Tiger Force ( EXECUTIVE EDITOR COMMENTARY ) "Massacre story needs to be told"

[Seascamp]

I don?t have a lot to add but I can say that the life?s blood of most the military types in VN was the incessant din of rumors, gossip, tall tales, etc. Admittedly I was more tuned in on Marine goings on and later there was some of the business with the Americal. Having said that, if there was bad news or a horrid story, it spread like wildfire and, of course, was embellished as it spread. That being said, I never heard of such a story or of any such operation and we had quite a set of ears up and could tune in on any non-encoded VOX and snoop till our heart?s content, and did. But then, by no measure did we know and see all but it seems that something so dramatic would have squirted out of the sandwich somewhere along the line. But who knows.

Scamp

[MORTARDUDE]

I have read all of the available stories about this. I don't want to believe it either, but I don't see anyone who was there saying none of it happened. I see some of the platoon members saying they didn't commit any crimes, but witnessed them and didn't try to stop them or report them. I would like to see what Col. Hackworth has to say about this, since he was responsible for getting the unit started. I tried to find out where he was at this time, but have been unable to.

What was the motivation for the newspaper articles to begin with ? They spent a year+ and a lot of time and effort finding folks and interviewing, knowing full well that even if any of it was true, nothing would be done about it.

IMHO

Larry

[Arrow]

I sent an e-mail to Soldiers For The Truth a site affiliated with David Hackworth. I also sentthe Toledoblade link asking them to take a look at the story and comment.I invited them to dothat here on the site if they wishedsending them the link to the PF. Ithanked them for their time and any feedback they could give us.


www.sftt.org/

[frisco-kid]

as far as I'm concerned. There's another 101st trooper that posts over on the VN board on the History Channel who also labels this BS. He was in the 2/327. He stayed later into the summer than I did. He never heard any hint of this going on, either. It was James' battalion and he stayed in the AO longer than Rex or I. If he didn't hear anything about it, I find it very difficult to believe it happened. Like has already been stated, something on this scale would have made it into the rumor mills. One of SEVERAL of the medics quoted in the articles lives here in the Bay Area. I'm thinking of looking him up.

As far as Hackworth forming Tiger Force, I'm not sure. I seem to remember hearing that Westmoreland started the idea of recon platoons when he was Division CG at Ft. Campbell. The Recondo School there was started under his command. Could be wrong. It's been alot of years. I'm old, ya know .

[Arrow]

The only tiger force I ever heard of was the 1st/327/101st battalion recon team, a platoon.I served in ACo/1st/327 as a grunt and I know for a fact that this unit was not in the area described at the time described. This just could not be or I'm completely nuts-- I know for sure that during early 67--at least from April 67 when I joined the 1st/327, that Tiger Force, the recon unit, was working with the rest of the unit around Duc Pho in Quang Ngai province which is a loooooong way from the central Highlands and they were doing recon, not village eradication

TigerForce was the specific recon team of the1st/327/101st battalionandthe way I readHack he's not taking credit for the wholeidea of reconbut just that specific team.

I am going to readthe articlesa few more times because on the first read my feeling was they are pooling a lot of information in a general kind of wayregardingmany incidents, people,and placesusing broad generalization and then for good measure findinggreat headline grabbers combiningthe word Tiger Force/slaughter etc.

Until you or James comes here and tells us differentthe whole series isoverinflatedBS to me.

ps. One of the guys is from Hotlanta. Maybe LT and Sid need toinvite him for raw oysters at the Outhouse Saloon.

[exlrrp]

I sure appreciate the reserch and looking you all have done for this--I'm in a place where I have to hassle out unfamiliar keyboards and have to buy internet time by the hour, often while I'm wating for the trains so I'm rushed--havent even read the blade article.
whether this is or not true, the reason for publishing it now can really only be to sell newspapers and what sells better than "AMERICAN SOLDIERS RUN AMOK!!"
I think that there is a kernel of truth to this because i th9nk that if you give enough people enough guns and put them in extremely stressfull situations, some of them are going to go bonkers--I mean look how many people go postal right here in our own country.
I know what I did and I know what I saw and if I saw or heard anythig about this I think you know that I woud say it.
Thetiming of this means it was right in the middle or Operation Roundup--when our batt and maybe the rest of the brigade was tasked with sweeping the Song Ve valley and moving the poulation into refugee camps. I have said this was the sorriest thing i ever did in my life and one of my greatest regrets was not being able to fibnd the person who thought it up and pushing his face in pigshit. every body hated it--what it meant is putting them on trucks and then burning their houses .I zippoed a house--one-- and stopped right there-- I didn't join the army to run people out of their houses and them burn them down. I will regret that till the day I die. the others stopped too, it was such a humongous horrible thing
Yes there was a lot of misery involved in this on both sides and I did see people pushed around, even buttstroked and kicked. but I saw no one killed or shot and I saw troops go to as much kindness as they coud given the circumstances.Its possible that in the stress of this a few migh have gone postal. It was a rotten thing to do to the Vietnamese and it was a rotten thing to do to the 101st
that was why I denied the reality of My Lai--untill I saw the pictures. I could just not imagine that happening in the platoon I was in--theres a lot of unkind things you could say about the 101st but mass murder sure wasnt one of them, at least not in my experience and I have checked that opinion out with me and packos friend Dan who was with me *he's in my platoon picture, the tallest white guy in the back row. He agrees with me entirely--it just would not have happened in that platoon.
I'm stillreally proud ofd having served in A Co 1st/327 and I always will be, they were the quintessential paratroopers as far as I am concerned. Their motto was "Above the Rest" and As far as I'm concerned that is where they will always stay.
I'm goiung to go back to enjoying Europe now but this was upsetting to me

James

[DMZ-LT]

Send me his name and address , I'd be glad to talk to the man. Better keep Sid away for awhile - he still has that kill em all and let God sort em out mentality. I know how different the guy on the other side of the bush sees the same day but this sounds like bar room BS

[phuloi]

Thank you for your heartfelt sharing of this.I understand how difficult it must be for you to search your memory banks and be reminded of one of the things from the Vietnam expierence that caused you much chagrin and sadness.Displacing civilians,as unseemly as it was,happened for a reason in the grand schism of war,and that was done to save lives-there`s AND ours.
God bless you,James.Enjoy your holiday,now.We`ll sort this shit out from here in the States.

[Arrow]

James...

What Griz said twice...

And thanks for the grand tour. I esp would love to tour the English towns and countryside. I'm a big fan of C.S. Lewis literature. And also have always loved the English cottages and gardens. Simple fare I know but there is a quietness about them that draws my spirit.

Go on now like Griz said and let us take care of this from here.

God Blesseth you...

[exlrrp]

" I condemn the bad in others, yet do the worst, which I abhor
(Seneca)
Old Seneca got it right and no one is more aware of it than me

I just came from walking the canals of Venice as darkness fell--walking with my sweetie, listening to the beautiful Italian music sung by the gndoliers as the gondolas slowly pass by. It choked me up and brought tears to my eyes and I have to look away because Its still hard to feell things so strongly, especially beautiful things
But its always good when I can feel things so strongly that I show emotion because I thought for a long long time that I had lost the capacity to do so.
And where I lost it was in the Song Ve Valley in '67--what the rest of my generation called the Summer of Love. Yeah, the irony slays me sometimes too when I think about it.
I killed my first 7 men in the Song Ve--you all may think I'm bragging again but I'm really not--just telling. I didn't think it was heroic then and I think even less so now. It was the middle of the night, they hit the trip flare, I pulled the Claymore clickers--no heroism about it, nothing brave, just business. Thats why they paid me that fat $65/month combat pay and I guess I earned a months worth that night. I wasn't a hero at all, as a matter of fact, If I hadn't been sitting there openmouthed awestruck I'd have started pulling the trigger on the machine gun I was sitting next to and got a bunch more like turkey shoot-- they ran right by me:
We crept out by the light of day and there they were, spread out like dead hogs, with that white motionless look like scattered mannequins--unreal, totally unreal. I was awestruck--I sure thought there would be more to it than that but that was it. I wanted to undo it about as bad as I ever wanted anything but there it was and there it would remain. Iknew then for sure--nothing is ever, EVER gonna be the same after this
There were 6 on the ground and one of them moved, he'd held a grenade all night and was trying to take some of us with him. and he might have but the squad leader shot him dead. He was a hero, that one, and I thought when I die I want to die like him, fighting to the last. Later we found a dead body on a stretcher that theyd been carrying. The bearers had been wounded and dumped him. That made 7. Many years later when I was reading the story of the Little Tailor to my son I got so choked up I couldn't read--Seven With One Blow. It chokes me up now to think of it.

But that wasn't the most shocking thing that happened to me in the Song Ve nor the most shocking thing I did nor the one that was the most damaging to me. That was Operation Roundup
Ive talked about it before--we were there to collect the people out of a picture post card valley, round them up and send them to refugee camps, then burn their houses and make the area into a free fire zone.
I don't remember being ordered to do this but thats what we all knew we had to do. I think this was the most shocking thing I ever did in my life, and the sorriest. There was nothing in that valley left but women and children and old folks-- the young men were all off fighting us and I could--and can--sure see why.
I knew then and Ive known ever since that if I was a Vietnamese, I'd have been a VietCong--such things can not be born with tolerance.
I zippoed a house mostly to see what it was like and like the Claymore--hadn't got it started when I knew I wanted to take it back more than anything in the world. But there it was and there was no taking it back, I would have to live with it from then on. I consider it the worst thing I ever did in my life and there were other sorry things in my life to measure up to it. I don't know why I have such a hard time with humility because I sure have a lot to be humble about. no doubt.
the thing I'm proudest of my platoon and company about is that it just died out. Again, I don't remember any countermanding order, or any conspiracy to evade orders, but we just stopped doing it. I guess it was just too fucking awful for any decent person to do and that platoon was full of decnt people. Hard core fucking paratroopers, no doubt ,but decent people none the less, they are not necessarily self canceling. I sure didn't enlist in the army and become a paratrooper so I could run people out of their houses and burn them down and those others didn't either. Theres nothing you could pay me to do it and theres no cause so good I would do it--that kind of action makes whatever good cause you started with into a bad cause, a bad, BAD cause. People who do that should feel ashamed of themsleves and I certainly did. I never felt we were the good guys after that, could never be the good guys after that and I lost whatever feelong I had left for our "Cause" It sure as hell was not good enough to justify that and that sure was not the only place in the country it happened. If I'd been a hero I would have refused to take part in it, even gone to jail first but I was an 18 year old kid just trying to stay alive in the worlds hardest place.
I couldn't get out of the Song Ve fast enough and that was ultimately why I volunteered for the lrrps. I wanted to fight the A team of the enemy and that was defintely not it. There were other reasons also.
If there were worse things happening in the Song Ve then, I guess I can believe it. You can't puit young men, heavily armed, into that kind of situation, into that kind of insanity and not expect bad things will happen. This is not to excuse or to pardon but to understand. I don't want to believe the people I served with would do that--I had a really good friend, Dan Clint--we came in as cherries together-- who made E6 in Tiger Force in a year--a helluva fighter among hellacious fighters-- and I don't want to believe that he would do this. But I didn't want to believe that My Lai happened either.
I don't think I'm going to read the Blade articles. Maybe the public has a "right to know" but I sure as hell don't have to know. I know what I know and thats enough. And if you think I'm chicken then you just werent in the Song Ve in the summer of Love
I was in the Duomo in Firenze yesterday and I paid extra to have a mass said for all those who are troubled by war. I'm not Catholic but the symbolism is there and i meant it from the heart. I think we owe the Vietnamese some hellacious amends-- friends of Bill Wilson will know what I mean. Thats why I felt so compelled to go back to Vietnam when I had the chance and I was glad to see them getting along so well. I saw no child beggars or whores, no scarred country, no refugees. God bless tham and bring them peace, they deserve it--and so do we.

be good,
love
James