The Shadow of Arms (22 page)

“It's me, sir. I'm with Major Pham now. I think we should disregard the report, sir.”

“Why? The boss wants the details.”

“Give him a verbal report, sir. The Vietnamese business dealings are more important than that.”

“Can you connect with their dealing channels?”

“Just finished the negotiations.”

“Good. Take your time. I'll get the details from you tomorrow morning at the hotel.”

When Yong Kyu got back to the room he saw that girls and liquor had arrived. One bottle of Johnnie Walker, two girls. One was in a tank top that clung like a swimsuit and a red miniskirt, and the other was wearing a black miniskirt and a polka-dotted blouse. The red miniskirt had wavy-permed hair cascading down her back and the black miniskirt had bobbed her hair very short.

Major Pham poured a drink for Yong Kyu, speaking in a friendly tone. “Drinks are on me. I like you.”

Yong Kyu found himself thinking back to a night he had spent at a campside village near Tam Ky during his days in the infantry. He had gone AWOL for one night. Guerrillas were attacking a guard bunker on the village's edge. He was with a girl, writhing on her belly with a .45 in one hand. He remembered how the sweat covered her small brown body. She kept gesturing for Yong Kyu to put the gun away.

After finishing, he had walked over to the window naked with the pistol still in his hand. Bright red flares rose in the air, then fell. He pushed up the bamboo window frame and peered out into the night. Tracers were flashing across the sky in a continuous stream. The girl quietly came up behind him and stroked his hair. He took the gun and hid it in the folds of the jungle pants he had taken off. The girl tried again and again to say something in awkward English: “Much sleep, sleep. Sun come up. That's OK.”

She lay down first on the bamboo bed and pulled him toward her. As he rested his head against her breasts, she wrapped her arms around his head and, patting gently, said “Sleep, sleep, that's OK.”

He slept. The sun rose the next day. The midnight attack was all over. Villagers and troops were in the streets clearing away the corpses of dead guerrillas.

Yong Kyu had emptied his pockets for the girl. It must have been his whole month's allowance. She grinned brightly, flashing her crooked teeth. Then she gave him a mound of red-bean rice cakes wrapped up in a banana leaf. He had flung them into a rice paddy from the back of a speeding truck. He visited Tam Ky once more after that. There was a barbed wire fence and a long traffic sign where the girl's place had been. The campside village had evaporated, for the defensive front had pushed closer to the city and the Vietnamese forces had been replaced by the American army.

The girl in the red miniskirt sitting beside Yong Kyu said, “I'm Lou.”

“Where are you from?”

“Singapore.”

The other woman was Malaysian. Both were of Chinese descent.

“If you prefer, they also have a half-blooded French woman,” said Major Pham.

“Where's your woman?”

“I like Dai Hans,” said Pham Quyen with a broad grin. “Miss Oh said she'd come here to meet you guys.”

“Should we buy them some Saigon Tea? But we have no tickets.”

Major Pham chuckled and said, “The Sports Club doesn't sell tickets. Ladies and gentlemen prefer cash.”

 

 

15

Report Regarding Misconduct Committed in the Course of an Operation by Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Division

The geographical situation of Quang Ngai Province, encircled by a mountain shield and only ten miles inland, made it one of the best Viet Cong strongholds. As far back as the 16th century, the region had been a spawning ground for anti-government rebels. During the period of French rule on through the Second World War, these highlands had been a sanctuary for guerrillas.

At the time of the Geneva Accords of 1954, when the nation was partitioned along the seventeenth parallel into North Vietnam and South Vietnam, almost 90 percent of the ninety thousand Communist sympathizers who moved from south to north were from Quang Ngai. The NLF guerrilla units in this area had the reputation of being the most formidable fighters in the south. Their commanders were seasoned by extensive combat experience.

In order to purify the water for other fish, the Viet Cong were exterminated along with their suspected sympathizers. The Vietnamese government had designated the entire province of Quang Ngai as a “free-fire zone.” Artillery units were at liberty to deliver heavy “neutralization fire” wherever they wanted to.

In the spring of 1967 the Allied Forces commenced “Operation Oregon:” orchestrated search-and-destroy missions that killed 3300 Viet Cong captured 5000 suspected VC, and seized 800 weapons; and a troupe—code-named “Zippo” for the lighter—burned down all the houses in a free-fire zone that covered almost half the province. In September of 1967, operational command of forces in Quang Ngai was transferred to a newly organized unit called the “Americal Division.” The new unit was composed of the 196th Brigade that had participated in Operation Oregon, the 198th Brigade dispatched from Fort Hood, Texas, and the 11th Brigade from Hawaii.

The infantry forces in the Americal Division were mostly army newbies. They had received two hours of training on prisoner treatment. Due to cultural gaps and racism, the operations were at times counterproductive. Battalion J Commander had the nickname “Gook Killer” painted on his helicopter gunship, broadcasting his open disdain for the Vietnamese people. Every time a VC was killed, a triangular-shaped peasant's hat was added to the side of the helicopter. Some of the gunship pilots who enjoyed air-to-ground attacks in free-fire zones took to calling their helicopters “Slope Hunters.”

A certain brigade commander, X, accepted bets on which unit would bag the ten-thousandth Viet Cong. It was said that the soldier who killed the ten-thousandth VC would be rewarded with a week's vacation at the private retreat of the commanding general.

Among the officers who showed great valor in the 1967-68 period was Colonel George Patton III, son of the famous World War II tank commander. The motto of Colonel P's 11th Armored Brigade stationed in the south of Quang Ngai was “Locate the Human Trash and Shoot Them.” The colonel reportedly sent out Christmas cards bearing color photographs of a heap of Viet Cong corpses. A minor scandal arose when the New York Times reported that Colonel P was seen at a farewell party carrying a polished skull, said to be of a Viet Cong, with a bullet hole over its left eye socket. The following is from a letter written by Major General R to a US congressman interviewed for the newspaper article:

Colonel P was a commander of combat troops. In conducting operations, he always put the safety of his men first. And the commander's concern can easily be seen in the fact that his brigade, which engaged the enemy eight to ten times per week, brought the heaviest losses to the enemy and the least loss to friendly forces. In a situation where one must kill or be killed, the motto he established was quite proper. It is true that he was presented at the farewell party with an old skull found in the jungle.

The fighting spirit of American soldiers was enhanced by their wrath when they experienced casualties from the sniping and booby traps commonly used in unconventional warfare. A third of the casualties in the Americal Division resulted from mines, sniping, and booby traps in and around the Vietnamese hamlets. So, the annihilation strategy of search-and-destroy became the operative policy for the region, and the goal was to reduce an entire sector to ashes. A letter from one of the privates in the division contained the following:

Today we went out on operations. I don't feel so proud of myself, and I don't feel proud of my friends or my country anymore. We torched all the houses in sight. They were thatched huts built with palm branches, almost like cattle pens, where the families lived. Our commander said he didn't like the walls and roofs, so we burned everything to ashes. There's a popular joke among the men: “Whatever is dead, and doesn't have white skin, is Viet Cong.”

Company C arrived in Vietnam the previous year after one year of training in Hawaii. Most troops in the company were volunteers, ranging in age from eighteen to twenty-two. Ten of them had the educational level of first-year college dropouts. Thirteen of the 130 soldiers in the company scored in the upper range when given the army I.Q. test. Excellent health. Good appetite. Won a trophy in a football tournament. The atmosphere in Company C quarters was optimistic and docile; the men were partial to comic books.

Commander, Company C, Captain Ernest L. Medina
: Age 33. Born 1936
in Springer, New Mexico. Lost his mother at an early age. Until age sixteen, worked as a day laborer on a big ranch on the slopes of the southern Rockies in Colorado. Falsified his age to enlist. Began as common infantryman. Nicknamed “Mad Dog,” not for malicious behavior but as a term of endearment reflecting enthusiasm and courage during basic training. Officer training school at Fort Benning in 1964, graduated with honors and commissioned as second lieutenant. Promoted to captain in 1966. Volunteered to serve in Vietnam as field commander hoping for battlefield promotion to major. Gave priority to rations and other supplies for his unit to uphold company morale. Typical American professional officer, taking initiative in all activities.

Leader, 1st Platoon, Company C, Second Lieutenant William C. Calley
: Age 21. Born in Palm Beach, Florida. Enlisted after flunking out of Palm Beach Junior College. Employed as a busboy in restaurant and as a railroad-crossing gateman. Fired for his negligence in letting a 47-car freight train pass during rush hour, causing traffic to stop for thirty minutes. Thereafter unemployed until July 1966, when entered Officer Candidate School in New Mexico. To impress subordinates, bragged about having worked as a private detective in Miami. Nickname: Surfside Six, after TV suspense show. Dreams of being a hero.

Testimony from Investigation

Lt. Gen. Frank A. Barker (Division Commander): To execute Gen. Westmoreland's strategy of search-and-destroy operations, each brigade headquarters organized Barker commando teams of one company from each of their three battalions. Capt. Medina's Company C was one of the special commando teams under my command, and was posted at the landing strip at Doti last January 26. The important task assigned to these commandos was to pressure the Pinkville sector several miles northeast of Quang Ngai city. Yes, “Pinkville” is our troops' name for that place. Was it because of a strong political presence of the Reds? No, it was because on the strategic maps, the region northeast of Quang Ngai was a conspicuous reddish color. Yes, that's right, the color meant it was a densely populated area.

Capt. Medina: We were told the area had been a VC den for the past twenty-five years. The villagers in the area had been given several orders to evacuate, and it was designated a free-fire zone. But I ordered my men not to fire on the villagers if they came into the open in the middle of an engagement. But that day when my platoons had retreated about four or five hundred meters and our radio operator was hit by enemy fire, I ordered them to go back up over a four-foot high bank.

Seymour M. Hersey: We'd been bivouacking in the field for about three weeks and were almost collapsing from exhaustion. We began wondering if it wasn't our captain's fault that we always got dirty, dangerous missions. Medina was always foaming at the mouth, bragging about our company being a model fighting machine. Somebody openly griped that Medina cared more about getting a promotion for himself than he did about the safety of his troops. Then again, Medina loved to blow his own horn in front of Lt. Gen. Barker, saying how the VC were terrified of Company C. Our morale was sunk in the mud. We hadn't gotten a single fresh reinforcement and forgot what it was like to sleep in a dry spot. We got cold toward the Vietnamese. If little children tagged after us begging for gum or money we literally kicked them away. We got up at dawn, ate cold C-rations, packed up and marched till noon, and ate the same C-rations for lunch. Then we kept on trudging all day until stopping to eat C-rations in the evening. The hot sun and the thirst nearly drove us out of our minds. Medina interrogated lots of suspected VC, saying he'd pry some information out of them. Once his men brought an old man over to Medina while he was lying on his stomach on a rock. With a sudden scream like he was spooking a herd of cattle, Medina grabbed the old man by his neck and started rolling. The old man was so terrified that he shit his pants. It was around February 15 that we started getting cruel.

Greszek
: When we arrived at the entrance of a hamlet, one of the men, Carter, offered a cigarette to an old peasant. As the old man was about to put the smoke in his mouth, Carter suddenly started beating him on the head with his gunstock. The old man's chinbone was smashed and his ribs broken, but nobody interfered. A few hours later we fired some shots at a shadow running across the field. Two of our men went closer, emptying the whole clips of their M16s before they discovered it was just an old woman on her way home to the village with a bunch of vegetables she'd picked. Lt. Calley radioed in a report that we'd killed a VC. A few minutes later two suspected VC guerrillas were brought before Calley. I had Vietnamese language training in Hawaii so I was going to interrogate the prisoners. Before I started the questioning, another platoon member dragged an old man over to us. I found the old man was carrying an ID card issued by the Vietnamese government, so I said to Calley: “Sir, I don't think this one is a Viet Cong.” But Calley started waving his M16 around and ordered the soldier to take care of the old man. “Why are you killing this old man?” I asked Calley, but he only said that all Vietnamese are the same trash. That was when Carter came over.

Carter
: All I did was threaten to push the old man into the well, prodding him with my gun. The old man planted his feet wide apart and wouldn't budge. That was when Calley fired.

Boyce
: Calley radioed to Medina to report that he'd caught an old VC trying to jump into a well. Medina ordered us to make a complete search of the well, saying it might be an entrance to a VC tunnel network. But by then the well was all bloody and none of us would go in. Calley called back and said there was no underground passage in the well. February 25, that was our company's worst day. We lost six and twelve were wounded after walking into an enemy minefield north of Pinkville. Most of the casualties were from Calley's first and third platoons. Capt. Medina was awarded a Silver Star for rescuing the wounded. But the minefield was one clearly marked on the maps we had. The losses could've been avoided. Sgt. Cohen was the one who had hurried us into that field, he was responsible.

Hersey
: It was around then that Company C seized a woman with a baby on her back and raped and killed her. One of the soldiers took snapshots of the whole thing with his Instamatic.

Gary Apollo: On March 14, two days before the My Lai operation, our company suffered casualties again. We hit some booby traps while passing along a thickly wooded trail. Sgt. Cox detected a bomb, but it went off while he was disarming it, killing him and putting out the eyes of a nearby soldier. After evacuating them by helicopter, we were so enraged that we torched all the houses in a village on the return route to our base. Still angry, we went into a village on the edge of a secure zone and killed and robbed a woman. The villagers reported that incident to the Vietnamese police. Medina received a protest from the police. He was upset that what happened had been uncovered, but he didn't punish any of his men for what they did.

Lt. Gen. Barker: My only concern was to sweep out the enemy—the Viet Cong were known to have about 280 veteran troops in that area. I relied on Capt. Medina. He and I did a helicopter over flight of the whole Pinkville region and then set up the operations plan.

Calley: Around 0700, the women and children of My Lai hamlet would go to the markets in Quang Ngai city or in Son Dinh to sell things, so, taking advantage of that time, we were given a search-and-destroy mission, with orders to burn My Lai hamlet, destroy the bunkers and tunnels, and slaughter the cattle.

Medina: I never gave an order to kill women or children.

Nguyen Phu: As a staff sergeant dispatched to Company C as an interpreter, I didn't believe what I was hearing. Even when I heard the soldiers saying they were going to wipe out a village the next day and would take revenge by killing every single Viet Cong they saw, I thought those American soldiers were just boasting.

Medina: Maybe Lt. Calley took the operations orders as a license to go into My Lai and have his men take their revenge.

Brooks: At dawn on March 16, Lt. Calley's 1st platoon and the 2nd platoon under my command moved into Pinkville by helicopter. Calley's was the advance force. After gunships bombarded the My Lai area with hundreds of rockets and bullets, Calley's platoon jumped down into the rice fields. The rice shoots were billowing in the breeze, almost ready for harvesting. My Lai was a hamlet with suspected VC sympathizers, with a population of about seven hundred.