Investigations into massacres of unarmed Vietnamese civilians by US Army unit

Folowing recent articles by the Toledo Blade were forwarded to me by a
Vietnam vet.

Besides the infamous My Lai masscare, it was suspected, and now
reported, that many other war crimes were committed by degenerate
individuals and units belonging to the US Army, the Army of South
Vietnam and South Korea.

These barbaric acts against the lives and dignity of the people of
Vietnam, and subsequent cover ups by their commanding offciers,
undermined the just cause of the people of South Vietnam and
ultimately gave victory to North Vietnamese Communist.

While it is well known that the Vietnamese Communist also committed
many acts of war crimes and terrorism against the people of Vietnam,
the US should take the leadership in accounting for all war crimes
committed by both sides. Only when all persons and units guilty of war
crimes properly punished by the laws, can we hope for true peace and
cooperation between the peoples of Vietnam and America, and effective
deterrence to future abuses.

We appeal to all conscientious Americans and Vietanmese to to pursue
full and thorough investigations of all suspected cases of war crimes,
committed either by Americans, Vietnamese or Koreans, to bring all
guilty parties to justice, and to bring proper conpensation to the
surviving family members.

Respectfully,

Tam D. Doan
The Liberty Flame Foundation

****************************

http://www.vnagency.com.vn/NewsA.asp...&NEWS_ID=27905

Investigations into massacres of unarmed Vietnamese civilians by US
Army unit
(10/20/2003 -- 18:00GMT+7)

Washington, Oct. 20 (VNA) - An American newspaper, "The Toledo Blade",
on Sunday published a series of articles and photos, investigating
massacres of Vietnamese civilians conducted by US soldiers in an elite
US Army unit of the 101st Airborne Division, known as Tiger Force, in
Quang Ngai province and the Central Highlands during Viet Nam's
resistance war.

"The Toledo Blade" correspondents carried out independent
investigations over the last eight months. They interviewed many
Vietnamese witnesses in the Song Ve Valley and many former Tiger Force
soldiers. They also reviewed thousands of classified Army documents,
National Archives records, and radio logs.

From these, the newspaper came to the following conclusions: former
Tiger Force soldiers killed hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians
between May and November 1967. Women and children were intentionally
blown up in underground bunkers, unarmed elderly farmers were shot as
they toiled in the fields, prisoners were tortured and executed their
ears and scalps severed for souvenirs. One soldier kicked out the
teeth of executed civilians for their gold fillings.

One medic said he counted 120 unarmed villagers killed in one month,
"The Toledo Blade" reported.

According to "The Toledo Blade", one battalion officer, Bradford
Mutchler, told investigators in 1975 that commanders were aware of
rumours of Tiger Force war crimes in 1967 but did not investigate in
fear of what might be uncovered.

The Army investigated 30 war-crime allegations against Tiger Force
between February 1971, and June 1975, finding that a total of 18
soldiers committed crimes, including murder and assault. But no one
was ever charged.

The findings of the investigation were sent to the offices of the
secretary of the Army and the secretary of defense, records show, but
no action was taken. Top White House officials, including John Dean,
former chief counsel to President Richard Nixon, were repeatedly sent
reports on the progress of the investigation.

The next investigative articles will be published by "The Toledo
Blade" between Oct. 20 and Oct. 21.-Enditem

NEXT STORY:

http://www.lib.washington.edu/southe...Massacres.html


Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 04:37:19 -0400

From: Stephen Morris

Reply-To: vsg@u...

To: Vietnam Studies Group

Subject: Sources on Vietnam war Massacres



** Reply Requested When Convenient **



I find it interesting and illustrative of the state of their
profession that, in response to a request for sources on massacres
committed during the Vietnam war, both of the American ethnic academic
historians who have commented so far should raise the issue of My Lai
(which resulted in the slaughter of hundreds), and several other
smaller atrocities or alleged atrocities by Allied forces. But neither
of these academics has mentioned the well known atrocities against
thousands of Vietnamese civilians committed by the NVA/VC.



The largest single event atrocities committed during the Vietnam war
inside Vietnam were either the Hue massacre of 1968, carried out by
the NVA/VC, the NVA shelling and machine gunning of civilians escaping
from Quang Tri during the NVA Easter Offensive of 1972, or the NVA
shelling of thousands of civilians in the columns of soldiers and
mostly civilians fleeing the highlands in 1975.



The answer as to which was the largest should be known to serious
sholars of the Vietnam war. Unfortunately the topic of communist
atrocities seems to be not of much interest to most of the Vietnam
specialists active on this list.



I am not sure who all the commanders responsible for the 1972 and 1975
massacres were. But I do know that two of those responsible for Hue
1968, then Defense Minister General Vo Nguyen Giap, and then regional
commander Tran Van Quang were, last time I checked, still alive in
Hanoi. Giap was also Defense Minister in 1972 and 1975, but less
actively involved in policy in 1975. Unfortunately interviewing these
comrades on these sensitive matters is hardly likely to be very
illuminating. As loyal party men they will deny that the slaughter of
civilians by communists ever happened (one official Hanoi line on the
Hue massacres is that "the people" did it in anger. See the PBS
"Vietna. A Television History" episode on Tet for that). Some of these
events were reported in the American press at the time. Better
personal interview results might come from talking to the relatives of
the victims, as the PBS team under Austin Hoyt (now at WGBH Boston)
did at the time.

There were many other atrocities of merely My Lai proportions
committed by the NVA/VC -- such as the flame thrower extermination of
hundreds of Montagnard women and children at Dak Son in 1967, and the
slaughters at Duc Duc and Phu Thanh (?) villages in 1970 and 1971. All
these events can be documented.


I wonder why the Vietnam studies professionals had not raised these
examples before I did?

Stephen J. Morris.

NEXT STORY:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Vi...att.net&rnum=4



From: Vietnam Insight
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Subject: VI:My Lai and Tet 1968 Offensive Massacres
Date: 1 Apr 1998 23:45:34 GMT
Message-ID: <6fujiu$qn0$1@n...>

[NOTE: Someone had added a pro-communist paragraph not in the original
San Jose Mercury News story; I deleted that self-serving paragraph.]

Published Sunday, March 29, 1998, in the San Jose Mercury News

*****************************
S. Vietnamese have waited 30 years for communists to repent for
atrocities

BY PATRICK PHU LE

RECENTLY, the United States honored the three servicemen who
helped stop the atrocities at My Lai and transported the wounded
to medical facilities. It was a meaningful decision carried out
in good faith to express U.S. concerns for mistakes committed
during the Vietnam war, and as an American citizen, I am very
pleased by this action.

Vietnam's communist propaganda machinery did not spare the
opportunity to jump on the bandwagon and announce they welcome
this decision even though it is overdue. Better late than never,
they said.

But as a Vietnamese-American and a resident of Hue during the
Viet Cong's massacre of more than 6,000 civilians -- known in
this country as the Tet offensive -- it is very legitimate for me
to pose a question to the Vietnamese communists: ``We have done
our part, when are you going to do yours?''

Thirty years have passed, and a trial of those responsible for
the massacre of immense cruelty is well overdue. The U.S.
military court convicted and punished those involved in My Lai.
But the Vietnamese communist government has not even acknowledged
that the event known in Vietnam as Mau Than Tet -- Tet of the
Year of the Monkey -- was wrong. It hurt not only thousands of
innocent Hue civilians, but also the South Vietnamese people in
general, on the verge of withdrawal from Hue and numerous cities
all ove r South Vietnam.

I was 18 at the time and lost many of my classmates and teachers.
Their bodies were found among thousands of Hue residents in huge
communal holes discovered soon after the Viet Cong retreated from
Hue. The victims' heads were crushed by savage blows and their
hands were tied by barbed wire.

And they had nothing to do with the South Vietnamese regime; they
were just civilians without any means to defend themselves.
Images of my teachers' and classmates' violent deaths followed me
for years. Like any 18-year-old, I looked forward to a hopeful
future and could not imagine how such atrocities could ever
happen. For a long time after the ordeal, I was in doubt of the
true meaning of life. Vietnamese communists still owe me and
other South Vietnamese who had their relatives executed in the
Tet offen sive an explanation for their actions.

But I doubt the Vietnamese communists will ever do their part in
apologizing for the crimes against humanity they committed 30
years ago. They never will take any actions for a simple reason:
The Tet massacre was not an isolated incident like My Lai. It was
not a mistake by a small group of soldiers and their commanders
but the execution of a calculated policy of raining terror on the
South Vietnamese people by the communist war machinery, a
surprise attack in the middle of the most sacred moments of the
Vietnamese people. To bring those responsible to justice would
be putting the whole communist regime on trial. That's something
Vietnamese communists could not do and will never do.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick Phu Le, Ph.D., is an activist in the San Jose
Vietnamese-American community.



NEXT STORY:

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs...ORCE/110190168

Day 1 of a 4 Day Series

Article published October 19, 2003
Day One of a Four-Day Series: Rogue GIs unleashed wave of terror in
Central Highlands

By MICHAEL D. SALLAH and MITCH WEISS
BLADE STAFF WRITERS ?? THE BLADE, 2003


QUANG NGAI, Vietnam - For the 10 elderly farmers in the rice paddy,
there was nowhere to hide.

The river stretched along one side, mountains on the other.

Approaching quickly in between were the soldiers - an elite U.S. Army
unit known as Tiger Force.

Though the farmers were not carrying weapons, it didn't matter: No one
was safe when the special force arrived on July 28, 1967.

No one.
With bullets flying, the farmers - slowed by the thick, green plants
and muck - dropped one by one to the ground.

Within minutes, it was over. Four were dead, others wounded. Some
survived by lying motionless in the mud.

Four soldiers later recalled the assault.

"We knew the farmers were not armed to begin with," one said, "but we
shot them anyway."

The unprovoked attack was one of many carried out by the decorated
unit in the Vietnam War, an eight-month investigation by The Blade
shows.

The platoon - a small, highly trained unit of 45 paratroopers created
to spy on enemy forces - violently lost control between May and
November, 1967.

For seven months, Tiger Force soldiers moved across the Central
Highlands, killing scores of unarmed civilians - in some cases
torturing and mutilating them - in a spate of violence never revealed
to the American public.

They dropped grenades into underground bunkers where women and
children were hiding - creating mass graves - and shot unarmed
civilians, in some cases as they begged for their lives.

They frequently tortured and shot prisoners, severing ears and scalps
for souvenirs.

A review of thousands of classified Army documents, National Archives
records, and radio logs reveals a fighting unit that carried out the
longest series of atrocities in the Vietnam War - and commanders who
looked the other way.

For 41/2 years, the Army investigated the platoon, finding numerous
eyewitnesses and substantiating war crimes. But in the end, no one was
prosecuted, the case buried in the archives for three decades.

No one knows how many unarmed men, women, and children were killed by
platoon members 36 years ago.

At least 81 were fatally shot or stabbed, records show, but many
others were killed in what were clear violations of U.S. military law
and the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

Based on more than 100 interviews with The Blade of former Tiger Force
soldiers and Vietnamese civilians, the platoon is estimated to have
killed hundreds of unarmed civilians in those seven months.

"We weren't keeping count," said former Pvt. Ken Kerney, a California
firefighter. "I knew it was wrong, but it was an acceptable practice."

Many details of the period in question are unknown: Records are
missing from the National Archives, and several suspects and witnesses
have died.

In many cases, the soldiers remember the atrocities and general
locations, but not the precise dates.

What's clear is that nearly four decades later, many Vietnamese
villagers and former Tiger Force soldiers are deeply troubled by the
brutal killing of villagers.

"It was out of control," said Rion Causey, 55, a former platoon medic
and now a nuclear engineer. "I still wonder how some people can sleep
30 years later."

Among the newspaper's findings:


Commanders knew about the platoon's atrocities in 1967, and in some
cases, encouraged the soldiers to continue the violence.


Two soldiers who tried to stop the atrocities were warned by their
commanders to remain quiet before transferring to other units.


The Army investigated 30 war-crime allegations against Tiger Force
between February, 1971, and June, 1975, finding a total of 18 soldiers
committed crimes, including murder and assault. But no one was ever
charged.


Six platoon soldiers suspected of war crimes - including an officer -
were allowed to resign during the investigation, escaping military
prosecution.


The findings of the investigation were sent to the offices of the
secretary of the Army and the secretary of defense, records show, but
no action was taken.


Top White House officials, including John Dean, former chief counsel
to President Richard Nixon, repeatedly were sent reports on the
progress of the investigation.

To this day, the Army's Criminal Investigation Command refuses to
release thousands of records that could explain what happened and why
the case was dropped. Army spokesman Joe Burlas said last week it may
have been difficult to press charges, but he couldn't explain flaws in
the investigation.

The Army interviewed 137 witnesses and tracked down former Tiger Force
members in more than 60 cities around the world.

But for the past three decades, the case has not even been a footnote
in the annals of one of the nation's most divisive wars.

Thirty years after U.S. combat units left Vietnam, the elderly farmers
of the Song Ve Valley live with memories of the platoon that passed
through their hamlets so long ago.

Nguyen Dam, now 66, recalls running as the soldiers fired into the
rice paddy that summer day in 1967. "I am still angry," he said,
waving his arms. "Our people didn't deserve to die that way. We were
farmers. We were not soldiers. We didn't hurt anyone."

But one former soldier offers no apologies for the platoon's actions.

William Doyle, a former Tiger Force sergeant now living in Missouri,
said he killed so many civilians he lost count.

"We were living day to day. We didn't expect to live. Nobody out there
with any brains expected to live," he said in a recent interview. "So
you did any goddamn thing you felt like doing - especially to stay
alive. The way to live is to kill because you don't have to worry
about anybody who's dead."


(THE BLADE/ANDY MORRISON)

Kieu Trac walks through a Song Ve Valley rice paddy in June, where his
father, Kieu Cong, and other farmers were killed by Tiger Force
soldiers 36 years ago.
ZOOM 1


Battle-tested platoon drew special mission
The Quang Ngai province stretches eastward from the lush, green
mountains to the sweeping white beaches of the South China Sea.

To the villagers, it was revered, ancestral land that had been farmed
for generations.

To the North Vietnamese, it was a major supply line to guerrillas
fighting to reunite the country.

To the U.S. military, it was an area of jungles and river valleys that
had to be controlled to stop the communist infiltration of South
Vietnam. Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in
Vietnam, created a special task force in 1967 to secure the province.

In a conflict marked by fierce guerrilla warfare, the task force
needed a special unit to move quickly through the jungles, find the
enemy, and set up ambushes. That role fell to Tiger Force.

Considered an elite arm of the 101st Airborne Division, the platoon -
formed in 1965 - often broke into small teams to scout the enemy,
creeping into the jungle in tiger-striped fatigues, soft-brimmed hats,
with rations to last 30 days.

Not everyone could join the platoon: Soldiers had to volunteer, needed
combat experience, and were subjected to a battery of questions - some
about their willingness to kill.

The majority of those men were enlistees who came from small towns
such as Rayland, Ohio, Globe, Ariz., and Loretto, Tenn.

By the time Tiger Force arrived in the province on May 3, 1967, the
unit already had fought in fierce battles farther south in My Cahn and
Dak To.

But this was a different place.

With deep ties to the land, the people of Quang Ngai province were
fiercely independent.

In this unfamiliar setting, things began to go wrong.

No one knows what set off the events that led to the deaths of untold
numbers of civilians and prisoners.

But less than a week after setting up camp in the province, Tiger
Force members began to break the rules of war.

It started with prisoners.

During a morning patrol on May 8, the soldiers spotted two suspected
Viet Cong - the local militia opposed to U.S. intervention - along the
Song Tra Cau River. One jumped into the water and escaped through an
underwater tunnel, but the other was captured.

Taller and more muscular than most Vietnamese, the soldier was
believed to be Chinese.

Over the next two days, he was repeatedly beaten and tortured. At one
point, his captors debated whether to blow him up with explosives,
according to sworn witness statements.

One former soldier, Spec. William Carpenter, told The Blade he tried
to keep the prisoner alive, "but I knew his time was up."

After he was ordered to run - and told he was free - he was shot by
several unidentified soldiers.

The platoon's treatment of the detainee - his beating and execution -
became the unit's operating procedure in the ensuing months.

Time and again, Tiger Force soldiers talked about the executions of
captured soldiers - so many, investigators were hard pressed to place
a number on the toll.

In June, Pvt. Sam Ybarra slit the throat of a prisoner with a hunting
knife before scalping him - placing the scalp on the end of a rifle,
soldiers said in sworn statements. Ybarra refused to talk to Army
investigators about the case.

Another prisoner was ordered to dig bunkers, then beaten with a shovel
before he was shot to death, records state.

The killing prompted a medic to talk to a chaplain. "It upset me so
much to watch him die," Barry Bowman said in a recent interview.

One Tiger Force soldier, Sgt. Forrest Miller, told investigators the
killing of prisoners was "an unwritten law."

But platoon members weren't just executing prisoners: They began to
target unarmed civilians.

In June, an elderly man in black robes and believed to be a Buddhist
monk was shot to death after he complained to soldiers about the
treatment of villagers. A grenade was placed on his body to disguise
him as an enemy soldier, platoon members told investigators.

That same month, Ybarra shot and killed a 15-year-old boy near the
village of Duc Pho, reports state. He later told soldiers he shot the
youth because he wanted the teenager's tennis shoes.

The shoes didn't fit, but Ybarra ended up carrying out what became a
ritual among platoon members: He cut off the teenager's ears and
placed them in a ration bag, Specialist Carpenter told investigators.

During the Army's investigation of Tiger Force, 27 soldiers said the
severing of ears from dead Vietnamese became an accepted practice. One
reason: to scare the Vietnamese.

Platoon members strung the ears on shoe laces to wear around their
necks, reports state.

Former platoon medic Larry Cottingham told investigators: "There was a
period when just about everyone had a necklace of ears."

Records show soldiers began another gruesome practice: Kicking out the
teeth of dead civilians for their gold fillings.

Villagers resisted relocation orders
For Tiger Force, the fighting was unpredictable in Quang Ngai.

In the first three weeks of May, platoon soldiers were under frequent
sniper fire as they walked unfamiliar trails.

Booby traps covered the rolling hills and beaches.

On May 15, the unit was ambushed by a North Vietnamese battalion in
what became known as the Mother's Day Massacre. From 11 a.m. to 5:45
p.m., the out-manned platoon became trapped in a valley under intense
fire.

By the time it ended, two Tiger Force soldiers were killed and 25
wounded.

Over the next few weeks, the platoon would change.

A new field commander, Lt. James Hawkins, joined the unit, along with
two dozen replacements.

The newcomers arrived as the platoon was about to move into the Song
Ve Valley.

The Army's plan was to force the villagers to move to refugee centers
to keep them from growing rice that could feed the enemy. But it
wouldn't be an easy assignment.

Many villagers refused to go to the centers, which the U.S. State
Department criticized in 1967 for lacking food and shelter. Surrounded
by concrete walls and barbed wire, the camps resembled prisons.

Though the Army dropped leaflets from helicopters ordering the 5,000
inhabitants to the centers, many ignored the orders. "They wanted to
stay on their land. They took no side in the war," Lu Thuan, 67, a
farmer, recently recalled.

Unlike most of the province, the valley - removed from the populated
coast by narrow dirt roads - was not a center of rebellion, say
villagers and historians. "We just wanted to be left alone," said Mr.
Lu.

Lieutenant executed unarmed, elderly man
But no one was left alone.

The Song Ve Valley - four miles wide by six miles long - became the
center of operations for Tiger Force over the next two months.

In clearing the land, the soldiers began burning villages to force the
people to leave.

It didn't always go as planned.

At times, villagers would simply flee to another hamlet. Other times,
they would hide.

For the soldiers, the valley became a frustrating place.

During the day, they would round up people to send to relocation
camps. At night, platoon members huddled in camps on the valley floor,
dodging grenades hurled from enemy soldiers in the mountains.

The lines between civilians refusing to leave and the enemy became
increasingly blurred.

One night, the platoon ran into an elderly carpenter who had just
crossed the shallow Song Ve River. Dao Hue, as he was known, had lived
in the valley his entire life.

He was walking to his village along the banks of the river on a dirt
trail he knew by heart.

On this night, he wouldn't make it home.

His shooting death on July 23 as he pleaded for his life would be
remembered by five soldiers during the Army's investigation.

It would also send a message to the people of the valley that no one
was safe, leading hundreds to flee.

The platoon had been patrolling the valley and set up camp in an
abandoned village, where they began drinking beer delivered by
helicopter. By dusk, several soldiers were drunk, reports state.

At nightfall, the platoon received an unexpected order: Move across
the river, and set up an ambush. What followed was a shooting that
would be questioned by soldiers long after they left Vietnam.

When Mr. Dao crossed the river, he ran into Sgt. Leo Heaney, who
grabbed the elderly Vietnamese man with the gray beard.

Immediately, the 68-year-old carpenter dropped his shoulder pole with
baskets on each end filled with geese.

"He was terrified and folded his hands and started what appeared to me
as praying for mercy in a loud high-pitched tone," Mr. Heaney told
Army investigators.

He said he realized the man posed no threat.

Sergeant Heaney said he escorted Mr. Dao to the platoon leaders,
Lieutenant Hawkins and Sgt. Harold Trout. Trembling, the man continued
to babble loudly, witnesses said.

Immediately, Lieutenant Hawkins began shaking the old man and cursing
at him, witnesses recalled. Without warning, Sergeant Trout clubbed
Mr. Dao with the barrel of his M-16 rifle.

He fell to the ground, covered with blood.

In a sworn statement to investigators, Specialist Carpenter said he
told Lieutenant Hawkins the man "was just a farmer, and was unarmed."

But as medic Barry Bowman tried to treat the villager's head wound,
Lieutenant Hawkins lifted the man up from where he was kneeling and
shot him in the face with a Carbine-15 rifle.

"The old man fell backwards on the ground, and Hawkins shot him
again," Specialist Carpenter said in a sworn statement. "I just knew
he was dead as half of his head was blown off."

Lieutenant Hawkins denied the allegations in an interview with Army
investigators on March 16, 1973. But in a recent interview with The
Blade, he admitted killing the elderly man, claiming his voice was
loud enough to draw enemy attention.

"I eliminated that right there."

But four soldiers told investigators there were other ways to silence
him. In fact, the shots ultimately gave their position away, which led
to a firefight.

Said Mr. Bowman: "There was no justifiable reason that the old man had
to be killed."

Nearly four decades later, the villagers who found Mr. Dao's remains
said they knew he was killed by U.S. soldiers.

His niece, Tam Hau, now 70, was one of the first to see her uncle's
body by the river the next day.

She and another relative, Bui Quang Truong, dragged their uncle's
remains to their village. "He was shot all over his body," she
recalled. "It was very sad - sad for all of us."

Soldiers intensified attacks in the valley
Four days after the shooting of Dao Hue, four Tiger Force soldiers
were wounded in guerrilla grenade attacks.

The platoon struck back.

Over the next 10 days, the soldiers led a rampage through the valley.

The area was declared a free-fire zone - a special designation that
meant troops didn't have to seek approval from commanders and South
Vietnamese officials before attacking enemy soldiers.

But Tiger Force soldiers took the words - free-fire zone - literally.
They began to fire on men, women, and children, former platoon members
said.

Two partially blind men found wandering in the valley were escorted to
a bend in the Song Ve River and shot to death, records show. Two
villagers, including a teenager, were executed because they were not
in relocation camps.

While approaching a rice paddy on July 28, platoon members opened fire
on 10 elderly farmers.

The image of the bodies scattered across the green expanse has long
been remembered by Tiger Force soldiers and the people of Van Xuan
village.

By all accounts, the farmers thought they were safe.

They were too old to serve in the military and not openly aligned with
either side in the conflict, according to their relatives.

In the end, four were killed and others wounded in what several
soldiers told investigators was an unjustified attack.

The order to shoot came from Lieutenant Hawkins, the officer leading
the patrol, records state.

One villager recently recalled the farmers were surprised when the
soldiers began firing. Kieu Trac, now 72, said he watched helplessly
as his father fell in the rice field with the others.

He said he waited for hours before crawling into the field in the
darkness to look for his father's body. He recalled turning over the
corpses - one by one - until he found Kieu Cong, 60.

The son and his wife, Mai Thi Tai, carried his remains back to the
village for burial.

The bodies of three others, Le Muc, Phung Giang, and an elderly female
member of the Trang family, were later buried by relatives.

"The farmers didn't do anything ??? we didn't hurt the soldiers. All
they were doing was working in the fields," said Mr. Kieu, pointing to
the spot where his father and the others were killed. "They thought
the soldiers would leave them alone."

Another villager, Lu Thuan, who watched the attack from a nearby
mountain, said he doesn't remember how many were wounded.

"Some were injured," said Mr. Lu, now 67. "They couldn't run fast
enough. Others acted like they died."

Mr. Carpenter, one of the soldiers in the patrol, insists he did not
fire his weapon. "It was wrong," he said in a recent interview. "There
was no way I was going to shoot. Those people weren't bothering
anybody."

He told Army investigators he was afraid to express his opinion. A
culture had developed in the unit that promoted the shooting of
civilians - with team leaders enforcing a code of silence.

Four former soldiers told investigators they didn't report atrocities
because they were warned to keep quiet by team leaders.

Ken Kerney, the former private, recalled in a recent interview the
briefing he received before joining Tiger Force.

"The commanders told me that ???What goes on here, stays here. You
never tell anyone about what goes on here. If we find out you did, you
won't like it.' They didn't tell me what they would do, but I knew. So
you're afraid to say anything.''

Villagers recently interviewed said they dug dozens of mass graves
after the soldiers moved through the valley.

Nguyen Dam, 66, recalled the grim task of burying neighbors and
friends whose bodies were left in the fields.

"We wouldn't even have meals because of the smell," the rice farmer
said. "I couldn't breathe the air sometimes. There were so many
villagers who died, we couldn't bury them one by one. We had to bury
them all in one grave."

Platoon moved north, focused on body count
Days after the attack on the farmers, U.S. planes flew over the
valley, dumping thousands of gallons of defoliants to ensure no one
would grow rice there during the war.

For Tiger Force, the Song Ve campaign was over.

On Aug. 10, platoon soldiers - armed with new supplies and
reinforcements - rode a truck convoy into a new area 30 miles north.

Known as the Quang Nam province, the vast landscape was covered by
triple-canopy jungles and intricate, enemy tunnels.

The mission was to control the province, but not in the traditional
way of winning territory.

The platoon became dragged into a battle that became a mantra of the
war: body count.

The success of a battle would be measured by the number of people
killed - not by whether a village was taken, according to the sworn
statements of 11 former officers.

In what became one of the bloodiest periods of 1967, the Army launched
a campaign on Sept. 11 known as Operation Wheeler.

The battalion commander who would lead Tiger Force and three other
units was Lt. Col. Gerald Morse, who had taken over the previous
month.

The 38-year-old officer was described as an aggressive, hands-on
commander who rode in helicopters and kept in frequent radio contact
with his units in the 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry.

Within days of taking over, Colonel Morse changed the names of the
battalion's three companies - an action questioned by investigators
years later.

Instead of companies A, B, and C, they were now known as Assassins,
Barbarians, and Cutthroats - with a sign hoisted over battalion
headquarters bearing the new names. And Colonel Morse would go by the
name "Ghost Rider."

Under his command, Tiger Force was encouraged to forcefully patrol the
dozens of hamlets in the province.

But the soldiers soon learned this was different from the Song Ve
Valley.

It was not only home to the Viet Cong, but a far more trained and
disciplined adversary: the 2nd Division of the North Vietnamese Army.

Though these enemy forces previously hid in the nearby Annamese
Mountains, they were now moving toward Chu Lai, the sprawling U.S. air
base that was home to Tiger Force and other units.

By early September, the enemy soldiers were setting ambushes for
troops, including Tiger Force.

"We soon found ourselves face to face with the enemy," recalled
William Carpenter, the former platoon specialist who now lives in
eastern Ohio. "It seemed like every day we were getting hit."

Within 18 days of arriving in the new operations area, five Tiger
Force soldiers died and 12 were wounded in fighting that left the
remaining platoon members bitter and angry.

The platoon - broken into groups of four to six soldiers - began
attacking villages with a vengeance, according to former soldiers.

"Everybody was blood thirsty at the time, saying ???We're going to get
them back. We're going to go back there. We're going to even the
score,'" former medic Rion Causey said in a recent interview.

He said he watched as soldiers took out their aggressions on unarmed
civilians who refused to leave their homes.

"I've never seen anything like it. We just came in and cleared out the
civilian population," said Mr. Causey, 55, now a nuclear engineer in
California. "It was a day by day by day thing."

In some cases, the Army dropped leaflets into villages warning people
to go to relocation centers.

If the people didn't leave, "they would be killed," Mr. Causey said.

To cover up the shootings, platoon leaders began counting dead
civilians as enemy soldiers, five former soldiers told The Blade.

A review of Army logs supports their accounts.

For 10 days beginning Nov. 11, entries show that platoon members were
claiming to be killing Viet Cong - a total of 49. But no weapons were
found in 46 deaths, records show.

Mr. Causey recalls a report to commanders.

"We would call in on the radio - ???seven VC running from hut. Shot
and killed' - Hell, they weren't running. We didn't know if they were
VC."

Sgt. James Barnett told investigators he once raised concerns to
Lieutenant Hawkins that Tiger Force soldiers were killing people who
weren't carrying weapons.

"Hawkins told me not to worry about it," he said. "We can always get
the weapons later."

During the rampage, the soldiers committed some of their most brutal
atrocities, Army records show.

A 13-year-old girl's throat was slashed after she was sexually
assaulted, and a young mother was shot to death after soldiers torched
her hut.

An unarmed teenager was shot in the back after a platoon sergeant
ordered the youth to leave a village, and a baby was decapitated so
that a soldier could remove a necklace.

During the Army's investigation, former Pvt. Joseph Evans - another
Tiger Force soldier - refused to be interrogated. But in a recent
interview, he said many people who were running from soldiers during
that period were not a threat to troops.

"They were just running because they were afraid. They were in fear.
We killed a lot of people who shouldn't have been killed."

Grenades targeted civilians in bunkers
For villagers, it was a routine: Run to the underground bunkers for
safety.

In every hamlet, there were shelters, supported by bamboo and brick
and covered by leaves and brush.

To the civilians, it didn't matter whether the soldiers were American
or North Vietnamese. They went to the bunkers when either approached.

When Tiger Force appeared on a path leading to a village 20 miles west
of Tam Ky, the people scurried for cover.

Tiger Force soldiers told investigators they remembered seeing women
and children crawl through the openings.

No one knows how many were inside, but it didn't matter.

When the soldiers reached the bunker entrances, they "knew what to
do," Pvt. Ken Kerney told investigators.

Without trying to talk to the people below, the soldiers pulled the
clips on their grenades, and dropped the explosives through the holes.

Setting up camp nearby, soldiers heard human cries coming from the
underground shelters throughout the night.

But no one bothered to help.

For platoon member Charles Fulton, the night dragged on.

"We kept hearing human sounds which came from the direction of the
bunkers,'' he told investigators. "They were the sounds of people that
had been hurt and trying to get someone's attention to get help.
Although faint, they were clear."

The bodies eventually were removed by villagers, former soldiers told
investigators. No weapons were found in the bunkers, nor was there any
evidence the villagers were a threat to U.S. forces, according to
witness statements.

The next day, soldiers approaching the hamlet saw the bodies of women
and children lining the roadway.
Soldiers achieved objective of 327 kills
Toward the end of Operation Wheeler, there was even greater motivation
for killing.

An order was given via radio one day that would be remembered by seven
soldiers years later.

A voice came over the airwaves with a goal for the battalion: We want
a body count of 327. The number was significant because it was the
same as the battalion's infantry designation: the 327th.

Three former soldiers swore under oath the order came from a man who
identified himself as "Ghost Rider" - the radio name used by Colonel
Morse.

Army radio logs show the goal was achieved: Tiger Force reported the
327th kill on Nov. 19.

In a recent interview, Colonel Morse, who retired in 1979, denied
giving such an order, saying it was "ridiculous ... I would never have
done anything like that."

During questioning by Army investigators, former Pvt. John Colligan
said the order indeed was given.

In fact, he said the soldier who reached that goal "was to receive
some type of reward."

Sergeant Barnett told investigators he heard the same order over the
airwaves by someone who identified himself as Ghost Rider.

Three former soldiers said in recent interviews the goal was achieved
in part through the killing of villagers.

Number of killings remains a mystery
No one knows how many unarmed civilians were killed by Tiger Force
from May through November, 1967.

Soldiers from the platoon killed 120 villagers in one month alone,
former medic Rion Causey said in a recent interview.

Former medic Harold Fischer recalled that most of the platoon were
"shooting people left and right."

"We would go into villages and just shoot everybody. We didn't need an
excuse. If they were there, they were dead."

While the Army substantiated 20 war crimes against 18 Tiger Force
soldiers during their seven-month sweep across the Central Highlands,
former soldiers described 11 more in recent interviews with The Blade,
including:



Two elderly men killed during an unprovoked attack on a hamlet near
Tam Ky. One was beheaded and the other, who was wounded, was shot by
medic Barry Bowman in a "mercy killing," he said.


An elderly man shot to death by Private Colligan near Chu Lai when the
soldier wanted to test a new 38-caliber handgun on a live target, Mr.
Fischer said.


Numerous villagers shot by Tiger Force members in a hamlet near Chu
Lai, said former Pvt. Douglas Teeters. The villagers were waving
leaflets at the troops asking to be relocated, but when enemy forces
fired on the soldiers from another direction, the troops opened fire
on everyone in their sight, said the former medic.

"We killed a bunch of them. I don't remember how many," he said. "But
I remember when it was over, we just said the dead gooks were VC. But
we knew they weren't all VC."

And most soldiers just kept quiet, even if they didn't participate.

"Remember, out in the jungle, there were no police officers. No
judges. No law and order," Mr. Kerney said in a recent interview.
"Whenever somebody felt like doing something, they did it. There was
no one to stop them.

"So we watched and didn't say anything. We turned the other way.
Looking back, it's terrible. We should have said something. But at the
time, everybody's mindset was, ???It's OK.' But it wasn't OK. It's
very sad."
Changing war put troops on defensive
By the end of November, the long campaign was over.

In a story in the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes, Tiger Force's Sam
Ybarra was praised for the 1,000th kill of Operation Wheeler.

At a ceremony at the Phan Rang base on Nov. 27, 1967, medals were
pinned on the chests of Tiger Force soldiers, including Sergeant
Doyle, who ordered the execution of a farmer during the operation.

In the ensuing weeks, Tiger Force would leave the Central Highlands.
By early 1968, the war was changing.

North Vietnam began its own campaign - the Tet Offensive - attacking
100 villages and cities in the south.

Tiger Force was sent to defend a base near Cambodia.

For medic Rion Causey, the war was no longer about killing civilians
but defending American strongholds as the enemy moved toward Saigon.

As the base camp was overrun and soldiers were dying, he came to a
grim conclusion:

"The only way out of Tiger Force was to be injured or killed."

He was right.

On March 6, 1968, he was injured, and as he was lifted by the
helicopter, he recalled looking at the Tiger Force soldiers below.

"I remember just kind of saying to myself: ???God help you guys for
what you did. God help you.'"


NEXT STORY:

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs...ORCE/110200129

Article published October 20, 2003
Inquiry ended without justice
Army substantiated numerous charges - then dropped case of Vietnam war
crimes

By MICHAEL D. SALLAH and MITCH WEISS
BLADE STAFF WRITERS
?? THE BLADE, 2003


Seven years after leaving Vietnam, James Barnett broke down.

Haunted by the killing of civilians, the former Tiger Force sergeant
invited Army investigators to his home to offer a surprise confession.

He admitted to shooting a young, unarmed mother. He admitted to his
platoon???s cruel treatment of villagers.

He asked for immunity from prosecution, but in the end, he never
needed the legal protection.

No one would.

Though the Army substantiated 20 war crimes by 18 Tiger Force soldiers
committed in 1967 - with numerous eyewitnesses - no charges were
filed.

An investigation that should have brought justice to the longest
series of atrocities by a U.S. fighting unit in Vietnam reached the
Pentagon and White House but never a court of law - or the American
public.

Instead, the case was hidden in the Army???s archives, and key
suspects were allowed to continue their military careers.

By the time the investigation was over, a justice system that promised
to prosecute war criminals ended up protecting them.

At every turn, the system failed.

An eight-month investigation by The Blade, based on thousands of
military records and interviews, shows:


Commanders knew of the platoon???s atrocities in 1967 but refused to
investigate.


Soldiers went to Army commanders in 1967 to complain about the killing
of civilians, but their pleas were ignored.


Army investigators learned about the atrocities in February, 1971, but
took a year to interview witnesses.


Two Army investigators pretended to investigate while encouraging
soldiers to keep quiet so they wouldn???t be prosecuted.


By the time the investigation was completed in June, 1975, six key
suspects were allowed to leave the Army - escaping the reach of
military prosecutors.

When the Army???s final report reached commanders in 1975 for possible
prosecution against four remaining suspects, investigators gave
inaccurate and at times, incomplete information.

In three cases in which the final report accused people of "murder,"
commanders took no action.

Investigators found that five other soldiers carried out atrocities,
but their names were never mentioned in the final report.

Four military legal experts who reviewed the report for The Blade
questioned why the case was closed so abruptly.

"There should have been a [military grand jury] investigation of some
kind done on this," said retired Lt. Col. H. Wayne Elliott, a former
Army law professor. "I just can???t believe this wasn???t a pretty
high profile thing in the Pentagon."
41/2 year investigation by Army began in 1971
In a story that has never been told, the elite platoon torched
villages, executed prisoners, and slaughtered an untold number of
unarmed civilians between May and November, 1967, according to Army
records.

In recent interviews with The Blade, former platoon members say
hundreds may have been killed - in violation of military law and the
1949 Geneva Conventions.

The volunteer, 45-man unit from the 101st Airborne - created in 1965
to find the enemy in the jungles - was sent to South Vietnam???s
Central Highlands to help stop the North Vietnamese from taking over
the region.

But as the war intensified, soldiers in the platoon began to
indiscriminately kill villagers.

The atrocities were kept secret until 1971, when the Army began an
investigation that lasted 41/2 years - leading agents to 63 cities in
the United States, Germany, Korea, and the Philippines.

More than three decades later, Army spokesman Joe Burlas said he
couldn???t explain the breakdowns in the longest war-crime case from
Vietnam.

But one thing is clear: evidence of the atrocities reached the top
levels of government.

Summaries of the Tiger Force case were forwarded in 1973 to President
Richard Nixon???s White House and the offices of Secretary of Defense
James Schlesinger and Secretary of the Army Howard "Bo" Callaway,
according to National Archives records.

Through his secretary, Mr. Schlesinger declined to comment. Mr.
Callaway said he didn???t remember the investigation.

Beyond the military hierarchy, there was another safeguard in place
where the case could be heard.

A special U.S. panel was created in the wake of the 1968 My Lai
Massacre - the killing of about 500 Vietnamese civilians by an Army
unit - to review war-crime cases to prevent cover-ups.

But the panel, known informally as the Working War Crimes Group and
consisting of six military officers, never met, according to four
members.

More than 2,000 pages of testimony - including the 1974 confession of
former platoon Sergeant Barnett - were concealed in the Army???s
archives for years.

Mr. Barnett, who died in 2001, summed up his platoon???s actions to
investigators when they visited his Tennessee home: "Most of those
incidents could be classified as war crimes today."

Commanders failed to halt the atrocities
Thirty-six years ago, Capt. Carl James paid a surprise visit to the
Song Ve Valley.

He expected to meet the new platoon leader to talk about supplies but
instead found him standing over the corpse of an elderly farmer.

There were no weapons or enemy fire in the area.

He asked Lt. James Hawkins why he killed the unarmed man, Mr. James
recalled in a recent interview.

But the platoon leader could not provide an answer.

Mr. James said he admonished the lieutenant that day in July, 1967,
but never filed a complaint as required by military law.

"I thought I took care of the problem by warning him," Mr. James said.

His reluctance to notify Army officials was one of the first known
failures by commanders to investigate Tiger Force???s practices - and
stop the killing.

Time and again, battalion leaders knew of the atrocities but failed to
end them.

For example:



Harold Austin, the former battalion commander who oversaw Tiger Force,
said in a recent interview his headquarters received reports that
soldiers were mutilating the bodies of dead Vietnamese in early 1967,
but no investigation was conducted.


Lt. Donald Wood and Sgt. Gerald Bruner repeatedly complained to
superiors in August, 1967 about Tiger Force soldiers killing
civilians, according to witness statements. But there were no
investigations.


Capt. Robert Morin told Army officials he attended an officers???
party in 1967 where several officers joked about Tiger Force soldiers
drowning a farmer in the Song Ve River. But again, no investigation.

Mr. Hawkins said in a recent interview he doesn???t recall being
reprimanded in the Song Ve Valley for killing an elderly farmer but
admitted to shooting civilians who refused to move to relocation
camps.

Most commanders didn???t want to pursue an investigation of Tiger
Force because they feared turning up war crimes, former battalion
surgeon Bradford Mutchler told investigators in 1975.

"It was something that you just kept trying to sweep under the rug and
forget because you really didn???t want to know if it was true or
not."
Investigators didn???t follow their own rules
It began with a tip in 1971: A Tiger Force soldier had decapitated a
Vietnamese baby.

The statement by former Sgt. Gary Coy would spark an Army
investigation that would last until 1975.

Led by a field agent in Los Angeles, the case eventually utilized more
than 100 agents to interview 137 people. In the years after the 1968
My Lai massacre, military officials promised to take war crimes
seriously.

But an inspection of thousands of records of the Tiger Force case
shows agents failed to follow their own rules.

They were supposed to investigate as soon as a complaint was filed.
They were supposed to monitor key suspects. They were supposed to
track down victims.

Those procedures were ignored, seriously undermining an investigation
that would turn up some of the worst atrocities of the war.

At least six suspects were allowed to leave the Army during the
investigation, escaping possible court-martials. The Army could have
stopped their discharges while the case was pending. Three other
suspects died in battle.

While suspects were allowed to leave the Army, so were witnesses.
Because it took investigators a year to act on Mr. Coy???s complaint,
11 soldiers were discharged and could not be forced to testify.

Other witnesses included Vietnamese civilians. But U.S. investigators
failed to go to South Vietnam to track down witnesses - a practice in
such cases, according to records at the National Archives.

Thirty-six years later, The Blade went to Vietnam and found 11
villagers who knew precise details of three Tiger Force atrocities.

Even when soldiers provided clear details of crimes, investigators
failed to pursue the leads.

When Mr. Barnett invited investigators into his home in 1974, the
former sergeant admitted to killing a mother of a 6-month-old - but
said it was on the orders of his team leader, Sgt. Harold Trout.

He said he shot her with a rifle after she was given a sedative by a
medic and escorted into a bunker by Sergeant Trout.

When the sergeant and woman emerged from the shelter, Mr. Barnett
said, he was told by his team leader "to grease her," he told
investigators.

"I didn???t feel right about it," he said, "but I thought I was doing
my job when I did it. It was, to me, like any other day in Vietnam."

He identified another witness, but investigators failed to question
the soldier about the case, records show. Sergeant Trout refused to
talk to investigators in 1973 and declined recently to talk to The
Blade. The war "happened a long time ago," he said, "and there???s
nothing I???d really want to say now."

Beyond the breakdowns, another aspect of the case raises troubling
questions about whether Army agents went out of their way to protect
soldiers.

Two former Tiger Force soldiers - including a onetime murder suspect -
said in recent interviews they were encouraged by investigators not to
say anything - clear violations of military law.

Dan Clint, who was not a war-crime suspect, told The Blade he was
contacted for a second interview during the investigation by agent
Robert DeMario.

"He said, ???Hey, just do me a favor. Say that you don???t remember
anything, so I can get the thing over with,???" Mr. Clint said.

And he obliged the agent. During his interview with Mr. DeMario on
Jan. 17, 1974, Mr. Clint said he didn???t see any war crimes.

But that wasn???t true.

In a recent interview with The Blade, he said a Tiger Force sergeant
raped a villager, and soldiers shot civilians and prisoners who posed
no threat. "The killings were unrestrained," he said.

Mr. DeMario died in September, 1984.

The other former platoon soldier who said he was told not to report
any war crimes was William Doyle. The former sergeant and murder
suspect in the investigation said he took the agent???s advice.

Records show he was interviewed on Feb. 17, 1975, in St. Petersburg,
Fla., and answered "no comment" to the question of whether he knew
about crimes by Tiger Force soldiers.

But in a recent interview, he said he not only witnessed the killing
of unarmed villagers but committed them.

"If you wanted to pull the trigger, you pulled the trigger. If you
wanted to burn a village down, you burned it down. You do whatever you
wanted to do. Who???s going to say anything to you?"

He refused to give the name of the investigator who told him to stay
quiet. "He tipped me off to what was going on, what they were after,
and what they were trying to do,?????? said Mr. Doyle, now 70 and
living in Missouri.

Final report cast doubt on key cases
Despite problems in the investigation, Army agents substantiated 20
war crimes, including murders.

That means there was enough evidence to show probable cause in those
cases - critical to prosecution.

But investigators gave a different version of events to commanders.

In the 1975 final report for possible prosecution, lead investigator
Gustav Apsey presented incomplete or inaccurate information about the
crimes - casting doubt on key cases.

For example, no one disputed that Tiger Force soldiers fired on 10
elderly farmers in the Song Ve Valley in July, 1967.

The only debate among the four soldiers who talked to investigators
was how many farmers were struck by bullets.

But in the report, Mr. Apsey inexplicably said he couldn???t prove the
atrocity took place.

Missing from his report were the sworn statements of four soldiers who
were eyewitnesses to the event.

Spec. William Carpenter: "We killed about 10 of the farmers, then
stopped firing."

Sgt. Forrest Miller: "We had received no incoming fire from the
village and the people in the field, about 10 persons both male and
females, were shot."

The statements of the other two were basically the same: The farmers
were shot without warning.

In another major flaw in the case, Mr. Apsey concluded that
unidentified soldiers were involved in the attack. But that was
incorrect: Lt. James Hawkins was identified by two soldiers as leading
the assault.

In fact, one said the lieutenant gave the order to fire on the
farmers.

In a recent interview with The Blade, Mr. Hawkins admitted he ordered
the shootings.

He claimed the farmers should have been in a relocation camp and not a
farm field.

"Anything in [that area] was game. If it was living, it was subject to
be eliminated."

Other cases in the final report contained inaccurate information.

Investigators interviewed four soldiers who witnessed the slaughter of
women and children in three underground bunkers near Chu Lai, but the
final report provided misleading information.

In that report, Mr. Apsey wrote that he didn???t know whether those
people killed were combatants.

But every soldier who witnessed the event told investigators the
people hiding in the bunkers included women and children, and no one
was carrying weapons.

One witness, former platoon Pvt. Ken Kerney, said in a sworn statement
there "were no signs the people killed were linked to the enemy."

He said he watched as the children ran into the bunkers but never
brought an interpreter to the entrances to order them out.

In Army records of the incident - not mentioned in the final report -
Private Kerney told investigators that Tiger Force was ordered to go
to the village.

As platoon members arrived, "all the people ran into the bunkers. No
interpreter was available to talk to the people. But Tiger Force knew
what to do."

They hurled grenades in the openings.

A search later of the bunkers "failed to show any sign of Viet Cong"
activities or other links with the enemy.

Two other war-crime allegations substantiated by Army investigators
were never mentioned in the final report: a shooting attack on several
unarmed villagers near Chu Lai, and the killing of two partially blind
men in the Song Ve Valley.

In a recent interview, Mr. Apsey said he couldn???t explain why the
report contained inaccurate information.

"When I think about it now, it bothers me. I screwed up. I don???t
know what else to say," he said. The killing of women and children in
the bunkers was "a war crime. There???s no doubt about it. I don???t
know why I wrote what I did."

He said he didn???t try to compromise the investigation. "I would
never have done that," he said.

He said prosecutors would have had difficulty pressing charges in most
of the war crimes because too much time had lapsed and the statute of
limitations had expired in some cases.

But records show that witnesses were still available to testify in
1975, and in murder cases, there is no statute of limitations.

'Political timing' cited in breakdown of probe
Though the final report contained inaccuracies, Mr. Apsey presented
three murder cases to commanders for possible prosecution - one naming
Tiger Force commander James Hawkins.

But even then, no charges were filed.

Not even an Article 32 hearing - the equivalent of a military grand
jury - was held, the first step toward a court marital.

In the final report, Mr. Apsey wrote:



Platoon leader Lt. James Hawkins "murdered an unarmed elderly
Vietnamese man by shooting him in the head."


Team leader Sgt. Harold Trout "murdered an unarmed wounded Vietnamese
male by shooting him several times with a caliber .45 pistol."


Former platoon Pvt. James Cogan "executed an old unarmed Vietnamese
male by shooting him twice in the head with a caliber .45."

Mr. Cogan was discharged from the military by the time the final
report was filed in 1975, and like so many other suspects, he was
outside the jurisdiction of a military court.

Under military rules, it???s up to commanding generals of each soldier
to decide whether to prosecute.

Army spokesman Joe Burlas said that???s what happened in this case.
Commanders chose not to press charges based on the evidence.

But Mr. Hawkins said that???s not what happened to him.

He said his case was decided by powers far beyond his commander, Maj.
Gen. William Maddox.

In a recent interview, Mr. Hawkins said he was summoned to the
Pentagon in November, 1975 - five months after the final report was
completed. By his side was General Maddox.

He said they were presented a legal "brief" that stated the case was
closed. He doesn???t remember who showed him the document but said he
recalled the contents.

"What they said was, ???Yep, there???s wrongdoing there, and we know
about it. But basically it???s not ... in the best interest of this,
that, and the other to try to pursue this.??? It seemed like that was
the conclusion of the thing," he said.

He said the Tiger Force investigation was "a big deal, but it was kept
awful quiet. This was a hot potato. See, this was after [My Lai], and
the Army certainly didn???t want to go through the publicity thing."

General Maddox died in 2001.

Former Sergeant Trout refused to comment on his case.

Regardless of who decided not to press charges, Mr. Burlas said the
murder cases would have been difficult to prosecute for several
reasons, including a lack of access to crime scenes and physical
evidence.

But for several years leading to the final report, investigators could
have traveled to the crime scenes in South Vietnam and interviewed
witnesses.

In addition, physical evidence, such as a corpse or weapon, is not
essential in these types of cases, according to military legal
experts.

The lead investigator, Mr. Apsey, now retired and living in Washington
state, said he doesn???t know why commanders never filed charges
against Mr. Trout and Mr. Hawkins.

He said part of the reason may have been because the final report was
filed two years after the peace treaty was signed between the United
States and North Vietnam. The report was also completed two months
after the collapse of South Vietnam.

"I knew this damn thing wasn???t going to go anywhere," he said. "The
point is, the political timing was wrong."

Mr. Apsey said throughout his investigation his superiors were
concerned about the media discovering the Tiger Force case.

"Let me tell you this: At the time, it was considered a class-one
urgency," said Mr. Apsey, who added that field agents were required to
interview witnesses within 24 hours of being notified.

The four experts who reviewed the final report for The Blade said the
Army may have been able to successfully press charges in some
allegations that were substantiated, but others would have been
difficult.

William Eckhardt, the lead prosecutor in the My Lai case, said the
Army may have been reluctant to bring such a case to court because of
the publicity.

"Maybe their thinking was they didn???t want any more My Lais," he
said, adding that even that case was a challenge to prosecute because
of reluctance of soldiers to testify.

"If you look at the incredible struggle that the government went
through with My Lai, the fact that some of this wasn???t pursued
doesn???t surprise me.??????

But it didn???t stop the Army from pressing charges in other
atrocities.

Of the Army???s 242 war-crimes investigations in Vietnam, a third were
substantiated, leading to 21 convictions of charges ranging from
beating prisoners to murdering civilians, according to a review of
records at the National Archives.

Ten soldiers received prison terms ranging from 30 days to 20 years,
though many sentences were later reduced.

But in the case of Tiger Force, there was no punishment. In fact,
three suspects were later promoted.

Captain James, who was accused of failing to report a war crime,
became a major. Mr. Trout left the Army in 1985 as a sergeant major.

Mr. Hawkins was promoted to major and went on to serve as a civilian
flight instructor at Fort Rucker, Ala., after retiring in 1978.
White House kept tabs on investigation
Much is still unknown about the Tiger Force investigation.

Dozens of case records are missing from the National Archives, and the
Army refuses to release its own reports, citing privacy rights of the
former soldiers.

What is known is that summaries of the investigation were sent to the
White House between 1971 and 1973, records show.

While President Nixon was in office, his chief counsel, John Dean,
ordered the Army in May, 1971, to file weekly updates on the status of
war-crime investigations - 10 cases including Tiger Force. By 1973,
the reports were sent monthly.

A memo on March 2, 1973, gives a description of the case, with five
suspects and other "unidentified members of Tiger Force" under
investigation for crimes ranging from murder to body mutilation.

The same document was routed to the secretary of defense???s office
from the secretary of the Army???s office.

But in June, 1973 - five months after the U.S. pullout - the Army
stopped sending updates of cases to the White House.

A memo from Maj. Gen. DeWitt Smith to other Army officials noted the
"news media and public interest in the subject have waned with the
U.S. disengagement in Vietnam."

He went on to state the regular sending of reports "unnecessarily
continues to highlight the problem monthly."

Mr. Dean, who left the White House in April, 1973, said in a recent
interview he didn???t recall the Tiger Force case but was not
surprised the investigation was dropped. "The government doesn???t
like ugly stories," he said.

Former Secretary of the Army Howard "Bo" Callaway also said he did not
recall the case but said he would have taken the allegations "very
seriously."

"I guarantee you there???d be no sweeping under the rug."

With the Tiger Force investigation still in progress, Gerald Ford took
over the presidency after the resignation of Richard Nixon in August,
1974.

Within five months, there was only one ongoing war-crime case: Tiger
Force.

At the time, President Ford was urging the American public to "heal
the wounds of Vietnam."

In April, 1975, North Vietnam captured Saigon, reuniting the country.
By November, the Tiger Force case was closed.

A spokesman for former President Ford said he declined to comment on
atrocities in the Vietnam War.

Dr. David Anderson, a Vietnam veteran who edited the book, Facing My
Lai, said a new political era had begun by 1975, with economic issues
overshadowing the war. "No one wanted to hear about war crimes then,"
he said. "It would have been embarrassing."

Blade Staff Writer Joe Mahr contributed to this report.

NEXT STORY:

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs...ORCE/110200132

Article published October 20, 2003
Hearsay account triggered the probe

By MICHAEL D. SALLAH and MITCH WEISS
BLADE STAFF WRITERS
?? THE BLADE, 2003


After 41/2 years of investigating Tiger Force, the only soldier
disciplined in the case was the one who brought it to the Army???s
attention.

To Sgt. Gary Coy, it was an ironic end to an investigation that began
when he first talked to Army officials on Feb. 3, 1971.

By the time the investigation ended in 1975, a letter of reprimand was
in his file.

The reason: He told investigators he saw a Tiger Force soldier
decapitate a baby during a sweep of a village in November, 1967.

He later admitted he didn???t actually see the atrocity - but only
heard about it.

Still, his story to investigators about the infant???s death led to an
investigation that would be known as the "Coy Allegation" - or the
Tiger Force case.

It was in 1971 when Army agents first visited Sergeant Coy at Fort
Campbell, Ky., to interview him about an unrelated war-crime
investigation.

Agents wanted to know about accusations against the 101st Airborne in
Vietnam, but Sergeant Coy told them about a smaller unit within the
airborne division, Tiger Force.

He said a soldier whose first name was Sam severed a baby???s head
inside a hut. Investigators later identified the suspect as Sam
Ybarra.

Mr. Coy told investigators he lied about witnessing the atrocity
because he thought they would take the case more seriously, according
to an Army investigator???s report. He said he knew they would find
other soldiers who saw the killing.

He went on to tell agents that he and a fellow soldier promised each
other that whoever survived the war would bring the incident to the
Army???s attention. The other soldier, John Aherne, died in battle the
next year.

Investigators later interviewed several witnesses who said Private
Ybarra bragged about severing the baby???s head to get the infant???s
necklace.

One former soldier, Harold Fischer, told The Blade in a recent
interview that he witnessed Ybarra leaving the hut with a bloody
necklace on his wrist and looked inside to find the decapitated baby.

Mr. Coy, 56, who now lives in Missouri, said he didn???t feel he was
treated fairly by Army investigators.

"All the hassle I went through, with the war being over ... it
wasn???t worth it."

NEXT STORY:
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs...ORCE/110200131

Article published October 20, 2003
2 officers clashed over the treatment of noncombatants
1 tried to halt war crimes; the other admitted killing civilians

By MICHAEL D. SALLAH and JOE MAHR
BLADE STAFF WRITERS
?? THE BLADE, 2003


The two elderly Vietnamese women were walking toward the soldiers when
Tiger Force platoon Lt. James Hawkins ordered his men to shoot.

Quickly, another lieutenant, Donald Wood, told the men not to fire.

But the soldiers obeyed the senior ranking officer, spraying bullets
at the two who were walking to their home.

It was another clash between Tiger Force???s top lieutenants.

They fought over battle strategy. They fought over troop maneuvers.
They even fought over enemy strength estimates.

But their loudest disputes were over the treatment of Vietnamese
civilians, according to Army records and interviews.

Lieutenant Wood argued that villagers were not the same as enemy
soldiers, while his counterpart believed civilians were not to be
trusted, and those refusing to leave designated areas could be shot.

More than three decades later, their battles are still remembered by
the former soldiers who served with them between May and August, 1967,
as Tiger Force was moving deeper into the Central Highlands.

"They were like night and day - always fighting," former Spec. William
Carpenter said recently.

To Mr. Carpenter, Lieutenant Wood was a soldier who "cared about
people" but in the end, didn???t have the power to stop the violence.

Twice, the lanky artillery observer from Findlay attempted to halt
attacks on villagers in 1967, complaining to another officer and an
executive officer of another battalion, he told Army investigators.

He even complained to an inspector general about the platoon, he said.
But in each case, no action was taken.

In frustration, he transferred from the unit in August, 1967, as the
platoon went on to kill scores of villagers over the next three
months, records show.

The first altercation between the two men led to the shooting death of
an elderly carpenter in the Song Ve Valley that???s still remembered
by villagers and soldiers.

After weeks of evacuating the valley, platoon members set up camp near
an abandoned hamlet along the Song Ve River. A helicopter dropped a
special supply of hot food and beer.

For most of the afternoon, Lieutenant Hawkins - a tall, burly career
soldier who was known for arguing with senior officers - was drinking
with his men, and by evening, they were drunk, five other soldiers
swore in statements.

By nightfall, the platoon leader ordered his men to set up an ambush
across the river.

That???s when Lieutenant Wood tried to stop the order, arguing the
soldiers had been drinking and were in no condition to meet the enemy.

But Lieutenant Hawkins ignored him.

Shortly after wading across the river, the troops encountered the
unarmed elderly man who prayed for his life as he was shot and killed
by Lieutenant Hawkins, soldiers told investigators. The man was later
identified by villagers as Dao Hue, a carpenter who was born in the
valley.

Mr. Hawkins said in a recent interview he was justified in shooting
the man, saying he was "making a lot of noise" that could have given
the platoon???s position away.

Two other soldiers who witnessed the killing later told investigators
there were other ways to quiet the man and that shooting him ended up
alerting the enemy to their position.

Two weeks later, another confrontation took place between the men that
led to Lieutenant Wood leaving the unit.

Shortly after the officers arrived on the outskirts of a hamlet, a
Tiger Force soldier spotted two women approaching the village.

Immediately, Lieutenant Hawkins gave the order to open fire, records
state.

Lieutenant Wood protested the order, saying the people were simply
walking toward the soldiers. It didn???t matter: The platoon leader
and others fired their weapons, wounding one.

The two turned out to be unarmed, elderly Vietnamese women who were
later carried away in a helicopter, reports state.

During the Army???s investigation of Tiger Force six years later, Mr.
Wood said he protested to the executive officer of his artillery
battalion about the way Lieutenant Hawkins was treating civilians. But
he said the officer told him to return to the platoon.

He also complained to Lt. Stephen Naughton, a former Tiger Force
platoon leader who had been promoted.

Lieutenant Naughton, who was interviewed by Army investigators in
1974, said he received the complaint and passed it on to a colonel in
the inspector general???s office at Fort Bragg, N.C.

He described the call: "He told me to forget about it, that I would
just be stirring things up, and hung up on me," the lieutenant told
investigators.

To make sure the Army took action, Lieutenant Wood said he filed a
formal statement with the same office in 1968.

But six years later, Army investigators said they couldn???t find any
records of the two officers??? complaints nor could they track down
the identities of the commanders who received them.

By the time the Army investigation was under way, Lieutenants Wood and
Hawkins had left Vietnam.

While Mr. Wood was never a suspect, records show Mr. Hawkins was under
investigation for murder, dereliction of duty, and conduct unbecoming
an officer.

In addition to the attacks on civilians described by Lieutenant Wood,
Army investigators turned up other atrocities involving Lieutenant
Hawkins, including a shooting assault on 10 farmers in the Song Ve
Valley, leaving four dead.

Despite the results of the investigation, no charges were filed.

In the years to follow, the two officers from Tiger Force would pursue
vastly different careers.

Mr. Wood, the son of a Whirlpool engineer, became a defense lawyer in
Findlay, known for driving sports cars and jumping from airplanes at
community events. Married with two children, he died of a brain
aneurysm in 1983 at 36.

His wife, Joyce, said he rarely talked about Vietnam, but often woke
up at night "with the sweats."

"He would have these dreams. I know he was very disturbed by his years
in Vietnam," she said.

Her husband refused to talk to her about the atrocities, but his son,
John, now 32, said his father "went to his grave bothered by what he
witnessed."

One of Mr. Wood???s friends, Dr. Henry Benz, said the former
lieutenant often talked to him about the people of Vietnam and how Mr.
Wood tried to take the time to "really understand the people in
Vietnam. He clearly took an interest."

Mr. Hawkins recalled his differences with Mr. Wood but said he still
believes he had a right to fire on unarmed civilians.

"I tell you what, in any war, civilians, innocent people, get killed.
Yes I can say I have seen people, farmers, whatever, getting killed,"
said Mr. Hawkins, who retired from the military in 1978 as a major.

As a civilian, he was rehired at Fort Rucker, Ala., as an aviation
instructor to begin a second Army career, retiring in May, 2001.

He said he doesn???t dwell on the past and believes everything he did
was justified. "I don???t regret nothing. There???s nothing that I
know of that I saw personally that I can say I regretted."

NEXT STORY:

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs...ORCE/110200130

Article published October 20, 2003
Vietnamese teen saved by sergeant
Michigan man turned gun on soldiers to avert shooting

By MICHAEL D. SALLAH and MITCH WEISS
BLADE STAFF WRITERS
?? THE BLADE, 2003


After watching Tiger Force soldiers execute an unarmed villager, Sgt.
Gerald Bruner did the unthinkable.

He raised his rifle with his own threat: He would kill anyone who
tried to shoot any more civilians.

The soldiers backed down.

For his efforts, he was berated by a commander for turning on other
soldiers - and told to see a psychiatrist.

But his actions in the village near Chu Lai in August, 1967, was the
only known time a platoon member threatened to shoot one of his own to
stop the brutality, Army records show.

He complained to superiors about the attack on the farmer, but nothing
happened.

Seven years later, he complained to Army investigators looking into
Tiger Force atrocities. Again, nothing happened.

In the end, the sergeant was unable to bring justice to a case that
troubled him to his grave, said family members.

When he died of cancer in 1997, he was still bothered by the two
months he spent with the platoon.

"He used to tell me that he hoped justice would come of the
investigation," said his younger brother, Michael Stuckey. "He was
disillusioned with what he called the zealot characters in Tiger
Force. He said they often went beyond the gray area. They took their
aggressions out on villagers."

Two weeks after the shooting in the village, Sergeant Bruner asked to
be transferred from the platoon after watching two lieutenants scare a
farmer by shooting at his feet and killing his cattle, records state.
He served two more tours in Vietnam, including a stint as a sniper.

But his memories of the execution in the hamlet 36 years ago remained
a powerful image for him, relatives said.

"Every time he brought up Vietnam, he would bring up the village, and
what happened," said his widow, Karen Bruner of Colon, Mich.

The confrontation began after the platoon entered a clearing with a
cluster of huts on the edge of the Annamese Mountains, records state.

The soldiers were greeted by smiling adults and children emerging from
a hut, three soldiers told Army investigators.

The villagers were holding leaflets dropped days earlier by the Army
allowing them to be evacuated from the area.

"They were happy as hell to see us," Sergeant Bruner told
investigators.

But what followed was a fatal shooting that was recalled by several
witnesses during the Army???s investigation.

Soldiers said Sgt. William Doyle, a team leader, began asking the
farmer if he had seen Viet Cong in the village.

The farmer said he would show the soldiers where the Viet Cong
guerrillas were hiding, but he wanted them to escort his family to a
relocation center for safety, the soldiers said.

Sergeant Doyle insisted the man tell the soldiers immediately where
the enemy was located, striking the farmer in the head with a rifle.
Again and again, the man pleaded for his family???s protection.

Without warning, the platoon leader raised his M-16 and shot the man
through his forearm.

Medic Ralph Mayhew recalled the next scene.

"The Vietnamese fell to his knees and spoke tearfully in his language.
I didn???t like the sight of it, so I turned away and walked away from
the area."

Sergeant Doyle then ordered his men to shoot the farmer.

Moments later, the farmer???s 16-year-old brother was brought to the
platoon leader and was tossed to the ground next to his dead brother.

One of the soldiers pointed a 45-caliber handgun at the teenager???s
head, until Sergeant Bruner intervened. The boy and the rest of his
family were whisked away without injury the following day.

In an interview with an investigator in February, 1974, Sergeant
Bruner said he detailed the atrocity to Capt. Carl James, a battalion
officer.

The captain later told investigators he recalled a conversation with
Sergeant Bruner about the case, according to an Army investigator???s
account of the interview, but the captain refused to sign a statement.

Sergeant Bruner said he was told by an unidentified company commander
"that this particular incident was being taken care of, and not to
worry about it, and just to forget it ... not to talk to anyone about
it."

He said the commander began yelling at him about the incident,
suggesting the sergeant see a psychiatrist because of his threat to
shoot fellow soldiers.

In an interview with The Blade, Mr. Doyle said the events described by
witnesses "are all true."

Mr. Doyle said he tried to kill the farmer, but his gun jammed, so he
ordered his men to carry out the execution. "I wanted to summarily
execute him, but my gun only fired one round and it hit him in the
arm.??????

He said he was aware that Mr. Bruner had objected to the killing, and
was critical of the former sergeant.

"Everyplace he went, he was the only one carrying goddamn Chu Hoi
leaflets," he said, referring to the Army leaflets dropped in villages
by helicopters that guaranteed the safety of civilians if they moved
to relocation camps.

"It was like he was on a civilian-affairs program. And that wasn???t
our deal. We were out there to hunt and kill."

The angry exchange in the village was the last between the two men.
Mr. Bruner was injured a month later after stepping on a booby trap
and immediately transferred from the platoon.

He was honorably discharged from the Army in November, 1975.

He moved with his wife and daughter to Michigan, where he worked for
the U.S. Veterans Administration in several capacities, including
assisting veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Family members say he was pained by his memories of Vietnam, often
drinking to forget.

Before he died at age 59, Mr. Bruner recorded a tape about his tours
in Vietnam for a Pearl Harbor commemoration in 1988, recalling the
shooting of the farmer.

In the tape, he condemned the killing.

"To me, this is what you call murder - they flat out murdered the
guy."

NEXT STORY:

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs...ORCE/110190170

Article published October 19, 2003
Primary figures

ZOOM 1


Sgt. James Barnett - The Tennessee native told Army investigators that
the unit committed widespread war crimes. He admitted executing an
unarmed woman on the orders of another sergeant. He resigned as a
lieutenant from the Army during the investigation. He became a boiler
operator before dying of cancer in Alabama in 2001 at age 56.
Spec. Barry Bowman - A platoon medic, he said he became so upset after
seeing a prisoner beaten and killed that he spoke to a battalion
chaplain about it. But he admitted to killing a wounded prisoner
himself, calling it a "mercy killing." He left the Army in 1969 and
rejoined from 1980 to 1986. Now 59 and living in Rhode Island, he said
he struggles with memories of the war.


ZOOM 1


Spec. William Carpenter - The eastern Ohio native joined Tiger Force
in January, 1967, at 18 and served until December. He recounted war
crimes during the Army investigation. Now 55, he lives near Rayland,
Ohio.

ZOOM 1


Pvt. Rion Causey - As a 19-year-old unit medic he witnessed the
executions of unarmed Vietnamese of all ages and genders, counting 120
civilians killed in just one month of 1967. Now 55, he is a senior
research scientist in Livermore, Calif.


Sgt. William Doyle - He joined Tiger Force in June, 1967, and admitted
in a recent interview that he killed unarmed civilians, prisoners, and
interpreters assigned to the unit. He said he left the Army in 1971 to
join the CIA's Air America, which helped fight communists in
neighboring Laos. He said he was tipped off by an Army investigator to
keep quiet about the war crimes. Now 70, he lives in Missouri.

ZOOM 1


Spec. Kenneth "Boots" Green - Pvt. Sam Ybarra's best friend in high
school, he joined the Army with Private Ybarra and was accused of
helping his friend commit several war crimes. He was called ???Boots'
because he never removed his boots when he was in the field. A North
Vietnamese sniper killed Specialist Green on Sept. 29, 1967.

ZOOM 1


Lt. James Hawkins - While commanding the platoon from July 2 to Nov.
1, the Kentucky native shot an unarmed, elderly man and ordered the
shooting of civilians and prisoners, former soldiers told Army
investigators in sworn statements. He told The Blade the killings were
justified. He was not charged by the Army and was promoted to major
before retiring in 1978. He worked as a civilian Army employee before
retiring again in 2001. Now 62, he lives in Florida.

ZOOM 1


Pvt. Ken Kerney - The Illinois native joined the platoon in May, 1967,
as a rifleman. He said in a recent interview he witnessed, but didn't
take part in, the wide-spread killing of civilians. When he returned
home from Vietnam, he burned his uniform. But he later joined the Army
National Guard and served in the 1991 Gulf War. Now 56, he is a
firefighter in California.


ZOOM 1


Lt. Col. Gerald Morse - At age 38 the Korean War veteran took over the
1st Battalion/327th Infantry. He immediately instituted a more
aggressive style for Tiger Force and the three companies he oversaw.
Many atrocities occurred while he was commander. Several soldiers told
investigators he pushed the unit to kill as many people as possible to
pad "body count" statistics, which he has denied. He retired in 1979
as a colonel. Now 74 and a champion racquetball player, he lives in
Arizona.

Sgt. Harold Trout - At 30, the sergeant was second-in-command of Tiger
Force and considered a combat veteran. Former soldiers say he ordered
the execution of a young mother, ordered the execution of a prisoner,
and himself executed a wounded detainee. He retired from the military
in 1985. Now 66, he lives in Tennessee.

Pvt. Sam Ybarra - By age 18, the high school dropout was arrested for
underage drinking and carrying a concealed weapon. He was released
from jail on the day he was inducted into the Army. Soldiers recall
him as the most prolific killer in the platoon. Dishonorably
discharged in 1969 for actions unconnected to Tiger Force, he returned
to his Arizona reservation, where he struggled with alcoholism and
drug abuse. He died in 1982 of pneumonia at 36.


NEXT STORY:

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs...ORCE/110200131

Article published October 20, 2003
2 officers clashed over the treatment of noncombatants
1 tried to halt war crimes; the other admitted killing civilians

By MICHAEL D. SALLAH and JOE MAHR
BLADE STAFF WRITERS
?? THE BLADE, 2003


The two elderly Vietnamese women were walking toward the soldiers when
Tiger Force platoon Lt. James Hawkins ordered his men to shoot.

Quickly, another lieutenant, Donald Wood, told the men not to fire.

But the soldiers obeyed the senior ranking officer, spraying bullets
at the two who were walking to their home.

It was another clash between Tiger Force???s top lieutenants.

They fought over battle strategy. They fought over troop maneuvers.
They even fought over enemy strength estimates.

But their loudest disputes were over the treatment of Vietnamese
civilians, according to Army records and interviews.

Lieutenant Wood argued that villagers were not the same as enemy
soldiers, while his counterpart believed civilians were not to be
trusted, and those refusing to leave designated areas could be shot.

More than three decades later, their battles are still remembered by
the former soldiers who served with them between May and August, 1967,
as Tiger Force was moving deeper into the Central Highlands.

"They were like night and day - always fighting," former Spec. William
Carpenter said recently.

To Mr. Carpenter, Lieutenant Wood was a soldier who "cared about
people" but in the end, didn???t have the power to stop the violence.

Twice, the lanky artillery observer from Findlay attempted to halt
attacks on villagers in 1967, complaining to another officer and an
executive officer of another battalion, he told Army investigators.

He even complained to an inspector general about the platoon, he said.
But in each case, no action was taken.

In frustration, he transferred from the unit in August, 1967, as the
platoon went on to kill scores of villagers over the next three
months, records show.

The first altercation between the two men led to the shooting death of
an elderly carpenter in the Song Ve Valley that???s still remembered
by villagers and soldiers.

After weeks of evacuating the valley, platoon members set up camp near
an abandoned hamlet along the Song Ve River. A helicopter dropped a
special supply of hot food and beer.

For most of the afternoon, Lieutenant Hawkins - a tall, burly career
soldier who was known for arguing with senior officers - was drinking
with his men, and by evening, they were drunk, five other soldiers
swore in statements.

By nightfall, the platoon leader ordered his men to set up an ambush
across the river.

That???s when Lieutenant Wood tried to stop the order, arguing the
soldiers had been drinking and were in no condition to meet the enemy.

But Lieutenant Hawkins ignored him.

Shortly after wading across the river, the troops encountered the
unarmed elderly man who prayed for his life as he was shot and killed
by Lieutenant Hawkins, soldiers told investigators. The man was later
identified by villagers as Dao Hue, a carpenter who was born in the
valley.

Mr. Hawkins said in a recent interview he was justified in shooting
the man, saying he was "making a lot of noise" that could have given
the platoon???s position away.

Two other soldiers who witnessed the killing later told investigators
there were other ways to quiet the man and that shooting him ended up
alerting the enemy to their position.

Two weeks later, another confrontation took place between the men that
led to Lieutenant Wood leaving the unit.

Shortly after the officers arrived on the outskirts of a hamlet, a
Tiger Force soldier spotted two women approaching the village.

Immediately, Lieutenant Hawkins gave the order to open fire, records
state.

Lieutenant Wood protested the order, saying the people were simply
walking toward the soldiers. It didn???t matter: The platoon leader
and others fired their weapons, wounding one.

The two turned out to be unarmed, elderly Vietnamese women who were
later carried away in a helicopter, reports state.

During the Army???s investigation of Tiger Force six years later, Mr.
Wood said he protested to the executive officer of his artillery
battalion about the way Lieutenant Hawkins was treating civilians. But
he said the officer told him to return to the platoon.

He also complained to Lt. Stephen Naughton, a former Tiger Force
platoon leader who had been promoted.

Lieutenant Naughton, who was interviewed by Army investigators in
1974, said he received the complaint and passed it on to a colonel in
the inspector general???s office at Fort Bragg, N.C.

He described the call: "He told me to forget about it, that I would
just be stirring things up, and hung up on me," the lieutenant told
investigators.

To make sure the Army took action, Lieutenant Wood said he filed a
formal statement with the same office in 1968.

But six years later, Army investigators said they couldn???t find any
records of the two officers??? complaints nor could they track down
the identities of the commanders who received them.

By the time the Army investigation was under way, Lieutenants Wood and
Hawkins had left Vietnam.

While Mr. Wood was never a suspect, records show Mr. Hawkins was under
investigation for murder, dereliction of duty, and conduct unbecoming
an officer.

In addition to the attacks on civilians described by Lieutenant Wood,
Army investigators turned up other atrocities involving Lieutenant
Hawkins, including a shooting assault on 10 farmers in the Song Ve
Valley, leaving four dead.

Despite the results of the investigation, no charges were filed.

In the years to follow, the two officers from Tiger Force would pursue
vastly different careers.

Mr. Wood, the son of a Whirlpool engineer, became a defense lawyer in
Findlay, known for driving sports cars and jumping from airplanes at
community events. Married with two children, he died of a brain
aneurysm in 1983 at 36.

His wife, Joyce, said he rarely talked about Vietnam, but often woke
up at night "with the sweats."

"He would have these dreams. I know he was very disturbed by his years
in Vietnam," she said.

Her husband refused to talk to her about the atrocities, but his son,
John, now 32, said his father "went to his grave bothered by what he
witnessed."

One of Mr. Wood???s friends, Dr. Henry Benz, said the former
lieutenant often talked to him about the people of Vietnam and how Mr.
Wood tried to take the time to "really understand the people in
Vietnam. He clearly took an interest."

Mr. Hawkins recalled his differences with Mr. Wood but said he still
believes he had a right to fire on unarmed civilians.

"I tell you what, in any war, civilians, innocent people, get killed.
Yes I can say I have seen people, farmers, whatever, getting killed,"
said Mr. Hawkins, who retired from the military in 1978 as a major.

As a civilian, he was rehired at Fort Rucker, Ala., as an aviation
instructor to begin a second Army career, retiring in May, 2001.

He said he doesn???t dwell on the past and believes everything he did
was justified. "I don???t regret nothing. There???s nothing that I
know of that I saw personally that I can say I regretted."

Get a dam life asshole. What the hell is the Libertyflame -- another
communist front operated out of the back of some gin mill.

-----------
"LIBERTY FLAME / LUA TU DO" wrote in message
news:7758c273.0310201431.309c8946@posting.google.c om...
> Folowing recent articles by the Toledo Blade were forwarded to me by a
> Vietnam vet.
>
> Besides the infamous My Lai masscare, it was suspected, and now
> reported, that many other war crimes were committed by degenerate
> individuals and units belonging to the US Army, the Army of South
> Vietnam and South Korea.
>
> These barbaric acts against the lives and dignity of the people of
> Vietnam, and subsequent cover ups by their commanding offciers,
> undermined the just cause of the people of South Vietnam and
> ultimately gave victory to North Vietnamese Communist.
>
> While it is well known that the Vietnamese Communist also committed
> many acts of war crimes and terrorism against the people of Vietnam,
> the US should take the leadership in accounting for all war crimes
> committed by both sides. Only when all persons and units guilty of war
> crimes properly punished by the laws, can we hope for true peace and
> cooperation between the peoples of Vietnam and America, and effective
> deterrence to future abuses.
>
> We appeal to all conscientious Americans and Vietanmese to to pursue
> full and thorough investigations of all suspected cases of war crimes,
> committed either by Americans, Vietnamese or Koreans, to bring all
> guilty parties to justice, and to bring proper conpensation to the
> surviving family members.
>
> Respectfully,
>
> Tam D. Doan
> The Liberty Flame Foundation
>
> ****************************
>
>
http://www.vnagency.com.vn/NewsA.asp...=34&NEWS_ID=27
905
>
> Investigations into massacres of unarmed Vietnamese civilians by US
> Army unit
> (10/20/2003 -- 18:00GMT+7)
>
> Washington, Oct. 20 (VNA) - An American newspaper, "The Toledo Blade",
> on Sunday published a series of articles and photos, investigating
> massacres of Vietnamese civilians conducted by US soldiers in an elite
> US Army unit of the 101st Airborne Division, known as Tiger Force, in
> Quang Ngai province and the Central Highlands during Viet Nam's
> resistance war.
>
> "The Toledo Blade" correspondents carried out independent
> investigations over the last eight months. They interviewed many
> Vietnamese witnesses in the Song Ve Valley and many former Tiger Force
> soldiers. They also reviewed thousands of classified Army documents,
> National Archives records, and radio logs.
>
> From these, the newspaper came to the following conclusions: former
> Tiger Force soldiers killed hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians
> between May and November 1967. Women and children were intentionally
> blown up in underground bunkers, unarmed elderly farmers were shot as
> they toiled in the fields, prisoners were tortured and executed their
> ears and scalps severed for souvenirs. One soldier kicked out the
> teeth of executed civilians for their gold fillings.
>
> One medic said he counted 120 unarmed villagers killed in one month,
> "The Toledo Blade" reported.
>
> According to "The Toledo Blade", one battalion officer, Bradford
> Mutchler, told investigators in 1975 that commanders were aware of
> rumours of Tiger Force war crimes in 1967 but did not investigate in
> fear of what might be uncovered.
>
> The Army investigated 30 war-crime allegations against Tiger Force
> between February 1971, and June 1975, finding that a total of 18
> soldiers committed crimes, including murder and assault. But no one
> was ever charged.
>
> The findings of the investigation were sent to the offices of the
> secretary of the Army and the secretary of defense, records show, but
> no action was taken. Top White House officials, including John Dean,
> former chief counsel to President Richard Nixon, were repeatedly sent
> reports on the progress of the investigation.
>
> The next investigative articles will be published by "The Toledo
> Blade" between Oct. 20 and Oct. 21.-Enditem
>
> NEXT STORY:
>
> http://www.lib.washington.edu/southe...Massacres.html
>
>
> Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 04:37:19 -0400
>
> From: Stephen Morris
>
> Reply-To: vsg@u...
>
> To: Vietnam Studies Group
>
> Subject: Sources on Vietnam war Massacres
>
>
>
> ** Reply Requested When Convenient **
>
>
>
> I find it interesting and illustrative of the state of their
> profession that, in response to a request for sources on massacres
> committed during the Vietnam war, both of the American ethnic academic
> historians who have commented so far should raise the issue of My Lai
> (which resulted in the slaughter of hundreds), and several other
> smaller atrocities or alleged atrocities by Allied forces. But neither
> of these academics has mentioned the well known atrocities against
> thousands of Vietnamese civilians committed by the NVA/VC.
>
>
>
> The largest single event atrocities committed during the Vietnam war
> inside Vietnam were either the Hue massacre of 1968, carried out by
> the NVA/VC, the NVA shelling and machine gunning of civilians escaping
> from Quang Tri during the NVA Easter Offensive of 1972, or the NVA
> shelling of thousands of civilians in the columns of soldiers and
> mostly civilians fleeing the highlands in 1975.
>
>
>
> The answer as to which was the largest should be known to serious
> sholars of the Vietnam war. Unfortunately the topic of communist
> atrocities seems to be not of much interest to most of the Vietnam
> specialists active on this list.
>
>
>
> I am not sure who all the commanders responsible for the 1972 and 1975
> massacres were. But I do know that two of those responsible for Hue
> 1968, then Defense Minister General Vo Nguyen Giap, and then regional
> commander Tran Van Quang were, last time I checked, still alive in
> Hanoi. Giap was also Defense Minister in 1972 and 1975, but less
> actively involved in policy in 1975. Unfortunately interviewing these
> comrades on these sensitive matters is hardly likely to be very
> illuminating. As loyal party men they will deny that the slaughter of
> civilians by communists ever happened (one official Hanoi line on the
> Hue massacres is that "the people" did it in anger. See the PBS
> "Vietna. A Television History" episode on Tet for that). Some of these
> events were reported in the American press at the time. Better
> personal interview results might come from talking to the relatives of
> the victims, as the PBS team under Austin Hoyt (now at WGBH Boston)
> did at the time.
>
> There were many other atrocities of merely My Lai proportions
> committed by the NVA/VC -- such as the flame thrower extermination of
> hundreds of Montagnard women and children at Dak Son in 1967, and the
> slaughters at Duc Duc and Phu Thanh (?) villages in 1970 and 1971. All
> these events can be documented.
>
>
> I wonder why the Vietnam studies professionals had not raised these
> examples before I did?
>
> Stephen J. Morris.
>
> NEXT STORY:
>
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Vi...=&ie=UTF-8&sel
m=6g0dkb%24avh%40bgtnsc03.worldnet.att.net&rnum=4
>
>
>
> From: Vietnam Insight
> Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
> Subject: VI:My Lai and Tet 1968 Offensive Massacres
> Date: 1 Apr 1998 23:45:34 GMT
> Message-ID: <6fujiu$qn0$1@n...>
>
> [NOTE: Someone had added a pro-communist paragraph not in the original
> San Jose Mercury News story; I deleted that self-serving paragraph.]
>
> Published Sunday, March 29, 1998, in the San Jose Mercury News
>
> *****************************
> S. Vietnamese have waited 30 years for communists to repent for
> atrocities
>
> BY PATRICK PHU LE
>
> RECENTLY, the United States honored the three servicemen who
> helped stop the atrocities at My Lai and transported the wounded
> to medical facilities. It was a meaningful decision carried out
> in good faith to express U.S. concerns for mistakes committed
> during the Vietnam war, and as an American citizen, I am very
> pleased by this action.
>
> Vietnam's communist propaganda machinery did not spare the
> opportunity to jump on the bandwagon and announce they welcome
> this decision even though it is overdue. Better late than never,
> they said.
>
> But as a Vietnamese-American and a resident of Hue during the
> Viet Cong's massacre of more than 6,000 civilians -- known in
> this country as the Tet offensive -- it is very legitimate for me
> to pose a question to the Vietnamese communists: ``We have done
> our part, when are you going to do yours?''
>
> Thirty years have passed, and a trial of those responsible for
> the massacre of immense cruelty is well overdue. The U.S.
> military court convicted and punished those involved in My Lai.
> But the Vietnamese communist government has not even acknowledged
> that the event known in Vietnam as Mau Than Tet -- Tet of the
> Year of the Monkey -- was wrong. It hurt not only thousands of
> innocent Hue civilians, but also the South Vietnamese people in
> general, on the verge of withdrawal from Hue and numerous cities
> all ove r South Vietnam.
>
> I was 18 at the time and lost many of my classmates and teachers.
> Their bodies were found among thousands of Hue residents in huge
> communal holes discovered soon after the Viet Cong retreated from
> Hue. The victims' heads were crushed by savage blows and their
> hands were tied by barbed wire.
>
> And they had nothing to do with the South Vietnamese regime; they
> were just civilians without any means to defend themselves.
> Images of my teachers' and classmates' violent deaths followed me
> for years. Like any 18-year-old, I looked forward to a hopeful
> future and could not imagine how such atrocities could ever
> happen. For a long time after the ordeal, I was in doubt of the
> true meaning of life. Vietnamese communists still owe me and
> other South Vietnamese who had their relatives executed in the
> Tet offen sive an explanation for their actions.
>
> But I doubt the Vietnamese communists will ever do their part in
> apologizing for the crimes against humanity they committed 30
> years ago. They never will take any actions for a simple reason:
> The Tet massacre was not an isolated incident like My Lai. It was
> not a mistake by a small group of soldiers and their commanders
> but the execution of a calculated policy of raining terror on the
> South Vietnamese people by the communist war machinery, a
> surprise attack in the middle of the most sacred moments of the
> Vietnamese people. To bring those responsible to justice would
> be putting the whole communist regime on trial. That's something
> Vietnamese communists could not do and will never do.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Patrick Phu Le, Ph.D., is an activist in the San Jose
> Vietnamese-American community.
>
>
>
> NEXT STORY:
>
>
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.../SRTIGERFORCE/
110190168
>
> Day 1 of a 4 Day Series
>
> Article published October 19, 2003
> Day One of a Four-Day Series: Rogue GIs unleashed wave of terror in
> Central Highlands
>
> By MICHAEL D. SALLAH and MITCH WEISS
> BLADE STAFF WRITERS ?? THE BLADE, 2003
>
>
> QUANG NGAI, Vietnam - For the 10 elderly farmers in the rice paddy,
> there was nowhere to hide.
>
> The river stretched along one side, mountains on the other.
>
> Approaching quickly in between were the soldiers - an elite U.S. Army
> unit known as Tiger Force.
>
> Though the farmers were not carrying weapons, it didn't matter: No one
> was safe when the special force arrived on July 28, 1967.
>
> No one.
> With bullets flying, the farmers - slowed by the thick, green plants
> and muck - dropped one by one to the ground.
>
> Within minutes, it was over. Four were dead, others wounded. Some
> survived by lying motionless in the mud.
>
> Four soldiers later recalled the assault.
>
> "We knew the farmers were not armed to begin with," one said, "but we
> shot them anyway."
>
> The unprovoked attack was one of many carried out by the decorated
> unit in the Vietnam War, an eight-month investigation by The Blade
> shows.
>
> The platoon - a small, highly trained unit of 45 paratroopers created
> to spy on enemy forces - violently lost control between May and
> November, 1967.
>
> For seven months, Tiger Force soldiers moved across the Central
> Highlands, killing scores of unarmed civilians - in some cases
> torturing and mutilating them - in a spate of violence never revealed
> to the American public.
>
> They dropped grenades into underground bunkers where women and
> children were hiding - creating mass graves - and shot unarmed
> civilians, in some cases as they begged for their lives.
>
> They frequently tortured and shot prisoners, severing ears and scalps
> for souvenirs.
>
> A review of thousands of classified Army documents, National Archives
> records, and radio logs reveals a fighting unit that carried out the
> longest series of atrocities in the Vietnam War - and commanders who
> looked the other way.
>
> For 41/2 years, the Army investigated the platoon, finding numerous
> eyewitnesses and substantiating war crimes. But in the end, no one was
> prosecuted, the case buried in the archives for three decades.
>
> No one knows how many unarmed men, women, and children were killed by
> platoon members 36 years ago.
>
> At least 81 were fatally shot or stabbed, records show, but many
> others were killed in what were clear violations of U.S. military law
> and the 1949 Geneva Conventions.
>
> Based on more than 100 interviews with The Blade of former Tiger Force
> soldiers and Vietnamese civilians, the platoon is estimated to have
> killed hundreds of unarmed civilians in those seven months.
>
> "We weren't keeping count," said former Pvt. Ken Kerney, a California
> firefighter. "I knew it was wrong, but it was an acceptable practice."
>
> Many details of the period in question are unknown: Records are
> missing from the National Archives, and several suspects and witnesses
> have died.
>
> In many cases, the soldiers remember the atrocities and general
> locations, but not the precise dates.
>
> What's clear is that nearly four decades later, many Vietnamese
> villagers and former Tiger Force soldiers are deeply troubled by the
> brutal killing of villagers.
>
> "It was out of control," said Rion Causey, 55, a former platoon medic
> and now a nuclear engineer. "I still wonder how some people can sleep
> 30 years later."
>
> Among the newspaper's findings:
>
>
> Commanders knew about the platoon's atrocities in 1967, and in some
> cases, encouraged the soldiers to continue the violence.
>
>
> Two soldiers who tried to stop the atrocities were warned by their
> commanders to remain quiet before transferring to other units.
>
>
> The Army investigated 30 war-crime allegations against Tiger Force
> between February, 1971, and June, 1975, finding a total of 18 soldiers
> committed crimes, including murder and assault. But no one was ever
> charged.
>
>
> Six platoon soldiers suspected of war crimes - including an officer -
> were allowed to resign during the investigation, escaping military
> prosecution.
>
>
> The findings of the investigation were sent to the offices of the
> secretary of the Army and the secretary of defense, records show, but
> no action was taken.
>
>
> Top White House officials, including John Dean, former chief counsel
> to President Richard Nixon, repeatedly were sent reports on the
> progress of the investigation.
>
> To this day, the Army's Criminal Investigation Command refuses to
> release thousands of records that could explain what happened and why
> the case was dropped. Army spokesman Joe Burlas said last week it may
> have been difficult to press charges, but he couldn't explain flaws in
> the investigation.
>
> The Army interviewed 137 witnesses and tracked down former Tiger Force
> members in more than 60 cities around the world.
>
> But for the past three decades, the case has not even been a footnote
> in the annals of one of the nation's most divisive wars.
>
> Thirty years after U.S. combat units left Vietnam, the elderly farmers
> of the Song Ve Valley live with memories of the platoon that passed
> through their hamlets so long ago.
>
> Nguyen Dam, now 66, recalls running as the soldiers fired into the
> rice paddy that summer day in 1967. "I am still angry," he said,
> waving his arms. "Our people didn't deserve to die that way. We were
> farmers. We were not soldiers. We didn't hurt anyone."
>
> But one former soldier offers no apologies for the platoon's actions.
>
> William Doyle, a former Tiger Force sergeant now living in Missouri,
> said he killed so many civilians he lost count.
>
> "We were living day to day. We didn't expect to live. Nobody out there
> with any brains expected to live," he said in a recent interview. "So
> you did any goddamn thing you felt like doing - especially to stay
> alive. The way to live is to kill because you don't have to worry
> about anybody who's dead."
>
>
> (THE BLADE/ANDY MORRISON)
>
> Kieu Trac walks through a Song Ve Valley rice paddy in June, where his
> father, Kieu Cong, and other farmers were killed by Tiger Force
> soldiers 36 years ago.
> ZOOM 1
>
>
> Battle-tested platoon drew special mission
> The Quang Ngai province stretches eastward from the lush, green
> mountains to the sweeping white beaches of the South China Sea.
>
> To the villagers, it was revered, ancestral land that had been farmed
> for generations.
>
> To the North Vietnamese, it was a major supply line to guerrillas
> fighting to reunite the country.
>
> To the U.S. military, it was an area of jungles and river valleys that
> had to be controlled to stop the communist infiltration of South
> Vietnam. Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in
> Vietnam, created a special task force in 1967 to secure the province.
>
> In a conflict marked by fierce guerrilla warfare, the task force
> needed a special unit to move quickly through the jungles, find the
> enemy, and set up ambushes. That role fell to Tiger Force.
>
> Considered an elite arm of the 101st Airborne Division, the platoon -
> formed in 1965 - often broke into small teams to scout the enemy,
> creeping into the jungle in tiger-striped fatigues, soft-brimmed hats,
> with rations to last 30 days.
>
> Not everyone could join the platoon: Soldiers had to volunteer, needed
> combat experience, and were subjected to a battery of questions - some
> about their willingness to kill.
>
> The majority of those men were enlistees who came from small towns
> such as Rayland, Ohio, Globe, Ariz., and Loretto, Tenn.
>
> By the time Tiger Force arrived in the province on May 3, 1967, the
> unit already had fought in fierce battles farther south in My Cahn and
> Dak To.
>
> But this was a different place.
>
> With deep ties to the land, the people of Quang Ngai province were
> fiercely independent.
>
> In this unfamiliar setting, things began to go wrong.
>
> No one knows what set off the events that led to the deaths of untold
> numbers of civilians and prisoners.
>
> But less than a week after setting up camp in the province, Tiger
> Force members began to break the rules of war.
>
> It started with prisoners.
>
> During a morning patrol on May 8, the soldiers spotted two suspected
> Viet Cong - the local militia opposed to U.S. intervention - along the
> Song Tra Cau River. One jumped into the water and escaped through an
> underwater tunnel, but the other was captured.
>
> Taller and more muscular than most Vietnamese, the soldier was
> believed to be Chinese.
>
> Over the next two days, he was repeatedly beaten and tortured. At one
> point, his captors debated whether to blow him up with explosives,
> according to sworn witness statements.
>
> One former soldier, Spec. William Carpenter, told The Blade he tried
> to keep the prisoner alive, "but I knew his time was up."
>
> After he was ordered to run - and told he was free - he was shot by
> several unidentified soldiers.
>
> The platoon's treatment of the detainee - his beating and execution -
> became the unit's operating procedure in the ensuing months.
>
> Time and again, Tiger Force soldiers talked about the executions of
> captured soldiers - so many, investigators were hard pressed to place
> a number on the toll.
>
> In June, Pvt. Sam Ybarra slit the throat of a prisoner with a hunting
> knife before scalping him - placing the scalp on the end of a rifle,
> soldiers said in sworn statements. Ybarra refused to talk to Army
> investigators about the case.
>
> Another prisoner was ordered to dig bunkers, then beaten with a shovel
> before he was shot to death, records state.
>
> The killing prompted a medic to talk to a chaplain. "It upset me so
> much to watch him die," Barry Bowman said in a recent interview.
>
> One Tiger Force soldier, Sgt. Forrest Miller, told investigators the
> killing of prisoners was "an unwritten law."
>
> But platoon members weren't just executing prisoners: They began to
> target unarmed civilians.
>
> In June, an elderly man in black robes and believed to be a Buddhist
> monk was shot to death after he complained to soldiers about the
> treatment of villagers. A grenade was placed on his body to disguise
> him as an enemy soldier, platoon members told investigators.
>
> That same month, Ybarra shot and killed a 15-year-old boy near the
> village of Duc Pho, reports state. He later told soldiers he shot the
> youth because he wanted the teenager's tennis shoes.
>
> The shoes didn't fit, but Ybarra ended up carrying out what became a
> ritual among platoon members: He cut off the teenager's ears and
> placed them in a ration bag, Specialist Carpenter told investigators.
>
> During the Army's investigation of Tiger Force, 27 soldiers said the
> severing of ears from dead Vietnamese became an accepted practice. One
> reason: to scare the Vietnamese.
>
> Platoon members strung the ears on shoe laces to wear around their
> necks, reports state.
>
> Former platoon medic Larry Cottingham told investigators: "There was a
> period when just about everyone had a necklace of ears."
>
> Records show soldiers began another gruesome practice: Kicking out the
> teeth of dead civilians for their gold fillings.
>
> Villagers resisted relocation orders
> For Tiger Force, the fighting was unpredictable in Quang Ngai.
>
> In the first three weeks of May, platoon soldiers were under frequent
> sniper fire as they walked unfamiliar trails.
>
> Booby traps covered the rolling hills and beaches.
>
> On May 15, the unit was ambushed by a North Vietnamese battalion in
> what became known as the Mother's Day Massacre. From 11 a.m. to 5:45
> p.m., the out-manned platoon became trapped in a valley under intense
> fire.
>
> By the time it ended, two Tiger Force soldiers were killed and 25
> wounded.
>
> Over the next few weeks, the platoon would change.
>
> A new field commander, Lt. James Hawkins, joined the unit, along with
> two dozen replacements.
>
> The newcomers arrived as the platoon was about to move into the Song
> Ve Valley.
>
> The Army's plan was to force the villagers to move to refugee centers
> to keep them from growing rice that could feed the enemy. But it
> wouldn't be an easy assignment.
>
> Many villagers refused to go to the centers, which the U.S. State
> Department criticized in 1967 for lacking food and shelter. Surrounded
> by concrete walls and barbed wire, the camps resembled prisons.
>
> Though the Army dropped leaflets from helicopters ordering the 5,000
> inhabitants to the centers, many ignored the orders. "They wanted to
> stay on their land. They took no side in the war," Lu Thuan, 67, a
> farmer, recently recalled.
>
> Unlike most of the province, the valley - removed from the populated
> coast by narrow dirt roads - was not a center of rebellion, say
> villagers and historians. "We just wanted to be left alone," said Mr.
> Lu.
>
> Lieutenant executed unarmed, elderly man
> But no one was left alone.
>
> The Song Ve Valley - four miles wide by six miles long - became the
> center of operations for Tiger Force over the next two months.
>
> In clearing the land, the soldiers began burning villages to force the
> people to leave.
>
> It didn't always go as planned.
>
> At times, villagers would simply flee to another hamlet. Other times,
> they would hide.
>
> For the soldiers, the valley became a frustrating place.
>
> During the day, they would round up people to send to relocation
> camps. At night, platoon members huddled in camps on the valley floor,
> dodging grenades hurled from enemy soldiers in the mountains.
>
> The lines between civilians refusing to leave and the enemy became
> increasingly blurred.
>
> One night, the platoon ran into an elderly carpenter who had just
> crossed the shallow Song Ve River. Dao Hue, as he was known, had lived
> in the valley his entire life.
>
> He was walking to his village along the banks of the river on a dirt
> trail he knew by heart.
>
> On this night, he wouldn't make it home.
>
> His shooting death on July 23 as he pleaded for his life would be
> remembered by five soldiers during the Army's investigation.
>
> It would also send a message to the people of the valley that no one
> was safe, leading hundreds to flee.
>
> The platoon had been patrolling the valley and set up camp in an
> abandoned village, where they began drinking beer delivered by
> helicopter. By dusk, several soldiers were drunk, reports state.
>
> At nightfall, the platoon received an unexpected order: Move across
> the river, and set up an ambush. What followed was a shooting that
> would be questioned by soldiers long after they left Vietnam.
>
> When Mr. Dao crossed the river, he ran into Sgt. Leo Heaney, who
> grabbed the elderly Vietnamese man with the gray beard.
>
> Immediately, the 68-year-old carpenter dropped his shoulder pole with
> baskets on each end filled with geese.
>
> "He was terrified and folded his hands and started what appeared to me
> as praying for mercy in a loud high-pitched tone," Mr. Heaney told
> Army investigators.
>
> He said he realized the man posed no threat.
>
> Sergeant Heaney said he escorted Mr. Dao to the platoon leaders,
> Lieutenant Hawkins and Sgt. Harold Trout. Trembling, the man continued
> to babble loudly, witnesses said.
>
> Immediately, Lieutenant Hawkins began shaking the old man and cursing
> at him, witnesses recalled. Without warning, Sergeant Trout clubbed
> Mr. Dao with the barrel of his M-16 rifle.
>
> He fell to the ground, covered with blood.
>
> In a sworn statement to investigators, Specialist Carpenter said he
> told Lieutenant Hawkins the man "was just a farmer, and was unarmed."
>
> But as medic Barry Bowman tried to treat the villager's head wound,
> Lieutenant Hawkins lifted the man up from where he was kneeling and
> shot him in the face with a Carbine-15 rifle.
>
> "The old man fell backwards on the ground, and Hawkins shot him
> again," Specialist Carpenter said in a sworn statement. "I just knew
> he was dead as half of his head was blown off."
>
> Lieutenant Hawkins denied the allegations in an interview with Army
> investigators on March 16, 1973. But in a recent interview with The
> Blade, he admitted killing the elderly man, claiming his voice was
> loud enough to draw enemy attention.
>
> "I eliminated that right there."
>
> But four soldiers told investigators there were other ways to silence
> him. In fact, the shots ultimately gave their position away, which led
> to a firefight.
>
> Said Mr. Bowman: "There was no justifiable reason that the old man had
> to be killed."
>
> Nearly four decades later, the villagers who found Mr. Dao's remains
> said they knew he was killed by U.S. soldiers.
>
> His niece, Tam Hau, now 70, was one of the first to see her uncle's
> body by the river the next day.
>
> She and another relative, Bui Quang Truong, dragged their uncle's
> remains to their village. "He was shot all over his body," she
> recalled. "It was very sad - sad for all of us."
>
> Soldiers intensified attacks in the valley
> Four days after the shooting of Dao Hue, four Tiger Force soldiers
> were wounded in guerrilla grenade attacks.
>
> The platoon struck back.
>
> Over the next 10 days, the soldiers led a rampage through the valley.
>
> The area was declared a free-fire zone - a special designation that
> meant troops didn't have to seek approval from commanders and South
> Vietnamese officials before attacking enemy soldiers.
>
> But Tiger Force soldiers took the words - free-fire zone - literally.
> They began to fire on men, women, and children, former platoon members
> said.
>
> Two partially blind men found wandering in the valley were escorted to
> a bend in the Song Ve River and shot to death, records show. Two
> villagers, including a teenager, were executed because they were not
> in relocation camps.
>
> While approaching a rice paddy on July 28, platoon members opened fire
> on 10 elderly farmers.
>
> The image of the bodies scattered across the green expanse has long
> been remembered by Tiger Force soldiers and the people of Van Xuan
> village.
>
> By all accounts, the farmers thought they were safe.
>
> They were too old to serve in the military and not openly aligned with
> either side in the conflict, according to their relatives.
>
> In the end, four were killed and others wounded in what several
> soldiers told investigators was an unjustified attack.
>
> The order to shoot came from Lieutenant Hawkins, the officer leading
> the patrol, records state.
>
> One villager recently recalled the farmers were surprised when the
> soldiers began firing. Kieu Trac, now 72, said he watched helplessly
> as his father fell in the rice field with the others.
>
> He said he waited for hours before crawling into the field in the
> darkness to look for his father's body. He recalled turning over the
> corpses - one by one - until he found Kieu Cong, 60.
>
> The son and his wife, Mai Thi Tai, carried his remains back to the
> village for burial.
>
> The bodies of three others, Le Muc, Phung Giang, and an elderly female
> member of the Trang family, were later buried by relatives.
>
> "The farmers didn't do anything ??? we didn't hurt the soldiers. All
> they were doing was working in the fields," said Mr. Kieu, pointing to
> the spot where his father and the others were killed. "They thought
> the soldiers would leave them alone."
>
> Another villager, Lu Thuan, who watched the attack from a nearby
> mountain, said he doesn't remember how many were wounded.
>
> "Some were injured," said Mr. Lu, now 67. "They couldn't run fast
> enough. Others acted like they died."
>
> Mr. Carpenter, one of the soldiers in the patrol, insists he did not
> fire his weapon. "It was wrong," he said in a recent interview. "There
> was no way I was going to shoot. Those people weren't bothering
> anybody."
>
> He told Army investigators he was afraid to express his opinion. A
> culture had developed in the unit that promoted the shooting of
> civilians - with team leaders enforcing a code of silence.
>
> Four former soldiers told investigators they didn't report atrocities
> because they were warned to keep quiet by team leaders.
>
> Ken Kerney, the former private, recalled in a recent interview the
> briefing he received before joining Tiger Force.
>
> "The commanders told me that ???What goes on here, stays here. You
> never tell anyone about what goes on here. If we find out you did, you
> won't like it.' They didn't tell me what they would do, but I knew. So
> you're afraid to say anything.''
>
> Villagers recently interviewed said they dug dozens of mass graves
> after the soldiers moved through the valley.
>
> Nguyen Dam, 66, recalled the grim task of burying neighbors and
> friends whose bodies were left in the fields.
>
> "We wouldn't even have meals because of the smell," the rice farmer
> said. "I couldn't breathe the air sometimes. There were so many
> villagers who died, we couldn't bury them one by one. We had to bury
> them all in one grave."
>
> Platoon moved north, focused on body count
> Days after the attack on the farmers, U.S. planes flew over the
> valley, dumping thousands of gallons of defoliants to ensure no one
> would grow rice there during the war.
>
> For Tiger Force, the Song Ve campaign was over.
>
> On Aug. 10, platoon soldiers - armed with new supplies and
> reinforcements - rode a truck convoy into a new area 30 miles north.
>
> Known as the Quang Nam province, the vast landscape was covered by
> triple-canopy jungles and intricate, enemy tunnels.
>
> The mission was to control the province, but not in the traditional
> way of winning territory.
>
> The platoon became dragged into a battle that became a mantra of the
> war: body count.
>
> The success of a battle would be measured by the number of people
> killed - not by whether a village was taken, according to the sworn
> statements of 11 former officers.
>
> In what became one of the bloodiest periods of 1967, the Army launched
> a campaign on Sept. 11 known as Operation Wheeler.
>
> The battalion commander who would lead Tiger Force and three other
> units was Lt. Col. Gerald Morse, who had taken over the previous
> month.
>
> The 38-year-old officer was described as an aggressive, hands-on
> commander who rode in helicopters and kept in frequent radio contact
> with his units in the 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry.
>
> Within days of taking over, Colonel Morse changed the names of the
> battalion's three companies - an action questioned by investigators
> years later.
>
> Instead of companies A, B, and C, they were now known as Assassins,
> Barbarians, and Cutthroats - with a sign hoisted over battalion
> headquarters bearing the new names. And Colonel Morse would go by the
> name "Ghost Rider."
>
> Under his command, Tiger Force was encouraged to forcefully patrol the
> dozens of hamlets in the province.
>
> But the soldiers soon learned this was different from the Song Ve
> Valley.
>
> It was not only home to the Viet Cong, but a far more trained and
> disciplined adversary: the 2nd Division of the North Vietnamese Army.
>
> Though these enemy forces previously hid in the nearby Annamese
> Mountains, they were now moving toward Chu Lai, the sprawling U.S. air
> base that was home to Tiger Force and other units.
>
> By early September, the enemy soldiers were setting ambushes for
> troops, including Tiger Force.
>
> "We soon found ourselves face to face with the enemy," recalled
> William Carpenter, the former platoon specialist who now lives in
> eastern Ohio. "It seemed like every day we were getting hit."
>
> Within 18 days of arriving in the new operations area, five Tiger
> Force soldiers died and 12 were wounded in fighting that left the
> remaining platoon members bitter and angry.
>
> The platoon - broken into groups of four to six soldiers - began
> attacking villages with a vengeance, according to former soldiers.
>
> "Everybody was blood thirsty at the time, saying ???We're going to get
> them back. We're going to go back there. We're going to even the
> score,'" former medic Rion Causey said in a recent interview.
>
> He said he watched as soldiers took out their aggressions on unarmed
> civilians who refused to leave their homes.
>
> "I've never seen anything like it. We just came in and cleared out the
> civilian population," said Mr. Causey, 55, now a nuclear engineer in
> California. "It was a day by day by day thing."
>
> In some cases, the Army dropped leaflets into villages warning people
> to go to relocation centers.
>
> If the people didn't leave, "they would be killed," Mr. Causey said.
>
> To cover up the shootings, platoon leaders began counting dead
> civilians as enemy soldiers, five former soldiers told The Blade.
>
> A review of Army logs supports their accounts.
>
> For 10 days beginning Nov. 11, entries show that platoon members were
> claiming to be killing Viet Cong - a total of 49. But no weapons were
> found in 46 deaths, records show.
>
> Mr. Causey recalls a report to commanders.
>
> "We would call in on the radio - ???seven VC running from hut. Shot
> and killed' - Hell, they weren't running. We didn't know if they were
> VC."
>
> Sgt. James Barnett told investigators he once raised concerns to
> Lieutenant Hawkins that Tiger Force soldiers were killing people who
> weren't carrying weapons.
>
> "Hawkins told me not to worry about it," he said. "We can always get
> the weapons later."
>
> During the rampage, the soldiers committed some of their most brutal
> atrocities, Army records show.
>
> A 13-year-old girl's throat was slashed after she was sexually
> assaulted, and a young mother was shot to death after soldiers torched
> her hut.
>
> An unarmed teenager was shot in the back after a platoon sergeant
> ordered the youth to leave a village, and a baby was decapitated so
> that a soldier could remove a necklace.
>
> During the Army's investigation, former Pvt. Joseph Evans - another
> Tiger Force soldier - refused to be interrogated. But in a recent
> interview, he said many people who were running from soldiers during
> that period were not a threat to troops.
>
> "They were just running because they were afraid. They were in fear.
> We killed a lot of people who shouldn't have been killed."
>
> Grenades targeted civilians in bunkers
> For villagers, it was a routine: Run to the underground bunkers for
> safety.
>
> In every hamlet, there were shelters, supported by bamboo and brick
> and covered by leaves and brush.
>
> To the civilians, it didn't matter whether the soldiers were American
> or North Vietnamese. They went to the bunkers when either approached.
>
> When Tiger Force appeared on a path leading to a village 20 miles west
> of Tam Ky, the people scurried for cover.
>
> Tiger Force soldiers told investigators they remembered seeing women
> and children crawl through the openings.
>
> No one knows how many were inside, but it didn't matter.
>
> When the soldiers reached the bunker entrances, they "knew what to
> do," Pvt. Ken Kerney told investigators.
>
> Without trying to talk to the people below, the soldiers pulled the
> clips on their grenades, and dropped the explosives through the holes.
>
> Setting up camp nearby, soldiers heard human cries coming from the
> underground shelters throughout the night.
>
> But no one bothered to help.
>
> For platoon member Charles Fulton, the night dragged on.
>
> "We kept hearing human sounds which came from the direction of the
> bunkers,'' he told investigators. "They were the sounds of people that
> had been hurt and trying to get someone's attention to get help.
> Although faint, they were clear."
>
> The bodies eventually were removed by villagers, former soldiers told
> investigators. No weapons were found in the bunkers, nor was there any
> evidence the villagers were a threat to U.S. forces, according to
> witness statements.
>
> The next day, soldiers approaching the hamlet saw the bodies of women
> and children lining the roadway.
> Soldiers achieved objective of 327 kills
> Toward the end of Operation Wheeler, there was even greater motivation
> for killing.
>
> An order was given via radio one day that would be remembered by seven
> soldiers years later.
>
> A voice came over the airwaves with a goal for the battalion: We want
> a body count of 327. The number was significant because it was the
> same as the battalion's infantry designation: the 327th.
>
> Three former soldiers swore under oath the order came from a man who
> identified himself as "Ghost Rider" - the radio name used by Colonel
> Morse.
>
> Army radio logs show the goal was achieved: Tiger Force reported the
> 327th kill on Nov. 19.
>
> In a recent interview, Colonel Morse, who retired in 1979, denied
> giving such an order, saying it was "ridiculous ... I would never have
> done anything like that."
>
> During questioning by Army investigators, former Pvt. John Colligan
> said the order indeed was given.
>
> In fact, he said the soldier who reached that goal "was to receive
> some type of reward."
>
> Sergeant Barnett told investigators he heard the same order over the
> airwaves by someone who identified himself as Ghost Rider.
>
> Three former soldiers said in recent interviews the goal was achieved
> in part through the killing of villagers.
>
> Number of killings remains a mystery
> No one knows how many unarmed civilians were killed by Tiger Force
> from May through November, 1967.
>
> Soldiers from the platoon killed 120 villagers in one month alone,
> former medic Rion Causey said in a recent interview.
>
> Former medic Harold Fischer recalled that most of the platoon were
> "shooting people left and right."
>
> "We would go into villages and just shoot everybody. We didn't need an
> excuse. If they were there, they were dead."
>
> While the Army substantiated 20 war crimes against 18 Tiger Force
> soldiers during their seven-month sweep across the Central Highlands,
> former soldiers described 11 more in recent interviews with The Blade,
> including:
>
>
>
> Two elderly men killed during an unprovoked attack on a hamlet near
> Tam Ky. One was beheaded and the other, who was wounded, was shot by
> medic Barry Bowman in a "mercy killing," he said.
>
>
> An elderly man shot to death by Private Colligan near Chu Lai when the
> soldier wanted to test a new 38-caliber handgun on a live target, Mr.
> Fischer said.
>
>
> Numerous villagers shot by Tiger Force members in a hamlet near Chu
> Lai, said former Pvt. Douglas Teeters. The villagers were waving
> leaflets at the troops asking to be relocated, but when enemy forces
> fired on the soldiers from another direction, the troops opened fire
> on everyone in their sight, said the former medic.
>
> "We killed a bunch of them. I don't remember how many," he said. "But
> I remember when it was over, we just said the dead gooks were VC. But
> we knew they weren't all VC."
>
> And most soldiers just kept quiet, even if they didn't participate.
>
> "Remember, out in the jungle, there were no police officers. No
> judges. No law and order," Mr. Kerney said in a recent interview.
> "Whenever somebody felt like doing something, they did it. There was
> no one to stop them.
>
> "So we watched and didn't say anything. We turned the other way.
> Looking back, it's terrible. We should have said something. But at the
> time, everybody's mindset was, ???It's OK.' But it wasn't OK. It's
> very sad."
> Changing war put troops on defensive
> By the end of November, the long campaign was over.
>
> In a story in the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes, Tiger Force's Sam
> Ybarra was praised for the 1,000th kill of Operation Wheeler.
>
> At a ceremony at the Phan Rang base on Nov. 27, 1967, medals were
> pinned on the chests of Tiger Force soldiers, including Sergeant
> Doyle, who ordered the execution of a farmer during the operation.
>
> In the ensuing weeks, Tiger Force would leave the Central Highlands.
> By early 1968, the war was changing.
>
> North Vietnam began its own campaign - the Tet Offensive - attacking
> 100 villages and cities in the south.
>
> Tiger Force was sent to defend a base near Cambodia.
>
> For medic Rion Causey, the war was no longer about killing civilians
> but defending American strongholds as the enemy moved toward Saigon.
>
> As the base camp was overrun and soldiers were dying, he came to a
> grim conclusion:
>
> "The only way out of Tiger Force was to be injured or killed."
>
> He was right.
>
> On March 6, 1968, he was injured, and as he was lifted by the
> helicopter, he recalled looking at the Tiger Force soldiers below.
>
> "I remember just kind of saying to myself: ???God help you guys for
> what you did. God help you.'"
>
>
> NEXT STORY:
>
>
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.../SRTIGERFORCE/
110200129
>
> Article published October 20, 2003
> Inquiry ended without justice
> Army substantiated numerous charges - then dropped case of Vietnam war
> crimes
>
> By MICHAEL D. SALLAH and MITCH WEISS
> BLADE STAFF WRITERS
> ?? THE BLADE, 2003
>
>
> Seven years after leaving Vietnam, James Barnett broke down.
>
> Haunted by the killing of civilians, the former Tiger Force sergeant
> invited Army investigators to his home to offer a surprise confession.
>
> He admitted to shooting a young, unarmed mother. He admitted to his
> platoon???s cruel treatment of villagers.
>
> He asked for immunity from prosecution, but in the end, he never
> needed the legal protection.
>
> No one would.
>
> Though the Army substantiated 20 war crimes by 18 Tiger Force soldiers
> committed in 1967 - with numerous eyewitnesses - no charges were
> filed.
>
> An investigation that should have brought justice to the longest
> series of atrocities by a U.S. fighting unit in Vietnam reached the
> Pentagon and White House but never a court of law - or the American
> public.
>
> Instead, the case was hidden in the Army???s archives, and key
> suspects were allowed to continue their military careers.
>
> By the time the investigation was over, a justice system that promised
> to prosecute war criminals ended up protecting them.
>
> At every turn, the system failed.
>
> An eight-month investigation by The Blade, based on thousands of
> military records and interviews, shows:
>
>
> Commanders knew of the platoon???s atrocities in 1967 but refused to
> investigate.
>
>
> Soldiers went to Army commanders in 1967 to complain about the killing
> of civilians, but their pleas were ignored.
>
>
> Army investigators learned about the atrocities in February, 1971, but
> took a year to interview witnesses.
>
>
> Two Army investigators pretended to investigate while encouraging
> soldiers to keep quiet so they wouldn???t be prosecuted.
>
>
> By the time the investigation was completed in June, 1975, six key
> suspects were allowed to leave the Army - escaping the reach of
> military prosecutors.
>
> When the Army???s final report reached commanders in 1975 for possible
> prosecution against four remaining suspects, investigators gave
> inaccurate and at times, incomplete information.
>
> In three cases in which the final report accused people of "murder,"
> commanders took no action.
>
> Investigators found that five other soldiers carried out atrocities,
> but their names were never mentioned in the final report.
>
> Four military legal experts who reviewed the report for The Blade
> questioned why the case was closed so abruptly.
>
> "There should have been a [military grand jury] investigation of some
> kind done on this," said retired Lt. Col. H. Wayne Elliott, a former
> Army law professor. "I just can???t believe this wasn???t a pretty
> high profile thing in the Pentagon."
> 41/2 year investigation by Army began in 1971
> In a story that has never been told, the elite platoon torched
> villages, executed prisoners, and slaughtered an untold number of
> unarmed civilians between May and November, 1967, according to Army
> records.
>
> In recent interviews with The Blade, former platoon members say
> hundreds may have been killed - in violation of military law and the
> 1949 Geneva Conventions.
>
> The volunteer, 45-man unit from the 101st Airborne - created in 1965
> to find the enemy in the jungles - was sent to South Vietnam???s
> Central Highlands to help stop the North Vietnamese from taking over
> the region.
>
> But as the war intensified, soldiers in the platoon began to
> indiscriminately kill villagers.
>
> The atrocities were kept secret until 1971, when the Army began an
> investigation that lasted 41/2 years - leading agents to 63 cities in
> the United States, Germany, Korea, and the Philippines.
>
> More than three decades later, Army spokesman Joe Burlas said he
> couldn???t explain the breakdowns in the longest war-crime case from
> Vietnam.
>
> But one thing is clear: evidence of the atrocities reached the top
> levels of government.
>
> Summaries of the Tiger Force case were forwarded in 1973 to President
> Richard Nixon???s White House and the offices of Secretary of Defense
> James Schlesinger and Secretary of the Army Howard "Bo" Callaway,
> according to National Archives records.
>
> Through his secretary, Mr. Schlesinger declined to comment. Mr.
> Callaway said he didn???t remember the investigation.
>
> Beyond the military hierarchy, there was another safeguard in place
> where the case could be heard.
>
> A special U.S. panel was created in the wake of the 1968 My Lai
> Massacre - the killing of about 500 Vietnamese civilians by an Army
> unit - to review war-crime cases to prevent cover-ups.
>
> But the panel, known informally as the Working War Crimes Group and
> consisting of six military officers, never met, according to four
> members.
>
> More than 2,000 pages of testimony - including the 1974 confession of
> former platoon Sergeant Barnett - were concealed in the Army???s
> archives for years.
>
> Mr. Barnett, who died in 2001, summed up his platoon???s actions to
> investigators when they visited his Tennessee home: "Most of those
> incidents could be classified as war crimes today."
>
> Commanders failed to halt the atrocities
> Thirty-six years ago, Capt. Carl James paid a surprise visit to the
> Song Ve Valley.
>
> He expected to meet the new platoon leader to talk about supplies but
> instead found him standing over the corpse of an elderly farmer.
>
> There were no weapons or enemy fire in the area.
>
> He asked Lt. James Hawkins why he killed the unarmed man, Mr. James
> recalled in a recent interview.
>
> But the platoon leader could not provide an answer.
>
> Mr. James said he admonished the lieutenant that day in July, 1967,
> but never filed a complaint as required by military law.
>
> "I thought I took care of the problem by warning him," Mr. James said.
>
> His reluctance to notify Army officials was one of the first known
> failures by commanders to investigate Tiger Force???s practices - and
> stop the killing.
>
> Time and again, battalion leaders knew of the atrocities but failed to
> end them.
>
> For example:
>
>
>
> Harold Austin, the former battalion commander who oversaw Tiger Force,
> said in a recent interview his headquarters received reports that
> soldiers were mutilating the bodies of dead Vietnamese in early 1967,
> but no investigation was conducted.
>
>
> Lt. Donald Wood and Sgt. Gerald Bruner repeatedly complained to
> superiors in August, 1967 about Tiger Force soldiers killing
> civilians, according to witness statements. But there were no
> investigations.
>
>
> Capt. Robert Morin told Army officials he attended an officers???
> party in 1967 where several officers joked about Tiger Force soldiers
> drowning a farmer in the Song Ve River. But again, no investigation.
>
> Mr. Hawkins said in a recent interview he doesn???t recall being
> reprimanded in the Song Ve Valley for killing an elderly farmer but
> admitted to shooting civilians who refused to move to relocation
> camps.
>
> Most commanders didn???t want to pursue an investigation of Tiger
> Force because they feared turning up war crimes, former battalion
> surgeon Bradford Mutchler told investigators in 1975.
>
> "It was something that you just kept trying to sweep under the rug and
> forget because you really didn???t want to know if it was true or
> not."
> Investigators didn???t follow their own rules
> It began with a tip in 1971: A Tiger Force soldier had decapitated a
> Vietnamese baby.
>
> The statement by former Sgt. Gary Coy would spark an Army
> investigation that would last until 1975.
>
> Led by a field agent in Los Angeles, the case eventually utilized more
> than 100 agents to interview 137 people. In the years after the 1968
> My Lai massacre, military officials promised to take war crimes
> seriously.
>
> But an inspection of thousands of records of the Tiger Force case
> shows agents failed to follow their own rules.
>
> They were supposed to investigate as soon as a complaint was filed.
> They were supposed to monitor key suspects. They were supposed to
> track down victims.
>
> Those procedures were ignored, seriously undermining an investigation
> that would turn up some of the worst atrocities of the war.
>
> At least six suspects were allowed to leave the Army during the
> investigation, escaping possible court-martials. The Army could have
> stopped their discharges while the case was pending. Three other
> suspects died in battle.
>
> While suspects were allowed to leave the Army, so were witnesses.
> Because it took investigators a year to act on Mr. Coy???s complaint,
> 11 soldiers were discharged and could not be forced to testify.
>
> Other witnesses included Vietnamese civilians. But U.S. investigators
> failed to go to South Vietnam to track down witnesses - a practice in
> such cases, according to records at the National Archives.
>
> Thirty-six years later, The Blade went to Vietnam and found 11
> villagers who knew precise details of three Tiger Force atrocities.
>
> Even when soldiers provided clear details of crimes, investigators
> failed to pursue the leads.
>
> When Mr. Barnett invited investigators into his home in 1974, the
> former sergeant admitted to killing a mother of a 6-month-old - but
> said it was on the orders of his team leader, Sgt. Harold Trout.
>
> He said he shot her with a rifle after she was given a sedative by a
> medic and escorted into a bunker by Sergeant Trout.
>
> When the sergeant and woman emerged from the shelter, Mr. Barnett
> said, he was told by his team leader "to grease her," he told
> investigators.
>
> "I didn???t feel right about it," he said, "but I thought I was doing
> my job when I did it. It was, to me, like any other day in Vietnam."
>
> He identified another witness, but investigators failed to question
> the soldier about the case, records show. Sergeant Trout refused to
> talk to investigators in 1973 and declined recently to talk to The
> Blade. The war "happened a long time ago," he said, "and there???s
> nothing I???d really want to say now."
>
> Beyond the breakdowns, another aspect of the case raises troubling
> questions about whether Army agents went out of their way to protect
> soldiers.
>
> Two former Tiger Force soldiers - including a onetime murder suspect -
> said in recent interviews they were encouraged by investigators not to
> say anything - clear violations of military law.
>
> Dan Clint, who was not a war-crime suspect, told The Blade he was
> contacted for a second interview during the investigation by agent
> Robert DeMario.
>
> "He said, ???Hey, just do me a favor. Say that you don???t remember
> anything, so I can get the thing over with,???" Mr. Clint said.
>
> And he obliged the agent. During his interview with Mr. DeMario on
> Jan. 17, 1974, Mr. Clint said he didn???t see any war crimes.
>
> But that wasn???t true.
>
> In a recent interview with The Blade, he said a Tiger Force sergeant
> raped a villager, and soldiers shot civilians and prisoners who posed
> no threat. "The killings were unrestrained," he said.
>
> Mr. DeMario died in September, 1984.
>
> The other former platoon soldier who said he was told not to report
> any war crimes was William Doyle. The former sergeant and murder
> suspect in the investigation said he took the agent???s advice.
>
> Records show he was interviewed on Feb. 17, 1975, in St. Petersburg,
> Fla., and answered "no comment" to the question of whether he knew
> about crimes by Tiger Force soldiers.
>
> But in a recent interview, he said he not only witnessed the killing
> of unarmed villagers but committed them.
>
> "If you wanted to pull the trigger, you pulled the trigger. If you
> wanted to burn a village down, you burned it down. You do whatever you
> wanted to do. Who???s going to say anything to you?"
>
> He refused to give the name of the investigator who told him to stay
> quiet. "He tipped me off to what was going on, what they were after,
> and what they were trying to do,?????? said Mr. Doyle, now 70 and
> living in Missouri.
>
> Final report cast doubt on key cases
> Despite problems in the investigation, Army agents substantiated 20
> war crimes, including murders.
>
> That means there was enough evidence to show probable cause in those
> cases - critical to prosecution.
>
> But investigators gave a different version of events to commanders.
>
> In the 1975 final report for possible prosecution, lead investigator
> Gustav Apsey presented incomplete or inaccurate information about the
> crimes - casting doubt on key cases.
>
> For example, no one disputed that Tiger Force soldiers fired on 10
> elderly farmers in the Song Ve Valley in July, 1967.
>
> The only debate among the four soldiers who talked to investigators
> was how many farmers were struck by bullets.
>
> But in the report, Mr. Apsey inexplicably said he couldn???t prove the
> atrocity took place.
>
> Missing from his report were the sworn statements of four soldiers who
> were eyewitnesses to the event.
>
> Spec. William Carpenter: "We killed about 10 of the farmers, then
> stopped firing."
>
> Sgt. Forrest Miller: "We had received no incoming fire from the
> village and the people in the field, about 10 persons both male and
> females, were shot."
>
> The statements of the other two were basically the same: The farmers
> were shot without warning.
>
> In another major flaw in the case, Mr. Apsey concluded that
> unidentified soldiers were involved in the attack. But that was
> incorrect: Lt. James Hawkins was identified by two soldiers as leading
> the assault.
>
> In fact, one said the lieutenant gave the order to fire on the
> farmers.
>
> In a recent interview with The Blade, Mr. Hawkins admitted he ordered
> the shootings.
>
> He claimed the farmers should have been in a relocation camp and not a
> farm field.
>
> "Anything in [that area] was game. If it was living, it was subject to
> be eliminated."
>
> Other cases in the final report contained inaccurate information.
>
> Investigators interviewed four soldiers who witnessed the slaughter of
> women and children in three underground bunkers near Chu Lai, but the
> final report provided misleading information.
>
> In that report, Mr. Apsey wrote that he didn???t know whether those
> people killed were combatants.
>
> But every soldier who witnessed the event told investigators the
> people hiding in the bunkers included women and children, and no one
> was carrying weapons.
>
> One witness, former platoon Pvt. Ken Kerney, said in a sworn statement
> there "were no signs the people killed were linked to the enemy."
>
> He said he watched as the children ran into the bunkers but never
> brought an interpreter to the entrances to order them out.
>
> In Army records of the incident - not mentioned in the final report -
> Private Kerney told investigators that Tiger Force was ordered to go
> to the village.
>
> As platoon members arrived, "all the people ran into the bunkers. No
> interpreter was available to talk to the people. But Tiger Force knew
> what to do."
>
> They hurled grenades in the openings.
>
> A search later of the bunkers "failed to show any sign of Viet Cong"
> activities or other links with the enemy.
>
> Two other war-crime allegations substantiated by Army investigators
> were never mentioned in the final report: a shooting attack on several
> unarmed villagers near Chu Lai, and the killing of two partially blind
> men in the Song Ve Valley.
>
> In a recent interview, Mr. Apsey said he couldn???t explain why the
> report contained inaccurate information.
>
> "When I think about it now, it bothers me. I screwed up. I don???t
> know what else to say," he said. The killing of women and children in
> the bunkers was "a war crime. There???s no doubt about it. I don???t
> know why I wrote what I did."
>
> He said he didn???t try to compromise the investigation. "I would
> never have done that," he said.
>
> He said prosecutors would have had difficulty pressing charges in most
> of the war crimes because too much time had lapsed and the statute of
> limitations had expired in some cases.
>
> But records show that witnesses were still available to testify in
> 1975, and in murder cases, there is no statute of limitations.
>
> 'Political timing' cited in breakdown of probe
> Though the final report contained inaccuracies, Mr. Apsey presented
> three murder cases to commanders for possible prosecution - one naming
> Tiger Force commander James Hawkins.
>
> But even then, no charges were filed.
>
> Not even an Article 32 hearing - the equivalent of a military grand
> jury - was held, the first step toward a court marital.
>
> In the final report, Mr. Apsey wrote:
>
>
>
> Platoon leader Lt. James Hawkins "murdered an unarmed elderly
> Vietnamese man by shooting him in the head."
>
>
> Team leader Sgt. Harold Trout "murdered an unarmed wounded Vietnamese
> male by shooting him several times with a caliber .45 pistol."
>
>
> Former platoon Pvt. James Cogan "executed an old unarmed Vietnamese
> male by shooting him twice in the head with a caliber .45."
>
> Mr. Cogan was discharged from the military by the time the final
> report was filed in 1975, and like so many other suspects, he was
> outside the jurisdiction of a military court.
>
> Under military rules, it???s up to commanding generals of each soldier
> to decide whether to prosecute.
>
> Army spokesman Joe Burlas said that???s what happened in this case.
> Commanders chose not to press charges based on the evidence.
>
> But Mr. Hawkins said that???s not what happened to him.
>
> He said his case was decided by powers far beyond his commander, Maj.
> Gen. William Maddox.
>
> In a recent interview, Mr. Hawkins said he was summoned to the
> Pentagon in November, 1975 - five months after the final report was
> completed. By his side was General Maddox.
>
> He said they were presented a legal "brief" that stated the case was
> closed. He doesn???t remember who showed him the document but said he
> recalled the contents.
>
> "What they said was, ???Yep, there???s wrongdoing there, and we know
> about it. But basically it???s not ... in the best interest of this,
> that, and the other to try to pursue this.??? It seemed like that was
> the conclusion of the thing," he said.
>
> He said the Tiger Force investigation was "a big deal, but it was kept
> awful quiet. This was a hot potato. See, this was after [My Lai], and
> the Army certainly didn???t want to go through the publicity thing."
>
> General Maddox died in 2001.
>
> Former Sergeant Trout refused to comment on his case.
>
> Regardless of who decided not to press charges, Mr. Burlas said the
> murder cases would have been difficult to prosecute for several
> reasons, including a lack of access to crime scenes and physical
> evidence.
>
> But for several years leading to the final report, investigators could
> have traveled to the crime scenes in South Vietnam and interviewed
> witnesses.
>
> In addition, physical evidence, such as a corpse or weapon, is not
> essential in these types of cases, according to military legal
> experts.
>
> The lead investigator, Mr. Apsey, now retired and living in Washington
> state, said he doesn???t know why commanders never filed charges
> against Mr. Trout and Mr. Hawkins.
>
> He said part of the reason may have been because the final report was
> filed two years after the peace treaty was signed between the United
> States and North Vietnam. The report was also completed two months
> after the collapse of South Vietnam.
>
> "I knew this damn thing wasn???t going to go anywhere," he said. "The
> point is, the political timing was wrong."
>
> Mr. Apsey said throughout his investigation his superiors were
> concerned about the media discovering the Tiger Force case.
>
> "Let me tell you this: At the time, it was considered a class-one
> urgency," said Mr. Apsey, who added that field agents were required to
> interview witnesses within 24 hours of being notified.
>
> The four experts who reviewed the final report for The Blade said the
> Army may have been able to successfully press charges in some
> allegations that were substantiated, but others would have been
> difficult.
>
> William Eckhardt, the lead prosecutor in the My Lai case, said the
> Army may have been reluctant to bring such a case to court because of
> the publicity.
>
> "Maybe their thinking was they didn???t want any more My Lais," he
> said, adding that even that case was a challenge to prosecute because
> of reluctance of soldiers to testify.
>
> "If you look at the incredible struggle that the government went
> through with My Lai, the fact that some of this wasn???t pursued
> doesn???t surprise me.??????
>
> But it didn???t stop the Army from pressing charges in other
> atrocities.
>
> Of the Army???s 242 war-crimes investigations in Vietnam, a third were
> substantiated, leading to 21 convictions of charges ranging from
> beating prisoners to murdering civilians, according to a review of
> records at the National Archives.
>
> Ten soldiers received prison terms ranging from 30 days to 20 years,
> though many sentences were later reduced.
>
> But in the case of Tiger Force, there was no punishment. In fact,
> three suspects were later promoted.
>
> Captain James, who was accused of failing to report a war crime,
> became a major. Mr. Trout left the Army in 1985 as a sergeant major.
>
> Mr. Hawkins was promoted to major and went on to serve as a civilian
> flight instructor at Fort Rucker, Ala., after retiring in 1978.
> White House kept tabs on investigation
> Much is still unknown about the Tiger Force investigation.
>
> Dozens of case records are missing from the National Archives, and the
> Army refuses to release its own reports, citing privacy rights of the
> former soldiers.
>
> What is known is that summaries of the investigation were sent to the
> White House between 1971 and 1973, records show.
>
> While President Nixon was in office, his chief counsel, John Dean,
> ordered the Army in May, 1971, to file weekly updates on the status of
> war-crime investigations - 10 cases including Tiger Force. By 1973,
> the reports were sent monthly.
>
> A memo on March 2, 1973, gives a description of the case, with five
> suspects and other "unidentified members of Tiger Force" under
> investigation for crimes ranging from murder to body mutilation.
>
> The same document was routed to the secretary of defense???s office
> from the secretary of the Army???s office.
>
> But in June, 1973 - five months after the U.S. pullout - the Army
> stopped sending updates of cases to the White House.
>
> A memo from Maj. Gen. DeWitt Smith to other Army officials noted the
> "news media and public interest in the subject have waned with the
> U.S. disengagement in Vietnam."
>
> He went on to state the regular sending of reports "unnecessarily
> continues to highlight the problem monthly."
>
> Mr. Dean, who left the White House in April, 1973, said in a recent
> interview he didn???t recall the Tiger Force case but was not
> surprised the investigation was dropped. "The government doesn???t
> like ugly stories," he said.
>
> Former Secretary of the Army Howard "Bo" Callaway also said he did not
> recall the case but said he would have taken the allegations "very
> seriously."
>
> "I guarantee you there???d be no sweeping under the rug."
>
> With the Tiger Force investigation still in progress, Gerald Ford took
> over the presidency after the resignation of Richard Nixon in August,
> 1974.
>
> Within five months, there was only one ongoing war-crime case: Tiger
> Force.
>
> At the time, President Ford was urging the American public to "heal
> the wounds of Vietnam."
>
> In April, 1975, North Vietnam captured Saigon, reuniting the country.
> By November, the Tiger Force case was closed.
>
> A spokesman for former President Ford said he declined to comment on
> atrocities in the Vietnam War.
>
> Dr. David Anderson, a Vietnam veteran who edited the book, Facing My
> Lai, said a new political era had begun by 1975, with economic issues
> overshadowing the war. "No one wanted to hear about war crimes then,"
> he said. "It would have been embarrassing."
>
> Blade Staff Writer Joe Mahr contributed to this report.
>
> NEXT STORY:
>
>
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.../SRTIGERFORCE/
110200132
>
> Article published October 20, 2003
> Hearsay account triggered the probe
>
> By MICHAEL D. SALLAH and MITCH WEISS
> BLADE STAFF WRITERS
> ?? THE BLADE, 2003
>
>
> After 41/2 years of investigating Tiger Force, the only soldier
> disciplined in the case was the one who brought it to the Army???s
> attention.
>
> To Sgt. Gary Coy, it was an ironic end to an investigation that began
> when he first talked to Army officials on Feb. 3, 1971.
>
> By the time the investigation ended in 1975, a letter of reprimand was
> in his file.
>
> The reason: He told investigators he saw a Tiger Force soldier
> decapitate a baby during a sweep of a village in November, 1967.
>
> He later admitted he didn???t actually see the atrocity - but only
> heard about it.
>
> Still, his story to investigators about the infant???s death led to an
> investigation that would be known as the "Coy Allegation" - or the
> Tiger Force case.
>
> It was in 1971 when Army agents first visited Sergeant Coy at Fort
> Campbell, Ky., to interview him about an unrelated war-crime
> investigation.
>
> Agents wanted to know about accusations against the 101st Airborne in
> Vietnam, but Sergeant Coy told them about a smaller unit within the
> airborne division, Tiger Force.
>
> He said a soldier whose first name was Sam severed a baby???s head
> inside a hut. Investigators later identified the suspect as Sam
> Ybarra.
>
> Mr. Coy told investigators he lied about witnessing the atrocity
> because he thought they would take the case more seriously, according
> to an Army investigator???s report. He said he knew they would find
> other soldiers who saw the killing.
>
> He went on to tell agents that he and a fellow soldier promised each
> other that whoever survived the war would bring the incident to the
> Army???s attention. The other soldier, John Aherne, died in battle the
> next year.
>
> Investigators later interviewed several witnesses who said Private
> Ybarra bragged about severing the baby???s head to get the infant???s
> necklace.
>
> One former soldier, Harold Fischer, told The Blade in a recent
> interview that he witnessed Ybarra leaving the hut with a bloody
> necklace on his wrist and looked inside to find the decapitated baby.
>
> Mr. Coy, 56, who now lives in Missouri, said he didn???t feel he was
> treated fairly by Army investigators.
>
> "All the hassle I went through, with the war being over ... it
> wasn???t worth it."
>
> NEXT STORY:
>
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.../SRTIGERFORCE/
110200131
>
> Article published October 20, 2003
> 2 officers clashed over the treatment of noncombatants
> 1 tried to halt war crimes; the other admitted killing civilians
>
> By MICHAEL D. SALLAH and JOE MAHR
> BLADE STAFF WRITERS
> ?? THE BLADE, 2003
>
>
> The two elderly Vietnamese women were walking toward the soldiers when
> Tiger Force platoon Lt. James Hawkins ordered his men to shoot.
>
> Quickly, another lieutenant, Donald Wood, told the men not to fire.
>
> But the soldiers obeyed the senior ranking officer, spraying bullets
> at the two who were walking to their home.
>
> It was another clash between Tiger Force???s top lieutenants.
>
> They fought over battle strategy. They fought over troop maneuvers.
> They even fought over enemy strength estimates.
>
> But their loudest disputes were over the treatment of Vietnamese
> civilians, according to Army records and interviews.
>
> Lieutenant Wood argued that villagers were not the same as enemy
> soldiers, while his counterpart believed civilians were not to be
> trusted, and those refusing to leave designated areas could be shot.
>
> More than three decades later, their battles are still remembered by
> the former soldiers who served with them between May and August, 1967,
> as Tiger Force was moving deeper into the Central Highlands.
>
> "They were like night and day - always fighting," former Spec. William
> Carpenter said recently.
>
> To Mr. Carpenter, Lieutenant Wood was a soldier who "cared about
> people" but in the end, didn???t have the power to stop the violence.
>
> Twice, the lanky artillery observer from Findlay attempted to halt
> attacks on villagers in 1967, complaining to another officer and an
> executive officer of another battalion, he told Army investigators.
>
> He even complained to an inspector general about the platoon, he said.
> But in each case, no action was taken.
>
> In frustration, he transferred from the unit in August, 1967, as the
> platoon went on to kill scores of villagers over the next three
> months, records show.
>
> The first altercation between the two men led to the shooting death of
> an elderly carpenter in the Song Ve Valley that???s still remembered
> by villagers and soldiers.
>
> After weeks of evacuating the valley, platoon members set up camp near
> an abandoned hamlet along the Song Ve River. A helicopter dropped a
> special supply of hot food and beer.
>
> For most of the afternoon, Lieutenant Hawkins - a tall, burly career
> soldier who was known for arguing with senior officers - was drinking
> with his men, and by evening, they were drunk, five other soldiers
> swore in statements.
>
> By nightfall, the platoon leader ordered his men to set up an ambush
> across the river.
>
> That???s when Lieutenant Wood tried to stop the order, arguing the
> soldiers had been drinking and were in no condition to meet the enemy.
>
> But Lieutenant Hawkins ignored him.
>
> Shortly after wading across the river, the troops encountered the
> unarmed elderly man who prayed for his life as he was shot and killed
> by Lieutenant Hawkins, soldiers told investigators. The man was later
> identified by villagers as Dao Hue, a carpenter who was born in the
> valley.
>
> Mr. Hawkins said in a recent interview he was justified in shooting
> the man, saying he was "making a lot of noise" that could have given
> the platoon???s position away.
>
> Two other soldiers who witnessed the killing later told investigators
> there were other ways to quiet the man and that shooting him ended up
> alerting the enemy to their position.
>
> Two weeks later, another confrontation took place between the men that
> led to Lieutenant Wood leaving the unit.
>
> Shortly after the officers arrived on the outskirts of a hamlet, a
> Tiger Force soldier spotted two women approaching the village.
>
> Immediately, Lieutenant Hawkins gave the order to open fire, records
> state.
>
> Lieutenant Wood protested the order, saying the people were simply
> walking toward the soldiers. It didn???t matter: The platoon leader
> and others fired their weapons, wounding one.
>
> The two turned out to be unarmed, elderly Vietnamese women who were
> later carried away in a helicopter, reports state.
>
> During the Army???s investigation of Tiger Force six years later, Mr.
> Wood said he protested to the executive officer of his artillery
> battalion about the way Lieutenant Hawkins was treating civilians. But
> he said the officer told him to return to the platoon.
>
> He also complained to Lt. Stephen Naughton, a former Tiger Force
> platoon leader who had been promoted.
>
> Lieutenant Naughton, who was interviewed by Army investigators in
> 1974, said he received the complaint and passed it on to a colonel in
> the inspector general???s office at Fort Bragg, N.C.
>
> He described the call: "He told me to forget about it, that I would
> just be stirring things up, and hung up on me," the lieutenant told
> investigators.
>
> To make sure the Army took action, Lieutenant Wood said he filed a
> formal statement with the same office in 1968.
>
> But six years later, Army investigators said they couldn???t find any
> records of the two officers??? complaints nor could they track down
> the identities of the commanders who received them.
>
> By the time the Army investigation was under way, Lieutenants Wood and
> Hawkins had left Vietnam.
>
> While Mr. Wood was never a suspect, records show Mr. Hawkins was under
> investigation for murder, dereliction of duty, and conduct unbecoming
> an officer.
>
> In addition to the attacks on civilians described by Lieutenant Wood,
> Army investigators turned up other atrocities involving Lieutenant
> Hawkins, including a shooting assault on 10 farmers in the Song Ve
> Valley, leaving four dead.
>
> Despite the results of the investigation, no charges were filed.
>
> In the years to follow, the two officers from Tiger Force would pursue
> vastly different careers.
>
> Mr. Wood, the son of a Whirlpool engineer, became a defense lawyer in
> Findlay, known for driving sports cars and jumping from airplanes at
> community events. Married with two children, he died of a brain
> aneurysm in 1983 at 36.
>
> His wife, Joyce, said he rarely talked about Vietnam, but often woke
> up at night "with the sweats."
>
> "He would have these dreams. I know he was very disturbed by his years
> in Vietnam," she said.
>
> Her husband refused to talk to her about the atrocities, but his son,
> John, now 32, said his father "went to his grave bothered by what he
> witnessed."
>
> One of Mr. Wood???s friends, Dr. Henry Benz, said the former
> lieutenant often talked to him about the people of Vietnam and how Mr.
> Wood tried to take the time to "really understand the people in
> Vietnam. He clearly took an interest."
>
> Mr. Hawkins recalled his differences with Mr. Wood but said he still
> believes he had a right to fire on unarmed civilians.
>
> "I tell you what, in any war, civilians, innocent people, get killed.
> Yes I can say I have seen people, farmers, whatever, getting killed,"
> said Mr. Hawkins, who retired from the military in 1978 as a major.
>
> As a civilian, he was rehired at Fort Rucker, Ala., as an aviation
> instructor to begin a second Army career, retiring in May, 2001.
>
> He said he doesn???t dwell on the past and believes everything he did
> was justified. "I don???t regret nothing. There???s nothing that I
> know of that I saw personally that I can say I regretted."
>
> NEXT STORY:
>
>
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.../SRTIGERFORCE/
110200130
>
> Article published October 20, 2003
> Vietnamese teen saved by sergeant
> Michigan man turned gun on soldiers to avert shooting
>
> By MICHAEL D. SALLAH and MITCH WEISS
> BLADE STAFF WRITERS
> ?? THE BLADE, 2003
>
>
> After watching Tiger Force soldiers execute an unarmed villager, Sgt.
> Gerald Bruner did the unthinkable.
>
> He raised his rifle with his own threat: He would kill anyone who
> tried to shoot any more civilians.
>
> The soldiers backed down.
>
> For his efforts, he was berated by a commander for turning on other
> soldiers - and told to see a psychiatrist.
>
> But his actions in the village near Chu Lai in August, 1967, was the
> only known time a platoon member threatened to shoot one of his own to
> stop the brutality, Army records show.
>
> He complained to superiors about the attack on the farmer, but nothing
> happened.
>
> Seven years later, he complained to Army investigators looking into
> Tiger Force atrocities. Again, nothing happened.
>
> In the end, the sergeant was unable to bring justice to a case that
> troubled him to his grave, said family members.
>
> When he died of cancer in 1997, he was still bothered by the two
> months he spent with the platoon.
>
> "He used to tell me that he hoped justice would come of the
> investigation," said his younger brother, Michael Stuckey. "He was
> disillusioned with what he called the zealot characters in Tiger
> Force. He said they often went beyond the gray area. They took their
> aggressions out on villagers."
>
> Two weeks after the shooting in the village, Sergeant Bruner asked to
> be transferred from the platoon after watching two lieutenants scare a
> farmer by shooting at his feet and killing his cattle, records state.
> He served two more tours in Vietnam, including a stint as a sniper.
>
> But his memories of the execution in the hamlet 36 years ago remained
> a powerful image for him, relatives said.
>
> "Every time he brought up Vietnam, he would bring up the village, and
> what happened," said his widow, Karen Bruner of Colon, Mich.
>
> The confrontation began after the platoon entered a clearing with a
> cluster of huts on the edge of the Annamese Mountains, records state.
>
> The soldiers were greeted by smiling adults and children emerging from
> a hut, three soldiers told Army investigators.
>
> The villagers were holding leaflets dropped days earlier by the Army
> allowing them to be evacuated from the area.
>
> "They were happy as hell to see us," Sergeant Bruner told
> investigators.
>
> But what followed was a fatal shooting that was recalled by several
> witnesses during the Army???s investigation.
>
> Soldiers said Sgt. William Doyle, a team leader, began asking the
> farmer if he had seen Viet Cong in the village.
>
> The farmer said he would show the soldiers where the Viet Cong
> guerrillas were hiding, but he wanted them to escort his family to a
> relocation center for safety, the soldiers said.
>
> Sergeant Doyle insisted the man tell the soldiers immediately where
> the enemy was located, striking the farmer in the head with a rifle.
> Again and again, the man pleaded for his family???s protection.
>
> Without warning, the platoon leader raised his M-16 and shot the man
> through his forearm.
>
> Medic Ralph Mayhew recalled the next scene.
>
> "The Vietnamese fell to his knees and spoke tearfully in his language.
> I didn???t like the sight of it, so I turned away and walked away from
> the area."
>
> Sergeant Doyle then ordered his men to shoot the farmer.
>
> Moments later, the farmer???s 16-year-old brother was brought to the
> platoon leader and was tossed to the ground next to his dead brother.
>
> One of the soldiers pointed a 45-caliber handgun at the teenager???s
> head, until Sergeant Bruner intervened. The boy and the rest of his
> family were whisked away without injury the following day.
>
> In an interview with an investigator in February, 1974, Sergeant
> Bruner said he detailed the atrocity to Capt. Carl James, a battalion
> officer.
>
> The captain later told investigators he recalled a conversation with
> Sergeant Bruner about the case, according to an Army investigator???s
> account of the interview, but the captain refused to sign a statement.
>
> Sergeant Bruner said he was told by an unidentified company commander
> "that this particular incident was being taken care of, and not to
> worry about it, and just to forget it ... not to talk to anyone about
> it."
>
> He said the commander began yelling at him about the incident,
> suggesting the sergeant see a psychiatrist because of his threat to
> shoot fellow soldiers.
>
> In an interview with The Blade, Mr. Doyle said the events described by
> witnesses "are all true."
>
> Mr. Doyle said he tried to kill the farmer, but his gun jammed, so he
> ordered his men to carry out the execution. "I wanted to summarily
> execute him, but my gun only fired one round and it hit him in the
> arm.??????
>
> He said he was aware that Mr. Bruner had objected to the killing, and
> was critical of the former sergeant.
>
> "Everyplace he went, he was the only one carrying goddamn Chu Hoi
> leaflets," he said, referring to the Army leaflets dropped in villages
> by helicopters that guaranteed the safety of civilians if they moved
> to relocation camps.
>
> "It was like he was on a civilian-affairs program. And that wasn???t
> our deal. We were out there to hunt and kill."
>
> The angry exchange in the village was the last between the two men.
> Mr. Bruner was injured a month later after stepping on a booby trap
> and immediately transferred from the platoon.
>
> He was honorably discharged from the Army in November, 1975.
>
> He moved with his wife and daughter to Michigan, where he worked for
> the U.S. Veterans Administration in several capacities, including
> assisting veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
>
> Family members say he was pained by his memories of Vietnam, often
> drinking to forget.
>
> Before he died at age 59, Mr. Bruner recorded a tape about his tours
> in Vietnam for a Pearl Harbor commemoration in 1988, recalling the
> shooting of the farmer.
>
> In the tape, he condemned the killing.
>
> "To me, this is what you call murder - they flat out murdered the
> guy."
>
> NEXT STORY:
>
>
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.../SRTIGERFORCE/
110190170
>
> Article published October 19, 2003
> Primary figures
>
> ZOOM 1
>
>
> Sgt. James Barnett - The Tennessee native told Army investigators that
> the unit committed widespread war crimes. He admitted executing an
> unarmed woman on the orders of another sergeant. He resigned as a
> lieutenant from the Army during the investigation. He became a boiler
> operator before dying of cancer in Alabama in 2001 at age 56.
> Spec. Barry Bowman - A platoon medic, he said he became so upset after
> seeing a prisoner beaten and killed that he spoke to a battalion
> chaplain about it. But he admitted to killing a wounded prisoner
> himself, calling it a "mercy killing." He left the Army in 1969 and
> rejoined from 1980 to 1986. Now 59 and living in Rhode Island, he said
> he struggles with memories of the war.
>
>
> ZOOM 1
>
>
> Spec. William Carpenter - The eastern Ohio native joined Tiger Force
> in January, 1967, at 18 and served until December. He recounted war
> crimes during the Army investigation. Now 55, he lives near Rayland,
> Ohio.
>
> ZOOM 1
>
>
> Pvt. Rion Causey - As a 19-year-old unit medic he witnessed the
> executions of unarmed Vietnamese of all ages and genders, counting 120
> civilians killed in just one month of 1967. Now 55, he is a senior
> research scientist in Livermore, Calif.
>
>
> Sgt. William Doyle - He joined Tiger Force in June, 1967, and admitted
> in a recent interview that he killed unarmed civilians, prisoners, and
> interpreters assigned to the unit. He said he left the Army in 1971 to
> join the CIA's Air America, which helped fight communists in
> neighboring Laos. He said he was tipped off by an Army investigator to
> keep quiet about the war crimes. Now 70, he lives in Missouri.
>
> ZOOM 1
>
>
> Spec. Kenneth "Boots" Green - Pvt. Sam Ybarra's best friend in high
> school, he joined the Army with Private Ybarra and was accused of
> helping his friend commit several war crimes. He was called ???Boots'
> because he never removed his boots when he was in the field. A North
> Vietnamese sniper killed Specialist Green on Sept. 29, 1967.
>
> ZOOM 1
>
>
> Lt. James Hawkins - While commanding the platoon from July 2 to Nov.
> 1, the Kentucky native shot an unarmed, elderly man and ordered the
> shooting of civilians and prisoners, former soldiers told Army
> investigators in sworn statements. He told The Blade the killings were
> justified. He was not charged by the Army and was promoted to major
> before retiring in 1978. He worked as a civilian Army employee before
> retiring again in 2001. Now 62, he lives in Florida.
>
> ZOOM 1
>
>
> Pvt. Ken Kerney - The Illinois native joined the platoon in May, 1967,
> as a rifleman. He said in a recent interview he witnessed, but didn't
> take part in, the wide-spread killing of civilians. When he returned
> home from Vietnam, he burned his uniform. But he later joined the Army
> National Guard and served in the 1991 Gulf War. Now 56, he is a
> firefighter in California.
>
>
> ZOOM 1
>
>
> Lt. Col. Gerald Morse - At age 38 the Korean War veteran took over the
> 1st Battalion/327th Infantry. He immediately instituted a more
> aggressive style for Tiger Force and the three companies he oversaw.
> Many atrocities occurred while he was commander. Several soldiers told
> investigators he pushed the unit to kill as many people as possible to
> pad "body count" statistics, which he has denied. He retired in 1979
> as a colonel. Now 74 and a champion racquetball player, he lives in
> Arizona.
>
> Sgt. Harold Trout - At 30, the sergeant was second-in-command of Tiger
> Force and considered a combat veteran. Former soldiers say he ordered
> the execution of a young mother, ordered the execution of a prisoner,
> and himself executed a wounded detainee. He retired from the military
> in 1985. Now 66, he lives in Tennessee.
>
> Pvt. Sam Ybarra - By age 18, the high school dropout was arrested for
> underage drinking and carrying a concealed weapon. He was released
> from jail on the day he was inducted into the Army. Soldiers recall
> him as the most prolific killer in the platoon. Dishonorably
> discharged in 1969 for actions unconnected to Tiger Force, he returned
> to his Arizona reservation, where he struggled with alcoholism and
> drug abuse. He died in 1982 of pneumonia at 36.
>
>
> NEXT STORY:
>
>
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.../SRTIGERFORCE/
110200131
>
> Article published October 20, 2003
> 2 officers clashed over the treatment of noncombatants
> 1 tried to halt war crimes; the other admitted killing civilians
>
> By MICHAEL D. SALLAH and JOE MAHR
> BLADE STAFF WRITERS
> ?? THE BLADE, 2003
>
>
> The two elderly Vietnamese women were walking toward the soldiers when
> Tiger Force platoon Lt. James Hawkins ordered his men to shoot.
>
> Quickly, another lieutenant, Donald Wood, told the men not to fire.
>
> But the soldiers obeyed the senior ranking officer, spraying bullets
> at the two who were walking to their home.
>
> It was another clash between Tiger Force???s top lieutenants.
>
> They fought over battle strategy. They fought over troop maneuvers.
> They even fought over enemy strength estimates.
>
> But their loudest disputes were over the treatment of Vietnamese
> civilians, according to Army records and interviews.
>
> Lieutenant Wood argued that villagers were not the same as enemy
> soldiers, while his counterpart believed civilians were not to be
> trusted, and those refusing to leave designated areas could be shot.
>
> More than three decades later, their battles are still remembered by
> the former soldiers who served with them between May and August, 1967,
> as Tiger Force was moving deeper into the Central Highlands.
>
> "They were like night and day - always fighting," former Spec. William
> Carpenter said recently.
>
> To Mr. Carpenter, Lieutenant Wood was a soldier who "cared about
> people" but in the end, didn???t have the power to stop the violence.
>
> Twice, the lanky artillery observer from Findlay attempted to halt
> attacks on villagers in 1967, complaining to another officer and an
> executive officer of another battalion, he told Army investigators.
>
> He even complained to an inspector general about the platoon, he said.
> But in each case, no action was taken.
>
> In frustration, he transferred from the unit in August, 1967, as the
> platoon went on to kill scores of villagers over the next three
> months, records show.
>
> The first altercation between the two men led to the shooting death of
> an elderly carpenter in the Song Ve Valley that???s still remembered
> by villagers and soldiers.
>
> After weeks of evacuating the valley, platoon members set up camp near
> an abandoned hamlet along the Song Ve River. A helicopter dropped a
> special supply of hot food and beer.
>
> For most of the afternoon, Lieutenant Hawkins - a tall, burly career
> soldier who was known for arguing with senior officers - was drinking
> with his men, and by evening, they were drunk, five other soldiers
> swore in statements.
>
> By nightfall, the platoon leader ordered his men to set up an ambush
> across the river.
>
> That???s when Lieutenant Wood tried to stop the order, arguing the
> soldiers had been drinking and were in no condition to meet the enemy.
>
> But Lieutenant Hawkins ignored him.
>
> Shortly after wading across the river, the troops encountered the
> unarmed elderly man who prayed for his life as he was shot and killed
> by Lieutenant Hawkins, soldiers told investigators. The man was later
> identified by villagers as Dao Hue, a carpenter who was born in the
> valley.
>
> Mr. Hawkins said in a recent interview he was justified in shooting
> the man, saying he was "making a lot of noise" that could have given
> the platoon???s position away.
>
> Two other soldiers who witnessed the killing later told investigators
> there were other ways to quiet the man and that shooting him ended up
> alerting the enemy to their position.
>
> Two weeks later, another confrontation took place between the men that
> led to Lieutenant Wood leaving the unit.
>
> Shortly after the officers arrived on the outskirts of a hamlet, a
> Tiger Force soldier spotted two women approaching the village.
>
> Immediately, Lieutenant Hawkins gave the order to open fire, records
> state.
>
> Lieutenant Wood protested the order, saying the people were simply
> walking toward the soldiers. It didn???t matter: The platoon leader
> and others fired their weapons, wounding one.
>
> The two turned out to be unarmed, elderly Vietnamese women who were
> later carried away in a helicopter, reports state.
>
> During the Army???s investigation of Tiger Force six years later, Mr.
> Wood said he protested to the executive officer of his artillery
> battalion about the way Lieutenant Hawkins was treating civilians. But
> he said the officer told him to return to the platoon.
>
> He also complained to Lt. Stephen Naughton, a former Tiger Force
> platoon leader who had been promoted.
>
> Lieutenant Naughton, who was interviewed by Army investigators in
> 1974, said he received the complaint and passed it on to a colonel in
> the inspector general???s office at Fort Bragg, N.C.
>
> He described the call: "He told me to forget about it, that I would
> just be stirring things up, and hung up on me," the lieutenant told
> investigators.
>
> To make sure the Army took action, Lieutenant Wood said he filed a
> formal statement with the same office in 1968.
>
> But six years later, Army investigators said they couldn???t find any
> records of the two officers??? complaints nor could they track down
> the identities of the commanders who received them.
>
> By the time the Army investigation was under way, Lieutenants Wood and
> Hawkins had left Vietnam.
>
> While Mr. Wood was never a suspect, records show Mr. Hawkins was under
> investigation for murder, dereliction of duty, and conduct unbecoming
> an officer.
>
> In addition to the attacks on civilians described by Lieutenant Wood,
> Army investigators turned up other atrocities involving Lieutenant
> Hawkins, including a shooting assault on 10 farmers in the Song Ve
> Valley, leaving four dead.
>
> Despite the results of the investigation, no charges were filed.
>
> In the years to follow, the two officers from Tiger Force would pursue
> vastly different careers.
>
> Mr. Wood, the son of a Whirlpool engineer, became a defense lawyer in
> Findlay, known for driving sports cars and jumping from airplanes at
> community events. Married with two children, he died of a brain
> aneurysm in 1983 at 36.
>
> His wife, Joyce, said he rarely talked about Vietnam, but often woke
> up at night "with the sweats."
>
> "He would have these dreams. I know he was very disturbed by his years
> in Vietnam," she said.
>
> Her husband refused to talk to her about the atrocities, but his son,
> John, now 32, said his father "went to his grave bothered by what he
> witnessed."
>
> One of Mr. Wood???s friends, Dr. Henry Benz, said the former
> lieutenant often talked to him about the people of Vietnam and how Mr.
> Wood tried to take the time to "really understand the people in
> Vietnam. He clearly took an interest."
>
> Mr. Hawkins recalled his differences with Mr. Wood but said he still
> believes he had a right to fire on unarmed civilians.
>
> "I tell you what, in any war, civilians, innocent people, get killed.
> Yes I can say I have seen people, farmers, whatever, getting killed,"
> said Mr. Hawkins, who retired from the military in 1978 as a major.
>
> As a civilian, he was rehired at Fort Rucker, Ala., as an aviation
> instructor to begin a second Army career, retiring in May, 2001.
>
> He said he doesn???t dwell on the past and believes everything he did
> was justified. "I don???t regret nothing. There???s nothing that I
> know of that I saw personally that I can say I regretted."

In article <7758c273.0310201431.309c8946@posting.google.com>,
LIBERTYFLAME@SOCAL.RR.COM says...
> Folowing recent articles by the Toledo Blade were forwarded to me by a
> Vietnam vet.
<< edit>>

Thanks for the update Sparky.
They ran your sorry ass out of vietpage...

OBTW
http://www.vietquoc.com/news2002/na101902.htm

*plonk*

In article , m.e.nicholas
says...
>

So, y'all are saying the NVA took the time to bury thousands of their victims?

Personally, I'd think that they had more important things to do...

"At the time, he was a company commander of the Republic of Vietnam 3rd
Battalion, 3rd Regiment, First Infantry Division. He was wounded in the battle
at Hue Royal Citadel. According to his knowledge, about 5,600 people were
massacred at dozen sites, the two largest of the mass graves were Khe Da Mai
(gorge) and Xuan O Dien Dai (sand bar). Some documents reported the total
missing at more than 9000."

>http://www.vietquoc.com/news2002/na101902.htm