M-16 rounds. Sometimes M-60s. We'd call for a test fire. And...sort of aim their way, hoping we'd hit somebody. I can't really say why we did it. Maybe it was because we were taught to hate them. I know this is all I heard when I was over there. I was told by my own lieutenant, my CO, well, he saw me wearing one of these bracelets--you've probably seen them before. Well, a Vietnamese boy gave it to me and we were pretty uptight, you know.

I thought he was a pretty neat little kid. And first thing he did was, he told me, he asked me why I was wearing it. I told him, I said, "Well, a Vietnamese boy gave it to me." I said it was a token of his friendship, really. He liked me and I liked him. We gave each other gifts, I suppose. And, he told me to take it off. And, of course, I didn't agree. I didn't want to take it off. I didn't feel I should. But, he told me these are the same people--he says, "Why do you accept gifts from the same people that go out and put mines in the roads and blow up your buddies?" And he told me that if I didn't take it off, he'd go to more maybe drastic measures. I don't know. And he just dismissed me. But, I don't know. I don't want to give any blood stories or nothing. I just can't do it. I just want you to know that the people over there aren't really being treated as human beings. They're being treated as slaves, let's say. Maybe not even slaves. I don't know. I don't know. I just don't know what to say. I just wanted you to know about it.

KRUCH. My name is Robert A. Kruch. I was a Pfc. in Vietnam with Company A, 3/21st, 196th Light Infantry Brigade. And a few people may have heard about it. It was in August of '69 that they (my company) refused to fight. Then I had some rather bitter feelings. I seen some of the things some other people have talked about. But I've also seen mistreatment of GIs by the higher command because they wouldn't produce a body count. After I had joined my company, we went in on a stand-down because most people had been in field for 2 1/2 months and we got into a fight with a recon platoon, which our colonel didn't like, so he choppered us out back into a hot LZ. Some of us had faulty weapons that were never replaced, like they were supposed to be when we were in. And there's about six people, at least, that got wounded. From that time on, it was rumored that the reason we never received our mail (it only came in sometimes once a week) or never got any hot food (supplied maybe once a month) was because our colonel was down on us because we didn't produce a body count and one time when we were being resupplied, he flew in and started yelling at the CO and he said, "I don't want any more of your _____ prisoners. I want a body count."

After that we were issued orders to...well, we were told we were in a free fire zone and anybody we saw that was over 12 years of age that we thought was a male, was to be considered the enemy and engaged as such. And I was told that the battalion commander before that had told the troops not to fire at anybody unless they were seen with weapons. To me this is a kind of a drastic change and it shows a difference in policies between the field grade officers as they come in. And it was rumored that this guy was with the 9th Division and he volunteered for an infantry unit to, as they put it, to make rank. And we were harassed, it seemed like from every day on, you know, for not having a body count, until we were finally sent on the last mission in which we were told it was a one-day assault. I, I got wounded on the third day and my own squad had only two meals of C-rations in three days between us, and we had to risk our necks to get water. And there's one case there where two people lived for eight hours and they wouldn't bring in medivacs to take them out and they both died. And those were the two bodies this company was supposed to retrieve when they refused to go back out again. We were ordered to assault a line of bunker complexes by a major that was back in LZ Center, when most of us didn't have any food or water and the things that we did have were hogged by the TOC Center. Our commander was judged by most of us as being in a state of shock. He didn't know what he was doing. He just issued orders to do it. And everybody in our...in our company felt that since this guy had only three weeks in the country and was obviously in a state of shock, you know, his orders shouldn't be obeyed. But, yet, we were told we'd be court-martialed or, or even shot, if we didn't obey, obey his orders. But, I think what, what it really was, is that people saw the people that got killed in those three days (which were at least nine that I saw and I was one of those that got wounded) and were totally senseless. And there was no reason for it other than being pushed by superiors up above to do things, you know, at a faster speed than we...we thought could be accomplished. And by poor leadership. We didn't feel that just going out and indiscriminately killing people helped matters any. And the way I felt, and the way most people felt, was that we were just picked out discriminately and set down in...over in Vietnam; shafted by our own country--to fight in a war which most of us didn't understand and nobody knew--even when we were over there we didn't know where we were at because we were just choppered around and set down so much.

I was there about a month and I had...there was only one person that had more time than I had and he had a couple of days more, almost a month. And the people that I did know that supported the war there, didn't even know simple facts about it. It was, it was almost unbelievable. They just supported it because they said that they were supposed to be there. I just don't think it's right to draft somebody and send him to an undeclared war that has moral connotations that are awfully bad. Subject them to the...just the mental treatment that some of these guys go through. And I think a lot of them feel that it's more the fault of their country than the people they're fighting against. That's all I'd like to say for right now.

WRIGHT. My name is Doug Wright. I was also with Americal. I went over with the 198 Infantry Brigade, the 1/6 Infantry. I served with the infantry and also with operations, Tactical Operations of Brigade Headquarters. For the past two days, or three days, rather...I mean you've heard all sorts of terrible things so that if many of us...many of us seem callous, it's only because of the indoctrination that we were subjected to, you know, before we went to Vietnam. That--coupled with personal vengeance. If you see your brother, you know, shot, shot in the face, you're going to be mad and you want to get back. I could relate horrendous occurrences, you know, that should have made most of you vomit by now. But I'd just like to say one thing. I'd like to reemphasize our purpose here...the purpose of the Winter Soldier Investigation. We're here to make people aware, or we're here to make you people aware. If you want a true awareness, you could go. But you've heard a first-hand experience. Nobody else besides the vet, besides the leg in the field, knows what's happening. He doesn't really know what's happening because when you go to the boonies they tell you where you're going and what you're going to do. But you really don't know what's happening. Because they keep you isolated, just as much as they keep you people isolated. We came to make you people aware. Now it's up to all of us. When you go from here, you need to make as many people aware as possible. To your homes, to where you work, to where you go to church; any type or organization. Tell what you've heard here. Make people aware. That our brothers in Vietnam are very unhappy.

MODERATOR. This whole panel, or this whole thing, was brought together to bring up war atrocities and the reasons behind it. It's really been an emotional thing for an individual to get up here and have to relate experiences that he's tried to forget. And I'd like to ask some of the people here on the panel why you came. We'll start our way here and just work our way down.

BEZANSON. The reason why I, myself, came is because I was tired of living with the nightmares that I lived with. The people that I, myself, messed up. The people I've seen my buddies mess up and then the next day they're killed; where they went from there we don't know, you know. But, like ever since I've come back to the United States, I've watched it turn from a country of democracy to one of hypocrisy. A person will teach their children "Love thy neighbor" until they get 18 years old and then you hate. Then they're taught to hate. Just hate. How can a person...I can't understand how a person can approve of the war and sleep at night knowing that he's sent his brothers or his sons over to Vietnam to be killed for, for something that makes no sense. It has never, to me, been explained why Vietnam exists. I came to this Winter Soldier Investigation to give my testimony and to find out how many of my brothers felt the same way I did, and I'm really glad to see that there's quite a number of people that are against the war and would like to see the $800.00 a second that we're spending on the war put into an automobile to make it safe to drive. They're spending it to kill the dude's brother and the same dude's dying in the automobile. But I just got tired of living with my nightmares and I think by relating I can share them with you, you know, and, and, it takes kind of the guilt off me, in a way. And maybe it'll stop, like my younger brother, or, or some of your younger brothers or sisters, or your children, from going over there and then having to come home and live with these same nightmares.

PALOSAARI. My primary reason for getting involved in this testimony was because of Jim Weber. He called me up last Thursday night. He said he was coming up to Detroit to testify. He gave me a rundown on what he planned on telling the people. And everything he said was true and, you know, I had to support him. I told him I would. I'd collaborate his story. I just felt that now was the time for me to do my part, to let people know how I feel, or how Jim feels, and how many, many of us feel. That was about it.

WEBER. I'm the Jim that he's talking about. This had bothered me for a long time. Prior to going into service, I was a manager of a shoe store--it's a chain across the country. I had a relatively easy job, well paying job. And so I imagined I would be a flag waver because I had a little bit of money and I wouldn't care about, you know, I had a racist attitude. Of course, we all still have racist attitudes. I, I didn't care about anyone else. You know, I cared about myself and I, I got drafted into the army and it, it made quite a big change because I was waving flags all the time that I was on my train, you know, down to South Carolina where I got my murder training. And I...okay, I went in there, and my complete moral worth was completely destroyed. I mean I was a worthless human being. The worst thing that you can be in the military is to be called a civilian. And so they had to completely resocialize us, which they were very effective at doing. I didn't agree with everything, but I went along with it. Then I was sent on to advanced genocide training down at Fort Polk, Louisiana. And this, this is where I got, you know, this is where I started to hate, hate anything that wasn't exactly like me. Anything that wasn't a fighting machine. Gooks. You've heard that mentioned here for three days, but I don't think you really know what it means unless you know how much hate is instilled in one person, how much, how much really guilt, I mean...like if you're not white and 21, you know, forget it. And this is what they do. This is what they do. They turn you into a fighting machine and it's, it's so, it's so hideous some of the things. I mean we've gone into barracks and we've had like pictures of...well, they weren't pictures, they were like cartoons, with slant eyes, you know.

Everything was a slant eye and these little hats on the top, you know. And these were the people you were hating. They were positioned right above the gun racks, you know. No uniform or anything, just, just simply the profile of one, or maybe the face, full face of another. And this, this went on, you know, for sixteen straight weeks. By the time I had left Fort Polk, Louisiana, I wanted to kill my mother, you know. Or anyone, that, that wasn't, you know, completely in agreement with me. I wanted to just kill everything, you know. It's really bad. I went over to Vietnam with the same attitude because I, I had been trained and I knew I was an effective fighting machine. That I was going to kill everything in my path and it started out and it...it lasted for about one day. When I got there and saw the _____ being beat out of a few children, you know. And from there on, it was all downhill and, man, like I was a great American, and I think I still am a great American, you know. Just because you don't completely agree with something you don't understand, there was no reason why, you know, you should be a Communist and write with your left hand. And it's really wild. Through Vietnam these things just kept going and going on and going on. I can relate to you _____ that went on. I mean, like, you've gone through this, right, you've gone through the whole thing. But even the people that were on our side, man, even the people that were fighting with us, were still lower class, second class citizens, you know. Since there weren't that many, they were a complete different race. We would call them niggers, you know, in this country. Over there we call them gooks, you know. It's the same thing. They're second class citizens. It's a complete racism thing, you know. Okay, so what happened? Like even the people that are supposed to be on our side, they're supposed to be fighting with us. Right? I have an example here. This isn't an atrocity. You know, it isn't blood and gore. We went into a village and we searched, we searched the people and not everyone understandably could be in the military because someone had to, you know, work the land. Someone had to provide the food. Okay, who was going to do this? It was people...it was people that, you know, had special permits, special passes, special ID cards. Now these are the people that are on our side.

We went into a village and we took the ID cards off of people and sent them back to the rear. I have one here that the press can verify after. (Bill Schmidt of the Detroit Free Press is supposed to be writing this down. I don't know how far he's got with it.) I'd like to know what happened to this man. Not this man, but all of our yellow brothers. It's just a big racism thing. You know, they're all complete second class citizens and it's really, really hideous, you know. There's a number of things. And then, when I come out of the service, and I come back. I would go into, you know, the bars, to where my friends used to loaf and, you know, I would hear these same things going on, that went on before I left. But now, things had changed for me, see. Because I had seen what was going on. I had firsthand, you know, witnessed these things and I wasn't getting it from the Pittsburgh Press or the Pittsburgh Post Gazette or anything like that, man. I had seen it. And my father, my parents, had sent me clippings of these massive massacres that we had committed. My unit, the 196th, which weren't true. You know, simply weren't true. And, the same thing that's been brought up all day long about the body count. Everything is a bunch of lies. And you get people sitting back here, you know, back here, and, and they believe this stuff and that's what we've got to get out. I really believe it. Like I've said before, you know. I think this is being a true American. I think it's, you know, sticking up for your country. Damn it, I love this country and I can't see it being run by fascist pigs, you know.

PANELIST. I came here for a lot of reasons that were just mentioned by the previous people talking. I have bad dreams. I have nightmares. I have guilt feelings. I would like to see true self-determination by the Vietnamese people. But most of all, I think, primary and utmost, I'd like to see the war ended because I think that's the first thing we can do in order to get our country together.

MODERATOR. Pardon me, we have to cut this short. So we're just going to make one statement. We all belong to the unit that Lieutenant Calley belonged to. What's been brought out during this whole testimony is that it's a general policy and not an isolated incident. We're trained from basic training, AIT and OCS, to kill and that's what we're out there to do. It is not the fault of Lieutenant Calley. It is not the fault of the infantryman in his platoon, but the fault of the U.S. government and the U.S. military establishment. The whole system is nothing. It is set up to dehumanize us and to make everybody we see a nonhuman so that we can kill them. It would be impossible with our background to go into a village and kill a woman and child unless we looked at those people as nonhumans. And because of the service and because of the military establishment, that's how we look at the Vietnamese. If there are any questions, ask now, for we have a very short amount of time. Go ahead, ma'am.

QUESTION. Nobody really likes war. I don't like it either. If you go into a war, it's kill or be killed. Now, if you see a Vietnamese person there with a hand grenade sitting in the rice paddies, you better kill them or they'll kill you.

PANELIST. You've never seen that, lady.

PANELIST. Ma'am, we're not talking about a Viet Cong with a weapon. We're talking about a civilian. A person with a hoe in his hand. We're talking about a woman and a child in a bunker. We're talking about My Lai, which happens every day. Every day, ma'am. And it happens in the United States, too.
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Re: Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veter

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17. MEDICAL PANEL

MODERATOR. This panel is concerned with medical aspects, medical affirmation of problems in Vietnam. My name is Jon Bjornson. I was formerly a Major, U.S. Army Medical Corps. I have my DD-214 right here, which is an honorable discharge form. I was a psychiatry-neurology consultant in Vietnam through 1964-1965. I also functioned for five months as a Flight Surgeon in the Mekong Delta and was Deputy Surgeon, United States Support Command at the time. I must admit that I wasn't happy with our policy in Vietnam before I went there, even in 1964, just after the overthrow of Diem. When I came back I was extremely disgusted and I resigned my commission. I'd like each of the panel members to introduce themselves, if they would. Why don't we start with you, Mike?

ERARD. My name is Michael Erard. I served as a Medic with the 173rd, 3rd/503rd.

GROSSO. My name is Joseph Grosso. I was a General Medical Officer for the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vietnam.

GALICIA. My name is David Galicia. I served as a psychiatrist, 3rd Field Hospital, Saigon, Republic of Vietnam.

DUBROW. My name is Jeff Dubrow. I was a Hospital Corpsman on the U.S.S. Sanctuary in Da Nang.

FORTIN. My name is Dave Fortin and I served as the driver for the 3rd Medical Battalion, 3rd Marine Division in Quang Tri.

STEIGER. My name is Gary Steiger and I served as a Medic in the 366th USAF Dispensary at Da Nang.

MODERATOR. Thank you. The first thing we will try to demonstrate is the variance of treatment, which was not medically sound, in terms of preference for patients. That is, Americans got the best treatment. If an ARVN had the same type of problem, wound, what have you, he got the second best. Prisoners got the worse by far. And we're going to take it by subjects. Mike, why don't you start off with something about how prisoners were treated by our medical people?

ERARD. We had a policy whereby prisoners were given just the basic treatment. In other words, maybe just a bandage or field dressing was put on a wound. We were instructed--and this was battalion SOP--that we were to expend no medical supplies on them. In other words, specifically we carried a small bottle of serum albumin, 500 cc, to be used for people who were in shock or had serious wounds. When we went out in the field we were told this costs $25. It's never to be used on a gook, meaning both Vietnamese and prisoners.

MODERATOR. Anybody else want to comment on it? Dave, what about you? What have you seen happen with prisoners?

FORTIN. Basically, in regard to this, a lot of various instances. But I can relate one specifically to you. A prisoner would be brought into triage, which is where they get their basic medical treatment before they go on to their specific needs like operations which had to be performed directly by a doctor. Well, in triage, a prisoner would be interrogated. They'd come down with ITT, which is Intelligence Translations people, and they'd try to get information from the prisoners. If the prisoner wouldn't give information out to the questions they asked, they'd use various ways of torture. They'd poke at his wounds. I've seen them stand a prisoner up who had a stomach wound; his shoulder was torn up. They generally harassed the prisoner until they could get information out of him. I don't even think he could speak. He was in pretty bad shape. They took him to an operating room and in the operating room he wasn't treated by a doctor, such as Americans were. I know sterile conditions were less than normal in this case. Rather than having a doctor who would work on an American, they'd have Corpsmen who were practicing or getting experience from working on the prisoners, treat them. He was in pretty bad shape. They had very little regard, whatsoever, for the concern of him once they got him out of the operating room. Their attitude was like, okay, we got to do it so we're going to do it, you know,. But, like, who cares whether he lives or dies. It's just something that has to be done. There was one doctor present. Other than that, the Corpsmen did all the major work. They set bones, very sloppily. If you set a bone sloppily, it's going to come out crooked. They don't care. You've heard all this through the testimony. You're dehumanized and yellow people are not even human. You have no regard for them, so you don't care what happens to them. And the prisoners more so than anyone else. Instances like this go on all the time. This is just one I could bring up. I don't know what happened to him once he left that operating room.

MODERATOR. David, you said there was an American doctor present when they tortured this guy?

FORTIN. When the interrogation people came in, he was still in triage. He was laying on a stretcher. He was in really bad shape. ITT is intelligence. It's translations; it's getting information from prisoners and working a little bit with civilians. But they came in. There's a doctor present. The doctor's not concerned with intelligence. They had a captain in this case, who is a Marine officer, and two ARVN, South Vietnamese intelligence people. One of which was an officer, one of which was a staff officer, or staff sergeant. And they're the ones who interrogated him. The officer was present. He ignored the interrogation. As a matter of fact he almost went along with it. He didn't actually touch the prisoner, but he didn't say anything to stop the torture, or whatever you want to call it, that was going on.

MODERATOR. Jeff, what about treatment of ARVN or civilians?

DUBROW. I worked in the surgical unit on board the Sanctuary. And most of the minor surgical procedures that were done on the Sanctuary were done in the recovery room. Such as debridgment of wounds around minor suturing cases, things like that. An ARVN soldier came in one day. I set him up for his procedure. It was a debridgment of a wound and it's done under a local anesthesia, like xylocaine or novocaine. I set the tray out and I drew up 10 cc of xylocaine. The ARVN was pretty apprehensive about what was going to be happening to him. So we had the interpreter tell him what was going on and he calmed down. About five, ten minutes later he was screaming like crazy, you know. I ran over to see what was the matter and I noticed that the syringe hadn't been touched. And the doctor was performing this procedure without anesthesia. He had done this about ten times. I'd seen him do it. And he was a lieutenant commander, by the way, which is like a major, so he knew better. Also the same doctor claimed in some cases he was rushed, like from one case to another. Like in suturing cases, I've seen him perform suturing cases without the use of sterile technique. In other words, no gloves. And it only takes 15 seconds to put a glove on, you know. So there was no excuse for that. This is, like I said, done only on ARVN soldiers, not American soldiers. Another doctor, who was a lieutenant commander also, performed 27 out of 30 negative laparotomy cases. A laparotomy is cutting into the abdomen and exposing the intestines and repairing any tear or wound that would be in the intestines. The x-rays would come in with the patient from triage, or from x-ray, or wherever, and I put the x-rays up on the screen. So I saw every x-ray that came in on these patients. And you could see a metal fragment in the intestines. It stands out like a sore thumb. It's just like a big, you know, lump in the middle of nothing. You can really see it. If, let's say, an ARVN or Vietnamese civilian would come in with a fragment wound of the arm or leg, or something like that, he would automatically order a laparotomy to be set up on him. We can't question him because I'm only an E-4 and he was a lieutenant commander. So I had to do what I was told. So, he would do these cases that didn't have to be done and a laparotomy can be an easy case. If there's a frag there, he could take the frag out, repair the wound and that's it. Sometimes it can be a very bad case. There would be a lot of bleeding. I've seen fellows from a simple fragment of the stomach die in surgery. And he would do these cases and they wouldn't have to be done. And like I say, there was 27 out of 30 negative cases. That's about all I have to say.

MODERATOR. At an American hospital he would be kicked off any staff. Tell me, Jeff, you're pretty knowledgeable about medicine. How much training did you have?

DUBROW. I went to basic Hospital Corps School and orthopedic Technician School in Philadelphia, and OJT OR technician in Vietnam.

MODERATOR. And what are you doing now?

DUBROW. Nothing.

MODERATOR. Why?

DUBROW. Civilian hospitals somehow think that Navy Corpsmen, Army Medics, or whatever, the only thing they're good for would be making beds and passing out bedpans. They think the training we have insufficient. And they won't give any ex-Medics a chance to prove themselves. So Medics won't work in a lot of civilian hospitals because after what they've done in Vietnam, or in the service, even if they haven't gone over there, they don't want to push bedpans around all day. They want to get down to the nitty-gritty and really get into some work. But they can't do this.

MODERATOR. You probably do most things a nurse can do, right?

DUBROW. Most things nurses can do. I can do probably more than a nurse can do. Nurses cannot suturize. I've sutured. I've debrided wounds where nurses can't.

MODERATOR. What about the triage? Gary, you want to explain what triage is? And how it worked in terms of Vietnamese Americans.

STEIGER. We worked six days a week in Vietnam in our dispensary. And you can get pretty bored on your days off because there really wasn't a heck of a lot to do. And there were, I think, six hospitals in the area including the ship that Jeff was on. Oftentimes the Air Force Medics would go to the Navy or Marine Hospital. I worked quite a bit in those places and triage is a system whereby the patients are divided into three main categories for treatment.

If you have a person coming in who is really badly wounded, he may have a limb or two missing, or multiple shrapnel wounds or whatever, and they expect him to die, he's placed in a category "expectant." Right after those people come the guys that if they weren't treated immediately would possibly die. In the "expectant" category, the chances are they wouldn't make it even with surgery. And the third category is a delay in which the guys come in, maybe have minor wounds, or things like this. When patients came in, not only to the Navy hospitals and others, but when they came in to our casualty staging flight where I worked, these patients would usually be the ones that were treated last. You could have an American come in in an expectant category and there was no way that he was going to make it. And the doctors would oftentimes treat him before they would treat an ARVN soldier or NLF soldier, or whatever, in a lower category who had a really good chance of making it if he was taken care of. Most of the time the Corpsmen would give him basic first aid and that was it. You weren't supposed to use any more of your supplies on them than was absolutely necessary to get them out of your facility and into a Vietnamese hospital. Now the prisoners that I saw that we handled were taken into our hospitals where they didn't receive treatment. I mean, it's, it's no way to...I lose the words. I mean they were lower than worms as far as these people were concerned. I mean you don't treat worms and you don't treat ARVN. It was about the same thing. We'd bring them in on a medivac. The Air Force flies cargo planes. They're hooked up for carrying litters and they carry wounded personnel and so forth on them. A C-130 would come in which could maybe carry 60 American wounded, and it would have over 100 Vietnamese on it. Well over 100. Stacked on top of each other and everything else. These people'd get off. They'd be taken off the plane. You'd have a man who's say in a body cast--you know, cast from his neck to his knees--and he'd be walking down the ramp and somebody would trip. This guy would fall three feet. He'd maybe had half the bones in his body broken and the doctor'd spent hours in or working on him, and they'd drop him from three feet. They'd put them into buses, and they were tossed into the buses more than put. They would take them down to the ARVN hospitals instead of taking them to a place where they could be treated. They'd be taken there and even if the ARVN didn't have the facilities--which they don't have--to treat these patients, we'd leave them anyway. The prisoners were transferred. There's several hospitals where they take care of these. One was where John was at, one at Vung Tau, and there's one at Chu Lai. And it was common knowledge amongst the people that were working on the flight line transferring these prisoners that they were turned over to the Koreans. It was a standing joke that in the Korean hospital if you had a patient who was really bad off, and you were sending someone down there who wasn't quite so bad off, and they didn't have the beds, the one in the bed that was going to die anyway would either be shot, or something else done to them, so they'd have room. And this happened all the time. The patients that we got in our casualty staging flight would set up in the end of the ward; if you were lucky, you could give them some water. It wasn't worth your time to treat them. That's the way I saw it. Unless we can realize that those people are human beings, that we're killing human beings over there, that they are the same flesh and blood of which we are...I don't know. We're just not human beings ourselves.

MODERATOR. I'm going to kind of throw this open to you, as I'm sure you've all had experience with it. There's a program in Vietnam which probably was the first major attempt at "pacification" called the Medical Civil Action Project. This was begun about six moths before I got there under MACV and then later all the medical units were, to some extent, rewarded, reinforced, encouraged to become involved in Medical Civil Action, which the press built up. Joe, why don't you start off on MedCap. What's it all about?

GROSSO. Well, in general, it was an attempt to use the practice of medicine as a propaganda device. Essentially it consisted of bringing into a village personnel and equipment to give the impression that some kind of a treatment facility was being provided for people. That, itself, was well- meaning, but the program involves the sporadic and often the inadvertent distribution of antibiotics of all kinds; both oral antibiotics and injectable antibiotics. This in itself is a very dangerous procedure and one which can ultimately disturb the normal bacterial flow which these people have carried for so many thousands of years. Now, while I was in Vietnam, of course, the Surgeon General's office issued a proclamation stating that no tuberculous disease would be treated. However, it was obvious at the time that the Medical Civic Action Program personnel had been attempting to treat tuberculosis in the villages with inadequate doses of antibiotic and this certainly is a practice which is detrimental, both to the people who have tuberculosis and to the other people in the village. Most of the other practices that were common in the MedCap program I believe to be contrary to what I had been taught in medical school. I believe most of us, even the lay public, is aware that to treat someone inadequately with antibiotics is a dangerous process. However, this is something that went on all the time in the villages. And it wasn't the fault of any of the medics who distributed the antibiotics because they certainly couldn't be responsible for a command policy which allowed a jeep with medical supplies to go into a village. Oftentimes the jeep would go into the village and the villagers themselves would procure the medicine from the jeep; would just take the medication right from the jeep. The medical personnel there were not able to control two or three hundred villagers picking at a medical chest filled with outdated, surplus medicinals. And I should add that more often than not, the medications that we used in the medical program were out of date, were surplus, were things that we had no use for in our medical operations for the military.

MODERATOR. Any more comments about MedCap?

STEIGER. Well, the Air Force also had a MedCap program and I participated a half dozen times in this program. It wasn't an officially sanctioned thing, but it was something that the people in our dispensary got together. I could back the doctor up on the fact that the only supplies we were ever allowed to use were the medicines that were outdated and the supplies for which we had no use. Things which had been sitting in Connexes, which are large steel storage boxes, since World War II. And there was no way that you could guarantee there was any kind of sterility, that any time these drugs would serve any purpose at all. We had no means, the majority of the time, to check out whether the people that we were treating were allergic to any of these drugs, and yet they were still given. They were given on a one-time basis. You know you can't treat some of these diseases on a one-time basis. You know you give people pills for two or three days and it's not effective at all. There were only one or two Vietnamese doctors in the province that would work with us. The rest of them refused.

MODERATOR. Where was that?

STEIGER. Da Nang.

MODERATOR. That's one of largest Vietnamese hospitals in the country.

STEIGER. Sometimes, the patients would come through, get their pills and they'd go back into the lines. And the Vietnamese interpreter, which we had, was supposed to go through and make sure that these people didn't come back for additional dosages of their medicine. And, on occasion, people would be removed from the MedCap line because the interpreter said they were either VC sympathizers or they didn't need treatment or something like this. We had no way to verify whether they needed treatment or not because none of us spoke Vietnamese and the whole thing was really phony. It didn't serve any purpose at all except for propaganda.

MODERATOR. When I was in Vietnam they had both a polio epidemic at one point, and a cholera epidemic, very severe. Were there any immunization programs? Any of you in MedCap immunization programs?

GROSSO. There were no immunization programs. There was no organized preventive mental health program that had any central authority. Everything was on a village basis. It was an attempt to put a jeep with some kind of personnel into the village. There was no preventive medicine or vaccination programs, to my knowledge.

PANELIST. The way our MedCap program worked is we never hit the same village twice, so I don't think there could have been.

GROSSO. That was my experience, too. As a matter of fact the program was to hit as many different villages as possible. And not to hit the same village again and again. Evidently the propaganda impact could be best utilized by hitting a village once and then moving on to another village.

MODERATOR. Why did they do that? I don't understand.

GROSSO. I don't understand it either.

MODERATOR. Didn't you just say that you had to give in a list or something?

GROSSO. No, the only list was the list kept by the interpreter. The interpreter would make a list of names in a large book. A ledger, that would be submitted to the command when we returned from the village. And I was led to believe that at the end of the month the names registered in this book would be submitted to a higher command as some indication of our pacification work in that area. Whether the villager was treated or not, the mere fact that he had come up to the jeep and sought treatment allowed us to enter his name in the ledger. He then became recipient to American military medicine.

PANELIST. Well, all we did, we just kept the numbers--we didn't even keep a book--and the numbers we brought back to the dispensary were given to the hospital commander.

MODERATOR. What would you say, Joe, is the overall effect of MedCap as far as pacification or meeting the needs of the people?

GROSSO. The conversations that I was able to have with Vietnamese nurses who provided interpretation for us, was that the program had very little effect on community health. Actually, it's my belief that the program had a detrimental effect, because it usually would preclude the possibility of the village people going to the province hospital or some central diagnostic facility where a clear-cut indication for treatment could be obtained. Once the military physician had seen them and done anything, even if it involved the saying of a few words or the giving of an aspirin, the primitive Vietnamese would think that he had received treatment, that he had received the best the earth could offer and after that he wouldn't avail himself of any further help. So I would say that overall the program was detrimental to the community health--to the village health.

PANELIST. Joe, another reason here. I just thought of this. Was the use of Vietnamese interpreters to help you make a diagnosis? Often a Vietnamese could come up and say something to the interpreter and point to his stomach and you would get back, from the interpreter, stomach ache. And that would be your only basis for making a decision on what kind of medication or anything. I mean there's a million things that can be wrong with the stomach and, you had to go on that judgment. You couldn't say to the Vietnamese, "You'll be all right." You had to give them something. Even, even if it was just an aspirin or something because they expected this from the Americans. And I got to a point if I couldn't make a positive diagnosis on something I'd give a shot of worm medicine so I figured I wasn't doing any harm and I might be doing a little good because most of them, especially the children, had worms. So they wouldn't feel slighted anyway. But, many times I couldn't, in conscience, give them something, especially an antibiotic, that might harm them--so I gave them worm medicine.

GALICIA. Insofar as medical coverage for Vietnamese in Saigon, Third Field Hospital, this was the only hospital in the Republic where the nurses wore whites. We had our hospital set up in what was an ex-school.

MODERATOR. Madam Nhu's School as I recall.

GALICIA. Yeah, that's right. It was altered many times over to affect a hospital. The hospital itself was good. It was a very sterile place and the type of treatment that was dished out there was of top-notch variety. I cannot fault the hospital, in that regard. We used to get ARVNs, VCs, sometimes VC prisoners, our own people and civilians. After all, Saigon is a city of three million people now because of the war. It's mushroomed from its 750,000 it was a few years ago because that's where they're coming, from the rural sections. Now these people knew it was a hospital and when they came in, they were actually refused treatment in the emergency room. They might get a cursory going over if they were brought in by our ambulance to the triage areas. The standing order was that if he was in such rough shape that he might die any moment, you just stuck a bottle of V5W, glucose water, in his arm. You use a plasmic spander or something so that then they can be taken to the ARVN hospitals. The standard word for the civilians was that they go to Choi Rhe hospital. I was in Choi Rhe hospital and I know why they didn't want to go there. There were two and three people to the beds.

MODERATOR. We have a picture. Can you show the slide?

GALICIA. The beds were full of cockroaches.

MODERATOR. This is a typical Vietnamese hospital.

GALICIA. Whatever care these people got in Choi Rhe was mostly what their family gave them because they would have the family stay with them. They were very shorthanded. After all, this is a backward country. We all know that. And the number of trained people there, the number of trained personnel is limited. And even when the facilities were available within our hospital that was the standing order. And I know this because I lived there daily.

MODERATOR. (First Slide) Here's a hospital in Ban Me Thout but almost every province hospital looks this way and some are worse and more crowded.

PANELIST. The one at Da Nang was a lot worse.

GALICIA. The one at Choi Rhe was a lot worse also. In contrast to this I'd like to go on to say that, however, where it concerned Vietnamese officials, we took care of the Prime Minister, his family and anybody who had any position or any authority within the Vietnamese government, this kind of thing. You'd know they were there because there were a dozen cars, there was all kinds of personnel to protect these people, and we actively treated these people. This was a time when you would finally see my commanding officer, whom I would prefer to leave nameless. This man was an internist. He was a fully qualified internist, but he never practiced a day of medicine when I was there. His rounds consisted of glad-handing all the VIPs that happened to be in the hospital at any one particular time.

Within the family of the hospital, itself, I remember one occasion in which I overheard one of my techs talking to a girl who worked within the hospital, hospital cleaning, and I heard him say something about me. And he said, "Well, why don't you talk to the Doc, he's a pretty straight guy, maybe he'll do something for you?" I learned that this girl's brother was ill. She lived out in the alley and after all she did work for us; this kind of made her part of the family. You would have thought that at least maybe these people would be treated. I went with this girl later on to her family's home, and I determined that this was a five year old boy who had pneumonia. I went back and I asked if he could be brought in. I was flat out told no. I then asked if I could have the medication to go out and treat him and I was again told no. So I stole the penicillin and went and treated him anyway.

MODERATOR. Two days ago there was a Weapons Panel here and there was an expert from the American Friends Service Committee who discussed what he called the automatic or computer-run battlefield. He showed a number of very sophisticated, what we call anti-personnel weapons, which are to be used in this automated battlefield--which is, incidentally, one of the reasons why we can cut down our troop numbers in Vietnam. Some of these weapons can kill everything within a 60 yard radius, everything. It was a surprise to me that they are actually in use there now. Mike, you had a little personal experience with one.

ERARD. We were hit by our own artillery fire with three of the rounds. We were on a hill and we had ambush sites out around the hill. And somehow, either through our own error, or through a computer error, we were fired on. We received three 105 rounds right over us. Then the next three was this anti-personnel type round 105. When it hits it explodes. Inside the canister are small pellets--they look something like a hard ball, only a bit smaller.

These things explode and I believe there are about six or eight of these in a 105 round. They explode out and they can be set for different times. The ones that hit us exploded about a minute after it landed. We didn't know that this round was being used either, until we took shrapnel from it. Everybody up on the hill took shrapnel in this. These can be set from a minute, but I understand they can be set up to hours and days as to when they actually go off. That was my personal experience. I never treated a Vietnamese with that type of wound though. It's a regular type shrapnel type wound.

MODERATOR. Joe, you've seen what they do. What do they do?

GROSSO. Well, I didn't exactly see the weapon, but I had to police the remains of a command post that was hit with an anti-personnel bomb. It was our command post, unfortunately, which received an 800-pound anti-personnel bomb one evening. And thirty members of the command post were killed. The parts and remains of the bodies had to be policed and the damage done is considerable. There were no survivors. Bodies were devastated and destroyed, some beyond recognition.

DUBROW. I don't remember exactly what the dates were, but in 1969, whether through sabotage or error or what, the bomb dump at Da Nang Air Base blew up. It was a Marine bomb dump. There was a village that was right adjacent to the bomb dump and I was assigned as a medic to the demolition team that was there, defusing the bombs, and things like that. There were literally thousands of these things that Mike was describing--guava bombs which had a concrete outer shell filled with high explosives inside, timed ones, and things like this. As I understand it from talking to friends of mine who were working at the First Medical Battalion, which was near Freedom Hill at Da Nang, they treated many of the people in the village for shrapnel wounds which were received from these types of bombs. They flew out of the bomb dump and landed in the village.

MODERATOR. I guess all of you have seen what happens with napalm. Anybody want to describe what happens or what you've experienced with our use of napalm to kill VC? What does napalm do and what have you seen?

PANELIST. In Dong Ha, located about 18 miles south of the demilitarized zone, they have a children's hospital. It's all Vietnamese children. Mainly they're all civilians. They had a lot of children in there for treatment of diseases. There was one specific child I saw. I asked the child what had happened to him, and he said he'd been hit by napalm. His face, from his right eye around the back of his head (and had no ear), on down to the middle of his chest, was like one big mass of scar that'd just grown together. He'd been treated, but there's not a whole lot they can do for him. There's several of these cases, you know. I'm sure these people could tell you.

MODERATOR. Who else saw it? Anybody else see napalm?

GALICIA. I saw the effects a couple of times. One I distinctly remember was a lady I used to see out in the yard in between two of the wards. This lady'd been burned beyond recognition, facial-wise. She had no face. Her eyes were left and they had somehow or another grafted some skin over the front of her head. She had some sort of an orifice left that she could take food through, but that's about it. She'd been the victim of napalm.

PANELIST. On our trips to the Da Nang provincial hospital and to the other hospitals in the city, when we took our Vietnamese patients down there, I recall seeing several dozen over the period of a year--men, women and children-- who'd been hit by napalm and were in essentially the same condition as has been described. They were scar tissues. These people were like kids with arms that were grafted to their sides because they had no skin left on the inner part of their arm. Kids that were, like, two, three, and four years old. They would never be able to lead a normal life because the scar tissue had been allowed to build up. There was no physical therapy program. I believe the only one in Vietnam is run by the American Friends Committee in Quang Ngai and they have the facilities to treat only a very small percentage of these people. There were a fairly large number, several dozen, that I saw at Da Nang burned by napalm.

MODERATOR. I have a sort of anecdote about napalm. I had a date with a representative of Dow Chemical Company who told me that most of these burn injuries were due to the fact the Vietnamese were using gas stoves and they were blowing up. Vietnamese use charcoal. How about white phosphorus? White phosphorus, I might add, is generally used for marking positions. It's absolutely against the Geneva Accords to use white phosphorus for military purposes. Did we?

GALICIA. Before we have any testimony concerning that, I think it's worth adding that white phosphorus is not something that if it hits you, you can put out. You have to carve it out, because it'll burn its way straight through anything, especially, if you're speaking in terms of humans. It burns through anything: flesh, bones, till it gets to the other side and falls out.

PANELIST. There's only one way you can even temporarily stop it and that's to smother it. You can't keep something smothered for an extended amount of time.

GALICIA. Why? Because it reignites?

PANELIST. It just continues to burn, unless it is kept away from air.

GALICIA. Right. It ignites with air.

MODERATOR. Have you seen any white phosphorus injuries?

DUBROW. I saw several patients who supposedly had been burned (I saw them in the Naval Hospital) by something we were told was white phosphorus or Willy Peter. I can't say for certain. It chars its way through. As I understand it, the Marines in our area would use what is called a pop-up flare, which is a handheld flare that you shoot up into the air and fire at Vietnamese. I do know that these patients did come in and were treated for this after they had been burned.

PANELIST. In our battalion, when we were in Bau Loc, which is in Lam Dong Province, the mortar platoon used white phosphorus with their HE rounds. The officers and platoon leaders were issued white phosphorus grenades. They were used, not as markers, but during fire fights or in a village to either scare out people or burn it down.

MODERATOR. Next thing is gas. This is also against the rules set down in the Hague and Geneva Conventions. We used a combination of gases there called CS, CN and I think DM. These are a nauseant, a mucous irritant, and a tearing gas, a lacimating agent. I knew we used these because I saw them used. On Christmas Day in 1964, we were attempting to recapture eight Americans somewhere in the area of Tay Ninh. We were attempting to recapture Americans who had been captured by the Vietnamese. They were going to blanket a large area near the Black Virgin Mountain where they thought these prisoners were. They mixed this gas on a soccer field which was adjacent to an airfield on one side and the hospital for Tay Ninh on the other side. They had large drums, they would mix them, and they would put them in a rocket pod of an armed helicopter.

While they were mixing them, a helicopter landed improperly behind the area where they were mixing and a large cloud of gas settled over the entire city of Tay Ninh including us. That included the hospital. Now these gases are said not to be lethal. Unfortunately they are lethal if you have pulmonary disease. If you happen to get nauseated and vomit when you've had abdominal surgery, it can be pretty serious. And if you happen to have an open wound with a nerve exposed, it will cause direct nerve damage. This whole hospital was covered with this gas which poured down over the area. Anybody else seen the effects of this nonlethal gas?

GROSSO. My only recollection doesn't include observation of the use of gas, but I recall four or five prisoners of war who were dying in the Tuy Hoa general hospital, one of our general hospitals, of pulmonary edema. The nurses there informed members of our brigade that these prisoners had been in tunnels and gassed. They did have pulmonary edema from my observations, at least, and according to the physicians who were attending them.

PANELIST. Something I can relate concerns a chemical. I don't even know exactly what chemical is used. I just saw what happened to children in the Dong Ha children's hospital from various use of chemicals and a lot of the other things you people have been seeing the last few days. Gas possibly could have been the cause of these things. I'm not really sure. There was a whole ward of about 12 little kids who had been born deformed because of gas, chemicals, whatever agents were used in the country by the United States. But these kids were deformed. One kid's feet were turned around and he was walking on the joints of his ankles. His elbows were also inverted. His hands were backwards.

MODERATOR. My guess is that you're talking about defoliating agents. There are three versions--White, Blue and Orange.

PANELIST. I couldn't exactly say what chemical or what defoliants caused it.

MODERATOR. Was this in an area where they were defoliating?

PANELIST. They defoliated portions of the whole country, so you can't designate a specific area. At least in this place I couldn't.

MODERATOR. Agent Orange, which is sometimes called 245T, is known to be teratogenic or cause birth defects in a number of experimental animals. Supposedly now it's outlawed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and supposedly we have stopped using it in Vietnam. However, the Vietnamese are reportedly still using it. We have dropped 40 million pounds of this agent on Vietnam.

PANELIST. My understanding is that a mother would come in contact with it through their drinking water most of which is rain water. They have a barrel outside of their house, a catch basin on top of the house, and the water runs down into the barrel. Everyone drinks out of this water and a woman, if she drinks about a quart of this water, can cause damage to a child while she's in pregnancy.

MODERATOR. Dave, why don't you tell us about some of your experiences with U.S. military personnel problems of drug addiction or drug abuse?

GALICIA. We went into this subject somewhat extensively on Sunday when we were talking about what we do to ourselves but I think it's worth repeating. I went there as a fully trained psychiatrist and that makes me have enough brains in my head, supposedly, to come up with a standing diagnosis for any one individual. Our policy, and the regulations which I worked under, precluded my being able to send people out of country for further treatment. I could make a positive diagnosis of severe physical addiction to a drug such as heroin or opium. In this country we consider this a big enough disorder to hospitalize people and we take them away from the source of the drug. There was no way to take people away from the source of the drug in Vietnam. That doesn't come as any new bit of information to any of the vets here. You get drugs anywhere. There is no problem where that is concerned. I dislike to use the word, but I can't really think of another one. I was monitored where this was concerned.

It took two days for the medivacee to get on a plane and get the _____ out of country. He went to Tan Son Nhut on the next day, he rested there for a day, and then he got on the plane and went the following day. So this left plenty of time for my write-ups to go up to Long Binh to the office of the Psychiatric Consultant from the Surgeon General's office for Vietnam. If I tried to push something through like this, I would get a phone call, be told that this simply was not policy and that what the _____ was I doing trying to medivac this person out of country. The one person that stands out largest in my memory was a black kid who came in on six different occasions. He had shot up to 30 cc of heroin or opium a day, 4 cc at a crack--seven or eight times a day. And if this is not addiction I don't know what is. He would be taken by the MPs back to some MP unit, then be released to his company commander again because there is such a rampant problem they didn't have space for these people. They didn't know what the _____ to do with them, so they ended up giving them back to the company commander.

The company commander may or may not have been an understanding guy; he'd try to put the man back to work, and, of course, this man would be back in the hospital again. I harbored a few of these people for a while. Most of my patients were on Ward 8. I would sneak these people up to Ward 9, which was a convalescent ward, and again I constantly got bombarded from the hospital, itself, because regulations there said I couldn't keep anybody for more than 30 days--I got called down front many times, accused of harboring individuals, and I confessed to it, but these were the people who had been in so many times that, you know, it was like clockwork--three days or four days from the time I let them out, they'd be back. I kept trying to tell people this and I kept getting turned off. Nobody ever offered me an explanation as to what I should have done with these folks except wean them off the drug at that particular time. Don't worry about their addiction.

Their ETS or their Deros day (their day for leaving) would rotate around some time and I'd be rid of that problem. I'd just have another one to handle. And this is about the way it went for me, all year long.

MODERATOR. You didn't have any methadone?

GALICIA. I was denied methadone. I don't know why the _____ I was denied methadone. I broke people on thorazine. I might say that it served the purpose and most people adequately came down. But that doesn't take away from the addiction and it's not the drug of choice. Anybody who has any medical school training knows that. It's a simple proposition and I think that one of the things that was put forth was that it was too expensive and, you know, that's a crock of _____. It's a cent and a half a tablet.

MODERATOR. In terms of hard drug use, that's heavy use of barbiturates, heroin, speed, how many of these guys started over there? Have you any idea?

GALICIA. Well, I don't have figures because I never kept figures. It would have made a tremendous study, I suppose, for somebody's article. But, I felt so sick inside most of the time, I wasn't really concerned with articles. I'd say that probably one out of two or three out of five of the people who came in would outrightly confess to me that they had taken nothing (in the United States). Maybe they'd smoked some pot while they were in this country, but that was about the extent of it. And, I don't know what their purpose would have been in lying. I really don't know.

PANELIST. Just about any kind of drug that you can think of from heroin on down, if you couldn't get it from one of the guys in the hospital, it could be bought downtown.

GALICIA. It was no problem to get drugs up on the ward, even. While I'm at it, there's another thing I'd like to get my licks in on. I'd forgotten about it till right now. When I came into country I was shown my office. The office was in the back of an area which had been the dayroom. And that would have been okay. The dayroom had some things we could have used almost for therapy. At that time it had pool tables, Ping-pong tables, card tables. This place had been turned into a Special Services Library and had been carpeted much the same as the carpeting on this floor. Rows and rows of books had been put up. Most of the time the _____ thing just went to no avail.

It was a good showpiece for people who came in to see Third Field and nurses in white, etc. But the psychiatric office (it had a real fancy name--Chief of Department of Psychiatry and Neurology) was fine, except there were no other psychiatrists and there was no neurologist. So I was it. I had a social worker and two techs. And then I had to fight like _____ when they went home to get some more techs to replace them. The area, the type of degradation I felt this particular service of medicine was held in was incredible. Here I sat with my office in the back of a Special Services Library. This wasn't bad enough. We continued under this. But my inpatient service was on an open medical ward and I'd just like to describe the ward very briefly to you. This was a huge ward that was subdivided much the same way as these pillars subdivide. On that side, and back away from the nursing station, and on the other side, back away from the nursing station, were medical patients. You know, they had pneumonia, this kind of thing.

Down the sides from the nursing station, because it seemed like the best thing to do, the psychiatric patients were housed. This would include anyone from a psychopath to a neurotic to a psychotic. And the kicker to this is that in the middle was the intensive care unit for cardiac patients who were on monitors. What I'm telling you is the truth. This could be confirmed. Off to the left, by the way, was the renal unit, which was the only renal unit in Vietnam and, briefly, if you're in the renal unit, you're in there because you just can't make pee. And that's because you've got so many other injuries that your kidneys shut down so they put you on a machine that drains all your blood out, filters it and cleans it out for you, and then puts it back in. I had a paranoid patient walking around in there one night. I was told, after I left the ward, talking about how people were drawing knives on him, etc., etc. You know, if you're in a state of paranoia, and you're walking around seeing people that are having all their blood taken out of them, and you go for a further walk and you see people on cardiac monitors, it's pretty bad.

MODERATOR. The next subject is: What have we done to the Vietnamese people with venereal disease?

GROSSO. It's a strange subject to talk about. My contribution would be the observations about our brigade's activities in the Dak To area when we used military personnel, military equipment, and military time to construct a large wooden framed restaurant which was staffed by Vietnamese girls. I believe there were at any time from 12 to 14, who provided services for an entire brigade of about 4,500 men on a volunteer basis, alphabetically. The charge was approximately $2.50. It required a great deal of time, materiel, and manpower for the medical company to examine these women several times a week. So it was more or less command policy that prostitution be part of the military operation.

GALICIA. I can add to that. In the travels I had to the south, each and every one of the battalion areas of the 3rd Brigade of the 9th Infantry Division, located 40 miles south of Saigon, had, under the army sign for the PX (Post Exchange) buildings that were erected for the purpose, supposedly, of a steam bath and massage. Each one of these things had a medic and I talked to these medics. Some of these medics had a full-time chore--to examine the GIs who wanted to partake of this particular service. I'm not so much against the service, myself, as I am the fact that these were Vietnamese people and they were being used in this fashion. If you want to be a prostitute, I guess that's your own business, but I'm not so sure that that was the case. I just don't know.

We were developing strains of gonococcol organisms that were so virulent we were having a very difficult time eradicating them from people. We didn't see much syphilis. That's not worth talking about. I don't know what the treatment for an average strain of gonorrhea or gonococcus would be. I suspect it's in the realm of a million and two tenths penicillin. But the standing order over there was a combination of 4.8 million units of penicillin IM, and something like 16 tablets of 250 mg. tetracycline per day for three or four days running and then a continued dosage after that. A lot of the times this really didn't do the trick either. There were still people who were having difficulty and I think the long range thing, when we're talking about what we do to the Vietnamese, is that when we leave, it stays.

MODERATOR. How about treatment on the Vietnamese? You know, can he get all these drugs to kill that organism?

GALICIA. No. It's not really available to them. Earlier in this panel I indicated to you that I stole the penicillin to treat a pneumonia.

PANELIST. At Da Nang the same situation existed everywhere. Outside of the military installations, you had houses of prostitution that were either built by the military or at least maintained by the 95th Evacuation Army Hospital at Da Nang. On the road leading to it were four houses, and the women, the prostitutes, who worked there, received their treatment from sympathetic doctors and corpsmen who worked at the hospital--the Evacuation Hospital there. We had a very large number of Air Force personnel at our base. We had an immunization clinic for the GIs and the longest lines for any of the immunizations were the penicillin lines for VD. If one of the Vietnamese women came in, whether she worked on the base or wherever she worked, claiming that she had caught VD or gonorrhea or whatever from a GI, she was always refused treatment on the grounds that if you treat one, you have to treat them all.

MODERATOR. Are there any last comments?

STEIGER. I have one that I would like to make. Jeff can back me up on this because he was there and he saw the same thing. From the 95th Evacuation Hospital and from other hospitals in the area, when we received patients, they all funnelled their patients into the 22nd Casualty Staging Flight, where I worked, to be medivaced to another base in Vietnam, which is usually Cam Ranh Bay or out of the country to Japan or the Philippines or to the States. We would receive Korean, American, Australian, or whatever. We'd get men who had been wounded and had not had their dressings changed for days. We would receive patients who had had amputations of the legs or arms, and when we tried to change the dressings on these patients, we would find that they were hard. I mean, it was an Ace-wrapped elastic bandage, like you used in athletics. They were solid, and the only thing that had been done for them was to pour Batadon, which is an antiseptic, over these wounds. After you soaked them and got them down, there were maggots inside, and these were our own men. This is the medical treatment they received. And this isn't like a thing that happened just once. It happened all the time.

MODERATOR. This was one hospital?

STEIGER. This was specifically from the 95th Evacuation Hospital. And those kinds of things go on over there all the time.

PANELIST. We had one GI who came in who had a big gaping wound on the lower part of his leg. The dressings hadn't been changed in about three weeks. I think it was the original battlefield dressing he had on. Why, I don't know, but it happens.

STEIGER. This is the superior medical care we had.

GALICIA. I was the recipient of some information today that made me think back. I went home to get this, because I think that this man (who for all good reasons remains nameless) was shipped to us from the 91st Evacuation Hospital in Chu Lai. I think that this man, as the story was given to us, was a recipient of some of our own misdirected fire. Whether he was or whether he wasn't, I don't believe really serves any purpose. This man had so many diagnoses, and this is a photocopy, or a transcript of the admission note when he came in, that they ran out of space on this paper and put the rest on a second one.

I sort of keep it as mere testimony of not only what these kind of weapons can do but what I was part of. I've many times thought about throwing it away, but I never did and I really don't know the reason for that. I suspect I do somewhere. This man had a penetrating wound of all his extremities--face, chest, abdomen and genitals. He had a perforation of the small bowel, contusion of the transverse colon, laceration of the liver, a transection of his distal ureter on the right, a ruptured bladder, a wound open-- penetrating of the rectum, fracture of the pelvis, rupture of the right spermatic cord, rupture of his _____, fracture of some of the bones in his leg, contusions of his lower left lung lobe, a hemathorax, which is blood of the thorax, acute renal failure and peritonitis. And the thing about it that really struck home with me, was that he was admitted to our hospital on 22 June 1970. He was to go home on 16 July 1970.

MODERATOR. Thank you. I would just like to share with you one last comment. During my last three days here, I think all of us have been extremely frustrated by the lack of national press coverage. We came from many parts of the country, often at our own expense, and this isn't the only country where there is a blackout on news. We're not sure why. We feel that what we had to say here was significant. And we all can prove we were in Vietnam. Here is a Saigon newspaper which I have saved--an English language newspaper. It's quite obvious that they did not want us to get certain kinds of information, and in terms of the hearings that you have heard in the past three days, it is obvious that somebody does not want the American people to hear what we had to say here. Thank you.
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Re: Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veter

Postby admin » Mon Jun 06, 2016 4:18 am

18. CLOSING STATEMENT

Don Duncan. Before we bring these three days to a close, I would like to pass on some thoughts relative to the testimony to which we have been listening for the last three days. As most of you know, the purpose of this investigation, of course, was to bring some sort of reality as to what the war in Vietnam really means to people that must fight it to the people that must suffer in it, to the Vietnamese, to the Americans, to all the mothers, fathers, sisters, wives, brothers. To let them know, in fact, what people do in Vietnam, and what it is doing to their sons, as well as to the Vietnamese. It's tremendously important that this testimony be brought out, and that it be as widely disseminated as possible, to remove once and for all the blinders and the blinds from in front of America's eyes. No president could have sent us, soldiers and others, to Vietnam, had there not been some sort of cooperation or concurrence, passive or active, on the part of a large segment of this country. How that consent was come by is rather irrelevant. The fact is they had it. Whether it was because we were bent by the media, bent by propaganda, or whatever, the point is now the blinders must be removed.

This meeting here today has been tremendously important. If it ended here today it would be important. I hope it doesn't because there is still a lot of important work to be done, namely, to get this information out to the rest of the country. It seems that we're not going to be able to count on the mass media to do that, so it is incumbent on those who were present here over these past three days, to do it. It has been important for another reason. We have had an unprecedented number of veterans from the Vietnam War come in contact with each other for the first time. And many of the revelations to which we have been witness for the past three days have come from these contacts. Men who otherwise never would have stepped forward, knowing that they had company, did step forward. It wasn't an easy thing. I can assure you for most of these people, it was probably as difficult as anything they have ever done in Vietnam--I would say more difficult than anything they ever did in Vietnam.

In the introduction to these hearings, you were told that we were going to prove that, in fact, war crimes in Vietnam are not the result of individual, personal aberrations, but are, in fact, policy of this country. We have presented testimony for three days covering a wide range of war crimes. We have covered a period by actual firsthand testimony from 1963 to 1970--seven years. We find: that in 1963, we were displacing population, we were murdering prisoners, we were turning prisoners over to somebody else to be tortured. We were committing murder then, and in 1970 we find nothing has changed. Every law of Land Warfare has been violated and been testified to here in the past three days. It has been done systematically, deliberately, and continuously. It has been done with the full knowledge of those who, in fact, make policy for this country. No active step has ever been taken to curtain those acts in Vietnam. The argument could be made that we have not shown policy, all we have shown is pattern and practice.

I think the argument to that is best displayed not by the testimony of the man who holds the rifle on the ground, but think of the bombings, think of the decisions that are behind the man that is carrying that rifle. We built forts in Vietnam to protect villages, or so we told the Vietnamese. And at the first shot fired at Tet in 1968 we destroyed the villages to protect the fort. District Eight in Saigon was leveled brick by brick, to the ground, to secure an area where Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, and Catholics, had come to the south because that was something the Church had told them in 1954. We leveled that area to protect a bridge. We have listened to some terrible stories here. We have found there are some wondrous ways indeed to inflict pain upon each other. We will call them atrocities, and we will call them war crimes. And to talk about those acts, I'm sure, has been almost as painful for those who have had to listen as for those who have talked about them.

I would, personally, at this point, like to thank those who have been sitting here for the last three days. I would like to thank you for the respect that you have shown the material that has been presented here. I think the way that you received it is admirable. I only hope you will do something with that knowledge now. In Vietnam, we have a situation where never has there been such a disparity of power since the days when Mussolini and Count Ciano went in to Abyssinia to slaughter the spear-carrying troops of Haile Selassie. We have brought wondrous tons of ordnance, hundreds of thousands of men, Dr. Strangelove weaponry. We have used an air force against a country that has none. We have used a navy against a country that has none. And it still wasn't enough, and still the war goes on, and still the Vietnamese fight. It has been called a war of arbitration. All wars are wars of attrition. A war of attrition in an industrial society means, in fact, destroying the means of waging war, the factories, communication lines, the roadways, bridges, the iron factories, and so on.

In a nonindustrial society--in an agrarian society--such as Vietnam, when you talk of a war of attrition, you're talking only of one thing. You're talking about destroying the means to resist--that is killing people. Our country has set out very systematically to kill whatever number of people are necessary in Vietnam to stop them from resisting whatever it is we are trying to impose on that country. This, I think, is policy. I think we have established that policy here at these hearings; for those of you who have never been in service and have listened to this testimony, you might well be amazed at how our people, our men, our boys, our sons, could do some of these things that they described in this room. Otherwise normal individuals, creating terror, torture, destruction, wanton. How could they have done this? How could they have been changed that dramatically in eight short weeks of basic training? I think the fact that so much can be done to so many men by so few people is the greatest testament to the fact that our colleges, our high schools, our everyday life is nothing but pre-basic training. We are well prepared.

Whatever it was that was in these men, that allowed them to do the things they did, is in all of us. We start taking it in, if by no other process, at least by osmosis, from the day we are born in this country. The men did not become racists when they entered the service. They grew up with it. It was taught to them and it was taught to them in our schools. The idea that the United States has a God-given right to go into any country and take out its raw materials at an advantage to ourselves is not something that they learned in Vietnam. They learned it in our schools. They learned it from their mothers, fathers, their sisters and their brothers, their uncles. They learned it from all of us. We did a terrible thing to a lot of men in Vietnam and we're still doing it. I don't know who the ultimate victim in Vietnam will be. Will it be those who went from the United States to fight in it or the Vietnamese that tried to resist? I do know this, having met and talked with many Vietnamese who have gone through worse hardships than anyone in this room who has been here these three days, that they, at least, do not seem to have lost their humanity in the process. But I fear that many of us, if we don't shorten up and get the message out, we will have lost our humanity beyond redemption.

If I can give you a specific example of the insanity of this policy, I think it might explain something. In 1967 (and this deals with this business about what was in these men that might have horrified you and what is in all of us) Dean Rusk went before the Senate of the United States trying to explain why we were in Vietnam and what we were doing there, and he made the statement that the reason that we were killing Vietnamese and engaged in a war of attrition against the Vietnamese was because Red China was a threat to the security of the world--meaning us. And one hundred eighty some odd million Americans sat in front of the TV tubes and nodded their heads. At last we had the reason why we were in Vietnam. We were in Vietnam to kill Vietnamese because China was a threat to us. He also went on to say that he was not going to allow wars of liberation to succeed, anywhere in the Third World. It's an interesting statement--that it could have been accepted by this country.

In fact, I heard very few voices raised against that statement. One of the few that heard was, of all people, Curtis LeMay. Curtis LeMay said we should go and bomb China. Everybody said Curtis LeMay was a madman. But who was the madman? He, having accepted that China was the enemy, thought at least it made sense to go and bomb the enemy. Dean Rusk wanted to bomb the Vietnamese. What a shock this must have been for a lot of soldiers who thought about that statement. Having been told they were going to Vietnam to fight for peace and freedom, they were suddenly told they were going to have to keep fighting Vietnamese until the Bolivians and the Peruvians learned their lesson. And Curtis LeMay was mad. The terrible thing we did to so many men in this country--and ultimately to the Vietnamese because of it--we sent them to fight a war without a reason to fight it. I don't know how many of you have experienced standing up in front of bullets, exposing your flesh to shrapnel, to hand grenades, and so on. It's a _____ of a thing to do, to send out somebody and tell them to make their body a target, and never give them a _____ reason to do it.

From 1963 through 1965, the war was fought by professionals, which is to say it wasn't fought at all. Things were going to _____ in a bucket. And so they started sending over the draftees, and large units, the people who had to enlist in the military reasons, or for whatever reason. And they threw them in. For them, taking orders wasn't enough. They wanted a reason. They wanted to believe the reasons they were given. And they accepted those reasons. In fact they urged and begged for a reason. And so they accepted the reasons of freedom and democracy. The reality of Vietnam, I believe, was a little too much. Anybody in Vietnam for three months, especially in a combat zone, who still believes he's fighting for freedom and democracy, should become a professional. The progress was given. Progress seemed to be enough. Large numbers of troops were sent to various areas of Vietnam, and after three days of battle and God knows how many killed, they would be in possession of that ground. And it was called a victory. The operation was called search and destroy. Quite appropriately. A series of these so-called victories, because we were in possession of the ground, albeit we left it the following day, was called progress. And progress for most, but many, was enough. And then came Tet of 1968. And in one night, the illusion of progress was gone. Tet could not have taken place without the active or passive cooperation of even the friendly Vietnamese. And who was the enemy? The slopes, the dinks, the zips--the Vietnamese. And all Vietnamese were gooks, sloops, slopes, dinks, and whatever. And yet they still had to go out and fight. There was nothing left, not even an illusion of progress. The light at the end of the tunnel turned out to be just what that implies--tunnel vision. And then we had to keep fighting. For what? We were told, "So...[unreadable] ...slaves." This isn't the road...[unreadable]...when you go to fight and kill for absolutely no cause, real or imagined. But in the end, the men keep getting killed. And every day the rage builds up, and the hate grows a little harder. And that rage must vent itself. And who do we blame this rage upon? The captain that gave the order to attack? The people that sent them over there so the captain could give them that order? Or the people who are shooting at you? The Vietnamese are shooting at you, and _____ it, you'll kill Vietnamese, and that's what you're in Vietnam for. So that terrible hatred spills out. And the whole thing not only destroys Vietnamese. It destroys the people who are destroying the Vietnamese. And I feel that it is probably destroying us at a greater and faster rate than it is destroying the Vietnamese. This country needs scapegoats. It needs a Lieutenant Calley. How can we admit it's policy? We need Negroes in this country. Who else are we going to kick? Chicanos? Our whole system is built on a principle of racism. To believe that you have the right to go into another country, and take from that country, at an advantage to you and a disadvantage to them you first of all have to believe that those people are something less than you are. Otherwise you'd be guilty of something.

And, of course, we're not guilty of anything. Because they are lesser people. When we got tired of the Indians, and there weren't too many of them left to exploit, we went and did it to somebody else. The move westward in this country has moved into Asia. And we're doing it to the Vietnamese, what we did to the Indians. It's oversimplified, but I think it's accurate. We are born with it; we live with it. We have heard testimony relating to another terrible thing. We heard testimony relating to electronic battlefields. Now we're going to kill Vietnamese without using people. And so that the only people who die in this war will be Vietnamese. We're in Vietnam for a very simple reason. We're in Vietnam, as Dean Rusk says, to prevent wars of liberation from happening in the Third World, anywhere. And why do we have to have that? It is not because the United States is against taking over a country by force.

We have proved, time and time again, that we have no objection to anybody of any political hue taking over another country by force. Just so long as the power that comes into power is cooperative with us on trade relations, etc. to supply the sinews of American industry, to supply the people of this country with all the things they never needed. To eliminate a nation, to engage in a war of attrition against a people, any people, for such ends as this can only be described adequately with one word; and it's a word that I think falls very harshly on American ears, because we relate it to another incident, and the word, of course, is genocide. Any time you engage in the systematic destruction of a people, that is genocide.

The London Agreement and Charter describes war crimes (this is the basis for the Nuremberg Tribunal) as crimes against peace, namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of war, a war of aggression or a war in violation of an international treaty, agreements, or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing. War crimes, namely, are a violation of laws or customs of wars. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill treatment of prisoners of war, or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity. And under the definition of the Charter, we tried the leaders of another nation for war crimes at Nuremberg.

We have heard much testimony to all of those things, here in the last three days. Again, there is much to be done. And we have to get this information out. I don't want anybody here to carry away a feeling of guilt with them. I want them to carry away the realization of what you have done, and I have done, and why we did it. And I want us all to do something with that. It may look like a hopeless struggle. I remember in 1966, February, I testified to many of the things that have been testified to the last three days. I was very lonely. Thank God, I'm not lonely anymore. But still it's a terrible way to gain company--to have men do these things. We have to get it out.

Our country has given us very definite proof within the last couple of days while we have been sitting in this room that our policies in Vietnam have not changed; that nothing is acceptable to the United States except victory. The Vietnamese have made it quite plain, for almost 2,000 years now, that they won't accept victory from an outside power. The policy has not changed. We must change the policy for them. We must get out and talk to these people. To the veterans who came out here today, from myself personally, and I hope from all the rest of you, a _____ of a big thank you, and a sincere thank you. But again, this for many of you, is a first step. There are many things that you, as veterans, with this experience, can do. You must not forget that, in fact, there are still 3,000,000 men in uniform. A _____ of a lot of them still in Vietnam and a _____ of a lot of them to end up in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Start working with them. Start working with those who have not yet been drafted, and talk to them, and make the reality of the war known to them. And talk to your families. Over 40% of all the adult males in this country are veterans. That's something we have to turn around. We have to stop producing veterans. And for many of you who have spoken out for the first time and become involved in something for the first time, stay with it. For those of you who are veterans and are working and have been working for some time, keep working. And some day, you will be ex-veterans and we'll just be people again. Thank you.
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