Messing With The Enemy Dead

[frisco-kid]

Except for scattering some 101st death cards or patches around dead VC or NVA, I didn't mess with them much. A too superstitious Irishman, I guess. Did stick a couple in a mouth. These cards were issued to us by the battalion and we were encouraged to use them. A bit of psychological warfare. Went into an area that we had called in arty on to try to get a body count, police up any weapons, and look for documents. Somebody found a forearm with a hand on it, stuck it upright in the mud and placed a 101st patch in it.

Some guys would take it a bit further by posing bodies sitting up with their arms over each others shoulders; with a beer or C-Rat can; etc.. This was usually done for Kodak moments. Don't be too quick to condemn. This was only done a few times that I saw. And besides, you had to keep some semblance of humor or you were in trouble. However, war tends to make it a little darker and off center. We could joke about some dead serious stuff. It was done to relieve the stress of the situation. Often to keep us from crying.

Never witnessed one of the biggest myths to come out of the VN War; the cutting off of ears and wearing them as a neckless. Total bullshit, I've always thought. Who would want to wear a string of rotting ears around their neck? Who would want to be around an SOB wearing a string of rotting ears around their neck? Not me. It was pretty much SOP to put a couple of rounds into a body before approaching it, but never saw any mutilating of bodies. Our officers and NCO's wouldn't have tolerated it.

[Bandman]

Tom I told my teams you can move them out of the way if need be, but other then that all you do is shot them, count them then leave them alone. I never had a mortician on any of my teams so I saw no need to mess with dead bodies. As for the ear thing, the only mutalation I ever witnessed was to American and ARVN troops, Sir Charles liked to do that, I think they thought it scared people, it made you want to respond in kind but I woulden't let my men, it made sence.

I always figured that it was hard enough over there and doing dirty deeds would only make enemies of the locals, and for what?, to show we could be as brutal as them?. It wasn't worth what it could cause. And Frisco I have to say this, I have seen many people say it was "easy to kill them, hell they were the enemy", well I killed my share and there was nothing easy about it. Not the first time, and not the last time and none in between. One of the hardest things for a man to do is take the life of another human being, you can do it, it just ain't easy.

[rotorwash]

The ear cutting off thing was something the Yards did. It had religious significance, the soul would wander until it could collect all of its salient parts. Imagine the impact on a green young crew chief when a bag of those things was thrown in my lap just as we were taking off. The SF type we were carrying almost fell out of the aircraft from laughing. When he recovered, he explained that it would be appreciated if we took them a long way before throwing them out. After explaining the situation to the pilots we made a beeline for the ocean where I shook them out of the bag. The bag was kind of neat until I found out it was made from an elephant scrotum. I sold it to an REMF for a princely sum, disgusting little fart. Wish E-Bay had been around. Needless to say, it was the closest I ever came to losing my cookies in flight.

Rotorwash

[Bill Farnie]

We didn?t mutilate enemy dead either. Couldn?t see any point/reason to doing it. Figured all it would do is piss them off. No needs to give them another reason too want to kill us. We did have death cards and used them. I wrote back in June, about the attack on Firebase Currahee when my company made a night CA into the firebase as the RRF and how the engineers dug mass graves for the dead NVA and as luck would have it an arm was sticking straight up from the grave outside the wire in front of our bunker and someone took the hand and made it into the one finger salute. I didn?t like that but understood.

[Seascamp]

Actually I read about the ear cutting off deal in Time Magazine. My Mom sent a copy each week so I got some real crazy impressions of what was going on in other Corps areas. Most often we were assigned to the 5th Marines for gun support and Navy arty is much more powerful than Army arty, so there was really nothing left to mess with I suppose, just raspberry jam in a deep hole is all. In 67 the Americal came aboard in Chu Li and we tried some gun work with them but mostly unsuccessfully. It takes a lot of experience and knowledge to call Navy fire and I think they moved people around too much so not a lot of experience was gained.
I heard some bad stories coming out of the Americal AO but mostly sea stories I think. Kind of like the stories of the ?black sif? and the alleged secret Island, that kind of thing.

With the 5th Marines we could put a 5/38 round in a pickle barrel at five clicks so we had some real experienced people that were used to working with us and we could do that in a run and shoot or hook and shoot situation. A lot of the time we had some 5th Marines aboard for cross training and getting acquainted kinds of things so that worked. Now then, we did have a mean bugger Marine Staff Sergeant/helicopter crew chief aboard that told me he?s cut my nuts off if I forgot to send up the life preserver on the cable hook harness again. And I think he would have so I never forgot to do that again, ever.

Scamp

[Andy]

The only ?cutting? I ever saw was after a mortar attack our tubes did a counter fire. We moved forward and found a bunch on blood trails and 3 bodies. One was a young woman with very long hair. One of the guys cut her hair off. He didn?t scalp her, just cut off a big hand full of hair. Later, he braided the hair, making it into a pair of boot laces. We went into the town of Cu Chi a month later, the working girls noticed his boots and he got a lot of, I don?t know, respect.

Stay healthy,
Andy

[frisco-kid]

Bandman: Thank you for your service, and Welcome Home. Don't mean nothin'.

Rotor: Always had a lot of respect for the Yards, and liked to interact with them. Didn't know about the ear thing. Thanks for the history lesson and a good story. So 'fess up; how much did you get for the elephant scrotum?

Andy: Now that's a unique war souvenier :ek: .



One thing we did do to enemy bodies fairly often was booby trap them. We'd take the fuse out of a smoke grenade and put it in a hand grenade, pull the pin and put it under a body. Since there is no delay to a smoke grenade fuse, it was instant KABOOM when the body was turned over. Would put a grin on your face when you heard the explosion. Made retrieving bodies a lot more dicey endeavor for Chuck :re: .

[DMZ-LT]

Had one guy in the platoon show me his collection of about 4 dried ears. Told him to stop or I would cut off his ear. He quit.We booby trapped bodies like Frisco did.

[Bill Farnie]

I forgot about the ears. There was a guy in my platoon, on his second tour, whom it was rumored that he had a bag of ears. Never saw them though ?. But what he did carry and what I did see at every NDP was the monkey skull he carried and put on a stick in front of his hole ? Merle Christensen was one strange dude but the type of solider you wanted around when the sh*t hit the fan.

[DMZ-LT]

Got me smiling homie. My friend , the first platoon leader was wounded 5 times in less than 6 months. Last time he came back he had a big bulls eye painted on both sides of his track . I would have liked Merle .