Casualties of War (1989) - User Reviews - IMDb Boyd had been a big help, he told me. He was confident, he told me, that he stood a better chance of finding help there than in the confines of the platoon area. I thought he wanted to destroy living evidence., In the morning, everyone got up shortly after six, and it wasnt long before Maos fate was sealed. Loc was spared, but Mao was seized by the two soldiers, who bound her hands behind her back with a length of coconut rope. In turn, the sergeant passed the news on to Lieutenant Reilly, who sent for Eriksson. The C.I.D. Erikssons patrol leader delivered a tongue-lashing to his counterpart, who apologized. Occasionally, official orders were used for justifying gratuitous acts of violence. Echoing the instructions that a battalion officer had given him earlier, the Sergeant informed the four men of the duties that each was expected to carry out, of the chain of command in the field, and of radio-communication arrangements with the platoon command, and then, consulting the grid cordinates of a map he was holding, the Sergeant described a precise westerly route that the patrol was to follow. He and his wife, Kirsten, have a neat, modest apartment of three rooms, its walls decorated with paintings by Mrs. Eriksson, a Sunday artist, who was present while we talked; she is twenty-three and is employed as a receptionist in an insurance office. incident on hill 192 where are they now. There Is Yet More to Casualties of War - Phoenix New Times Incident During his months leave, he was always with her and with relatives and friends and, in a way, Eriksson said, with Mao. He had scarcely landed in Vietnam, in October, 1966, when he was made aware of these occurrences, each of them apparently impulsive and unrelated to military strategy. Eriksson said to me, his voice urgent, as though he had just heard the news, Charlie kidnapped her, just as he did Maos mother. Vorst was in the group, and Eriksson, detaching himself from his unit, went up to the Captain and told him about Mao. But here was this Marine, who had put in much more combat service than Meserve or Clark or anyone else Id met, and he felt exactly as I did about the crime., Eriksson now fell into one of his silences, and I imagined he was contemplating the mystery of human character. Arriving at the austere hootch that Reilly used as a command post, Eriksson told me, he imagined that the Lieutenant, if only conversationally, would express dismay over the murder. Below was a valley with a winding stream, and along its banks were paddy fields with neat little dikes around them. Incident on Hill 192 - Wikipedia. I had no idea where my unit was. All the others in the patrol had raped or killed her. 1. If it didnt, then coming back from that patrol meant nothing., Recalling her husbands arrival, Mrs. Eriksson said that when she went out to the airport to meet him, she could tell at once that there was a stronger kindness in him than when he had left. Ill handle everything, Vorst said. I wanted to be very sure that he himself hadnt taken part in the rape. He himself, he imagines, must have looked glum. making slow progress toward the refuge of the cave complex, which was three hundred metres away, almost at the bottom of the ravine. . Though news of the incident reached the U.S. shortly after the soldiers' trials, [3] the story gained widespread notoriety through Daniel Lang's 1969 article . In addition, Rafe flatly said, Eriksson could not see the girl, despite which, Rafe also testified, Eriksson stated, Oh, no, like he regretted that he had fired. Rafe himself let go with a burst from his M-16, which, inexplicably, caused his rifle to jam. Clark at once greeted it with enthusiasm. It was based on an actual incident known as "the incident on Hill 192" which occurred in 1966. He didnt see how he could just walk up to Greenacre and state his business. All soldiers (excluding Storeby) were dishonorably discharged from the Army. Meserve stated that we would get the woman for the purpose of boom boom, or sexual intercourse, and at the end of five days we would kill her. And in Manuels testimony one finds: After we were briefed by Meserve, he said that we would take a girl with us on patrol, or that we would try to take a girl with us to have some fun. Meserve, Clark, and Manuel, together with members of the other squads, were shooting away at the solitary V.C., who was behind an aperture that measured perhaps six inches wide and a couple of inches high. Manuel showed no initiative in that regard, Eriksson told me, his attitude toward authority being simple and automatic: he heeded it devoutly. Ill never know. The holed-up V.C. that he [had] thought [at first] the men were just joking about really completing the acts. Throughout, Eriksson told me, he had the distinct impression that his position and Vorsts were at variance. Their testimony indicates that they were so inured to the epidemic, occupational violence of war that they found it hard to recognize their judicial plight as a type of retribution. 192.com Alexa Rank 47,733 Domain WHOIS Registered with 123-Reg Limited on June 13, 1997 WHOIS updated on June 5, 2019 Domain expires on June 12, 2024 IPv4 Address But, as Eriksson pointed out, he could not give me many such first-hand accounts of V.C. I hadnt let out anything to him about the murder, but as long as I was with Chaplain Kirk, I thought he was entitled to hear everything. The gesture impressed him, the chaplain has since told me. This is how it is with Casualties of War, Brian DePalma's tale of an atrocity . I was an inch too short. Somewhat gratefully, he went back to his prewar, and well-paid, job of cabinetmaking at the small department store. As Clark and Rafe left, Eriksson told me, he realized that he was about to exchange one kind of excitement for anotherthe encounter with the three Vietnamese, that is, for the quieter, more complicated ordeal of being alone with Mao. Only one piece of military action occurred that morning, and it could have been dispensed with. The court record attests that it was in the midst of this encircling racket that Meserve chose to initiate radio contact with Lieutenant Reilly, the burden of the Sergeants message being that he wanted to report one V.C., K.I.A. Under cross-examination at Meserves court-martial, Reilly, appearing as a defense witness, testified, Sergeant Meserve called me up and informed me in the middle of the fire fight that a girl was fleeing up the side of the mountain, and I informed him to get the girl. She was the big thing that had happened in the war for me, he told me. In an affidavit that Manuel later signed, he stated, Clark gagged the girl to keep her from yelling out. Continually, Eriksson recalls, he heard the familiar argument that the V.C. The girls nameher actual namewas Phan Thi Mao. . Phan Thi Mao (1945-1966) - Find a Grave Memorial INCIDENT ON HILL 192 (from my war diary) At one point, Eriksson recalled, the Captain warned him that if the incident did result in courts-martial, he might face rough going on the witness stand. But, as Eriksson unhesitatingly acknowledges, the fact is that when he thinks of his tour of duty in Vietnam it is always a single image that comes to his mind. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. I couldnt tell whether it was Charlie or the girl, Rafe testified. In disbelief and confusion, his heart palpitating, Eriksson saw that Meserve was losing no time in carrying out his plan, for, with Clark at his heels, the Sergeant had embarked on a systematic search of the hamlets hootches. Clark, who was several metres in front of Rafe, yelled back to him that it was the girl. Eriksson told me that he felt weary at the mere prospect of reappearing as a witness a year after the Radcliff trials. incident on hill 192 where are they now. She has a gold tooth! Instantly, the Sergeant said, Thats the girl well find. Astounded by the enormity of his own suggestion, Rafe looked miserably at Manuel and Eriksson as Meserve and Clark, quickening their steps, made for the white hootch that contained the pretty girl with a gold tooth. He had wanted to tell of the way the episode with Mao had affected him, and why it was that he had felt impelled to report the othersfour young Americans like him, each dependent on the others for survival deep in enemy territory. The hamlet was barely out of sight when Manuel, perhaps competing with Clark, untied Maos hands, then slipped his pack from his shoulders and loaded it onto the girls. Incident on Hill 192 | Imperial War Museums The men were to be gone five days, the Sergeant revealeda fairly long time for a reconnaissance missionand on hearing this Eriksson experienced a sense of exhilaration, just as he had at the prospect of far shorter patrols in which he had taken part. Thirty metres down, they came to a curiously shaped rock formation composed of two jutting ledges. incident on hill 192 where are they now - espectralvisual.com Out on a search-and-destroy mission the morning after leaving Meserves command, Eriksson told me, he encountered a small group of American military men reconnoitring the vicinity of the cave complex. All were dishonorably discharged, reduced in rank to private, and deprived of all pay, with the exception of Rafe, who was to go on receiving pay but forfeit fifty dollars monthly for eight years. He had only been fooling, he testified, when he talked of having fun on the reconnaissance mission. Meserve fought well that day. In the meantime, Erikssons orders placed him on temporary duty with a carpentry detail that was constructing additional housing for the base, whose population came to twenty thousand. It was an awkward moment, Eriksson said, and Clark terminated it. Q: For a murder. Eriksson shook his head. He displayed a hunting knife. Both Thomas and Loeb were leaders of the white supremacist World Church of the Creator. None of the four hit anything, and the Sergeant radioed the platoon command for artillery support, which was quickly granted; the coperation, Eriksson recalled, pleased Meserve no end, since it implicitly conferred an importance on the skirmish. incident on hill 192 where are they now - acting-jobs.net He called me back in a few minutes, or a couple of minutes, and informed me that he could not catch the girl, that he had had to shoot her. As the court transcript shows, Reilly didnt let matters rest there. Eriksson talked with me at his home in (I shall say) Minneapolis, where, since leaving the Army, he has been earning his living as a cabinetmaker at a local department store. When the two men were aloft and sitting side by side, the artilleryman suddenly glanced at Eriksson with fresh interest and said, Say, werent you the guy who turned in that patrol? Did Eriksson know that military judges and jurors were notoriously lenient in their sentencing? One M.P., I remember, told me he could have understood it if Id gone to bat for a G.I. The thought of them, he said, makes him feel discouraged at times about his future, which, he pointed out, could be a long one. He also remembers that she was wearing dusty earrings made of bluish glass; he noticed the trinkets because they gave off a dull glint one bright afternoon when he was assigned to stand guard over her. The C.I.D. Exploring the mountain further, often making their way through shoulder-high vegetation, Eriksson, Meserve, Manuel, and Rafe pushed on toward the summit. He stated at the trial, From where I was, I observed Clark grab the girl by the arm and take her into the bushes nearby. Meserve and the others returned an hour later, toward noon, and had a hearty snack, eating it outdoors, near the entrance to the hut. I made sure I wrote to him every day, and in each letter I put a packet of Kool-Aid, so that at least his water would be tasty. It didnt take many further interrogations to convince the law-enforcement officers that they had a case, for Rafe and Manuel readily signed affidavits whose substance supported Erikssons account of the incident on Hill 192the name by which Maos murder became known among the military. Then, of course, after rehabilitationI think theres a difference, sir. The 1966 incident at hill 192, and the courage shown by p f c storeby is not in doubt. They were just doing their job. Once the pair had assessed the gravity of the crimes being charged, they moved swiftly. Well, during this Operation Thayer II, which started [last October], we ran into a hootch that was burned down. Chief of the Philippine National Police, retirement | 297K views, 1.1K likes, 812 loves, 1K comments, 873 shares, Facebook Watch Videos from Radio. Just who, I wanted to ask, was the man in Manuels patrol who started the shooting? Grinning, Manuel approached Eriksson, stuck out his hand, and said, No hard feelings. Before Eriksson could say anything, Manuel turned and left the courtroom, a free man. His manner became momentarily subdued when Meserve waved him in as the third man, but Clark was his jaunty self again when he returned. Coming to me, the way he did, he might have been trying to save his neck by turning states evidence, so to speak. Kirk therefore interrupted Eriksson frequently, challenging him to tie together details that at first seemed contradictory. Rafe had flouted the order against unnecessary shooting, confirming Erikssons observation that plans could mean little in the field and that out there any patrol was a unit only in theory. During his first hour back in camp, he recalls, no one could have persuaded him otherwise. They were very definite. Q: You dont believe the military gives a choice between rules, orders, and conscience? John J. TolsonMajor General, U.S.A. It could keep them from believing that life was so valuableanyones life, I mean, even their own. In 1989 Brian De Palma directed the film Casualties of War, which was based on Lang's book. Agreeing, the Lieutenant said that he would order another squad, operating at the base of the mountain, to cordinate its movements with those of Meserves patrol, and that he would also dispatch two other squads to the area. Lying awake nights, listening to Asian birdsong and the squealing of monkeys in the jungle nearby, he said, he found himself constantly mulling over the phenomenon of military disciplinethe chain-of-command system. He hopes to open a small carpentry shop of his own in several years, but, ideally, he would like to be a farmera career that he doubts he will ever be able to afford. If hed kept quiet, he would have been impossible to live with., Regardless of when Meserve and Clark get out, Eriksson thinks, the atmosphere of civilian life may exert a moderating influence on their outlook. Rafe was the man closest to Clark and Maoonly a few metres awayand because he was, his testimony concerning the events that now took place carried special weight with the court. In Vietnam, the jurors petition urging clemency for Clark had been acted upon, with the result that the G.I.s life sentence had been commuted to a sentence of twenty years. Its a part of the country where we pride ourselves on not being demonstrative, she said. Hey, Sven, how do you know that girl wasnt a V.C. Despite Vorsts generally negative tone, Eriksson said, he believed that the company commander would eventually take steps to bring Meserve and the others to justice. The day continued eventful. . He felt that way, he explained, because out in the field, in territory that could turn hostile at any moment, the men in the patrol would be very much on their own, and this would be so even if a high-ranking officer were in charge. Clark, convicted of rape and premeditated murder, was to serve for life. . We were each acting the way we had to, he told me. Clark appeared to be beside himself with anticipation, Eriksson told me, and Manuel and Rafe appeared less so. Mrs. Eriksson, who was once more plying her husband and me with coffee and cake, put in, Sven and I are Lutherans. As far as he was concerned, Eriksson said, it had all seemed a morass of cleverness, but then, he conceded, he may well have entered the military courtroom in the Central Highlands, where the four trials were held, with unwarranted expectations, for it had been his hope that the trials would help him unravel his reactions to Maos fate. They hadnt ever heard Maos voice or seen her carrying Manuels pack.. Throughout, Eriksson recalls, dozens of pictures were taken, for possible use as trial exhibits, the flashes of the photographers bulbs pale in the afternoon sun. She was pleased, she told me, that I had asked to hear about the episode involving Mao. [8] After finding Phan Thi Mao (21), they bound her wrists with rope, gagged her, and took her on the mission. Now, watching the chaplain depart, Eriksson decided that Greenacre was very much worth cultivating. Using the upper one as a vantage point, they spied the small band of V.C. As the men had raced to get there, clambering and sliding, Rafe had slipped and fallen from a ledge, dislocating an elbow and a shoulder. I decided I was hearing an individual who wished he could have saved that girl but hadnt been able to, Kirk told me. Asked whether Meserve might not have been searching the hootches of Maos hamlet for the strictly military purpose of finding strange faces, he answered, I wouldnt say this, sir. Even though the two were alone, Eriksson remained cautious, revealing nothing about Maos murder. Later, after setting up camp in an abandoned hooch, four of the soldiers (excluding Storeby) took turns raping Mao. Just as long as he stayed in line, just as long as he kept the setup going, he could do whatever he wanted., Perhaps the most jarring of all the discoveries he made during this unhappy period, Eriksson told me, was that his fellow-G.I.s took a dim view of his efforts in behalf of Mao. [1] Although news of the incident reached the U.S. shortly after the soldiers' trials,[3] the story gained widespread notoriety through Daniel Lang's 1969 article for The New Yorker[4] and his subsequent book. She had the spark of life., The Oddballs and Odysseys of Charles Portis. Eriksson said, He told Meserve her coughing was going to give away our position, but I didnt think it was Charlie he had on his mind. Sven wasnt raised churchy, Mrs. Eriksson remarked. When Meserve ended his testimony, the prosecutor inquired how many times and to whom he had told the story you just told on the witness stand., Numerous times, sir, the Sergeant replied. If he said no, he would appear to be disowning the defendants, his comrades-in-arms; if he said yes, he would in effect be telling the jury that he regarded the war as a public-works project for criminals. In mild contrast, Rafe was capable of questioning authority, Eriksson said, but he generally wound up by going along with whoever seemed to be the leaderjust to keep from making trouble.. Incident on Hill 192 by Vanessa Pantoja - Prezi Q: I didnt ask you for a long elaboration. It had to be on one of the two rocks that the girl lay, Eriksson knew, and to spare the others in the party unnecessary exertion he screened out the nearer rock by himself, doggedly plunging through formidable brush to reach it. "[7], At approximately 05:00 on the morning of 18 November, the squad entered the tiny village of Cat Tuong, in the Phu My District, looking for a woman. Like most rural women, she was dressed in loose-fitting black pajamas. Moving in on the bush, Clark blazed away with his M-16, and at once the rustling foliage grew still. Transitory though their show of character may have been, he said, it encouraged him in reaching a private resolve, for as he kept watch above the cave complex, Eriksson told me, he was suddenly seized with the overwhelming realization that unless he took it upon himself to speak out, the fact of Maos death would remain a secret. I told him I was being wrongly brought to trial. Thomas remained free on bond during the trial, and court records showed that in exchange for his testimony he would only serve one year's probation. He was at his wits end for a way to circumvent the system, Eriksson told me, because he was convinced that it was this system that lay at the heart of his difficulties. man, Who raped or had sexual intercourse with the girl?, Manuel replied, Sergeant Meserve, Clark, R. Diaz, and myself. Eriksson now believes he should have foreseen that sooner or later one of these incidents was bound to strike him with special, climactic force. She might have helped me know what to do, instead of my having to figure it out aloneit was her life that was at stake. Incident on Hill 192 - The New York Times Needless to say, the question was not examined philosophically in the Camp Radcliff courthouse; instead, it was employed narrowly as a government gambit for stumping a witness. We would be fools to think those men couldnt do again what they did before., He would never cease to condemn the members of the patrol personally for their crime, Eriksson said, but that didnt mean they were beyond pity. As he was leaving, he told me, the Captain called out reassuringly, Ill handle everything!, When Eriksson heard nothing from Vorst for four days, he sought an interview, which was granted. agents, photographers, a firearms expert, and a ballistics man. But I couldnt think any of my brainstorms through. Acknowledging the danger in which Eriksson had placed himself, the Lieutenant told him, If I sent you out with that patrol, youd never make it back.. They were alone this time, Eriksson told me, and when Eriksson inquired what progress there had been in the murder case, the Captain seemed not to hear but posed a series of questions. fellows knew about law, Eriksson said. By the time I got out of jail, he told Eriksson, I was saying to myself, Whats happened is the way things are, so why try to buck the system? And take it from me, Eriksson, its even more hopeless to try to buck it in the middle of a wartheres more of a system then than ever. they said if you were fortunate enough to get in a group where you had an old-timer who had been in Vietnam like six months longer than you had, if you followed what he said, you would live longer. Besides, Manuel testified, If he had not gone into the hootch he would have risked becoming an outcast. Books. Mostly to my lawyer.. Incident on Hill 192 by Daniel Lang - Goodreads As if Sven had it so easy! Mrs. Eriksson said to me when she heard of these findings. There was to be an autopsy at the United States Army mortuary in Saigon, by a Japanese anthropologist, Professor Tadao Furue, of Tokyo University, and Colonel Pierre A. Finck, commanding officer of the 9th Medical Laboratory. Fox and Sean Penn, and is based on the events of the 1966 incident on Hill 192 during the Vietnam War, in which a Vietnamese woman was kidnapped from her village by a squad of American soldiers, who raped and murdered her. Incident on Hill 192 ~ Murder & Rape Details with Photos | Videos Anyway, thats what made me believe I was interested in religion. I couldnt even guess at the answersnot without knowing what kind of jam Manuel thought he was in.. Testifying in his own defense, Rafe stated, I was afraid to tell [the officer], because I might be the only one who brought it up. [5] In 1970 Michael Verhoeven made the film o.k., based on the incident. Rafe later testified, There were helicopters flying around, and everyone was getting jumpy about having the girl.. He told me that their bond was religion and that the interest each of them took in it had been heightened by their experiences in the war. With Mao out of the way, he was able to concentrate on the action at hand, managing his patrol, working in concert with the other squads, and helping to guide the diving gunships, whose presence he now welcomed. PNP Change of Command Ceremony and Retirement Honors for - Facebook Greenacre was present throughout the talk, at Erikssons insistence. He still has a tendency to fight off its memory, he said, and he thinks the reason for this is that although the experience he had may have revealed certain strengths in himself, he is far more concerned with the limitations it exposed. Meserve testified at his court-martial, The mother came out, like they always do, started crying, talking. The G.I. There is going to be four people on that patrol and an individual., Once Meserve had delivered his estimate of Erikssons virility, the ill-fated bacchanal got under way. The first of them, he told me, was that Mao woke up less alluring than when she had gone to bed. Wild with rage, Reilly had tried to wreck the place, whereupon hospital orderlies summoned the police, and the new father was arrested and jailed. They were cousins named DiazRafael, known as Rafe, whose home was near Amarillo, Texas, and Manuel, who came from a town some distance north of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
