Tiger Force

by Michael Sallah

  While waiting, some of the Tigers began talking about Messer. They didn’t know much about him. Most of the men didn’t even know his name. “He was just a kid. He never had a chance,” Bowman recalled.

  “He joined the unit in the morning,” Carpenter said, “and by the end of the day, he was dead.”

  Barnett seized on the moment. “You see what I mean?” he asked angrily, grabbing everyone’s attention. “That could have been any one of us.”

  No one said a word. They knew what he meant. The Tigers were still divided over how the leaders were treating the Vietnamese, and many remembered the words of Wood and Sanchez: Not everyone is the enemy. Good soldiers stay in control. But now Barnett had the stage and was making a point. Some of the soldiers stared at Messer’s body, covered with blood. No one wanted to go home like that—not in a body bag. In the distance, they could hear the blades of the approaching chopper.

  For soldiers, such moments can be powerful, forcing them to question their own conceptions of behavior in battle—whether they should exercise discretion or discard it altogether. Kill or be killed. If you’re angry or scared enough, you can shoot anything that moves.

  Ybarra and Green began talking about their own mortality. Green brought up the fact that a bullet had struck a tree inches above his head during the firefight. Ybarra said he noticed the same marks but didn’t want to say anything to Green at the time.

  Green looked over at his friend. “You gotta wonder, Sam, who’s going to be the first to get hit,” he said. Ybarra didn’t respond. He didn’t like to talk about death—his or Green’s. Of all the places they had been, this was by far the easiest place to die. The enemy owned this province. They were in control.

  As the soldiers loaded Messer’s body onto the chopper, the Tigers were ordered to move from the area and continue to look for the encampment. If they weren’t ready to engage the enemy when they landed, they were now. The Tigers gripped their rifles and looked side to side as they walked single file, moving along the trail until they came to the edge of another clearing, where huts blended into the shadows.

  With Ybarra at the point, the platoon members stopped and squatted down, peering through the brush to see if there was any activity. To the surprise of the soldiers, young children and women began running from the huts. Ybarra and Green quickly followed and found the villagers were scurrying into three sloped entranceways leading into the ground. Women and children jumped one by one into the openings, which were designed like storm cellars, with the entrances raised aboveground and covered by leaves and brush.

  The Tigers waited until all the people were inside. Ybarra began to creep toward the bunkers, with Green and six others following, while the rest waited with rifles raised.

  Sergeant James Haugh reached one of the entrances and began yelling inside, “Didi Mau,” a command ordering the villagers to exit.

  He waited for a minute, but no one came out.

  “Do we go in there?” asked one of the soldiers.

  Haugh was annoyed at the question. “Bomb ’em,” he said, breaking the silence.

  The soldiers looked at one another and hesitated for a moment. Haugh ordered them again: “Drop your grenades into the holes.” He was in no mood to deal with these people.

  Most of the underground shelters used by the Vietnamese in the Central Highlands were supported by bamboo and brick and were dug about fifteen feet deep to hold at least a dozen people. Slowly, two Tigers unclipped their grenades and, after looking at each other, dropped them into the holes before stepping away from the entrances. Explosions shook the ground. After a moment, the soldiers could hear moans and cries coming from the entranceways. One more time, the soldiers unclipped grenades and dropped them into the holes, and again they felt the earth tremble under their feet.

  The Tigers knew no one could survive the blasts, not unless there were tunnels leading away from the bunkers. While Haugh and others waited near the entrances, other soldiers carefully walked across the clearing to the huts, rifles raised. But no one was inside. Whoever had been in the hooches had fled to the bunkers.

  No one knew how many villagers were in the shelters. For now, Tigers set up camp at the edge of the village.

  As darkness set in hours later, Sergeant Charles Fulton recalled the cries coming from the bunkers. Two Tigers asked whether they should go into the shelters, but team leaders said no. “We kept hearing human sounds,” recalled Fulton. “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.” Throughout the night, other Tigers heard the same cries, but as the hours dragged into dawn, the sounds grew faint. By morning, the bunkers were quiet.

  As the men began to rise for the day, they received another radio transmission from Chu Lai: There was enemy-troop movement near another village south of the Que Son. Get ready for pickup by choppers.

  As the soldiers packed their belongings, a team of Tigers was sent into the bunkers. One by one, they began pulling bloodied and mangled bodies out of the entranceways and lining them up along the trail to the village. All of the villagers were dead, including young children. It was difficult to tell how many were inside, because part of the structures had collapsed from the blasts. In any case, no one bothered to count.

  Barnett asked if any weapons were found, but the Tigers shook their heads. They had searched the floors and walls with flashlights but found none, or even a shred of evidence that the dead were enemy sympathizers. “There was nothing there,” recalled Kerney. “Nothing.”

  After dropping from the choppers, the Tigers expected a firefight. But as they approached the village, which turned out to be nothing but a cluster of huts, the only inhabitants were their fellow soldiers from C Company. A skirmish had already taken place between C Company and the NVA, and the enemy had fled. Before the Tigers could even get the scoop about what had happened, the platoon received another radio transmission: return to the village where the bunkers were bombed—a chopper pilot had just spotted people darting in and out of the huts.

  The Tigers were more than frustrated. They had been ordered to leave the village and now they were being told to go back. If there were NVA soldiers in the area, they would be waiting.

  “We’re going to get killed,” groused Hawkins.

  And even if the village was serving as the enemy encampment they were sent to find, what did it really matter? It was probably one of hundreds scattered from the Que Son to the sea. It seemed as if every radio transmission the Tigers overheard was about various U.S. elements in the southeast portion of the province stumbling on North Vietnamese soldiers. A U.S. Marine platoon had encountered the enemy soldiers, and so had the 502nd, and the 2nd Battalion/327th Infantry. For days over the radio, the Tigers had listened to accounts of U.S. Air Force planes bombing the area, but it didn’t seem to be having any effect whatsoever on the enemy.

  But of course, as the Tigers noted, their complaints didn’t matter. They had to follow orders. Three choppers returned to pick up the men, and within minutes, they were being taken to a clearing a few kilometers away from the village. Commanders did not want the enemy to know where the Tigers were heading.

  The Tigers were dropped on a hillside that featured trails leading to the village. With Ybarra at the point, the platoon moved on a well-worn path along the Son Ly River. Eventually, the soldiers found another trail that led up an incline, with the village at the top. Haugh, who was behind Ybarra, motioned for the point man to step aside. Haugh wanted to lead the Tigers into the village clearing. As he moved closer to a row of huts, an elderly Vietnamese man jumped from the doorway and started to run. Without warning, Haugh opened up and peppered the old man with bullets. As quickly as Haugh fired his gun, Ybarra followed up with his M16, and seconds later other Tigers formed a line and began spraying the huts.

  The firing continued unabated until some huts, with so many rounds ripping into the thatch and bamboo support poles, collapsed.

&nb
sp; And then, as quickly as the firing started, it stopped. As the soldiers moved toward the entrances, they could see bodies on the ground, some moving, others still. Bowman walked over to the elderly man who had been shot by Haugh. Moaning on the ground, the man was wearing a long gray robe with tassels. A pot used for burning incense was on the ground next to him.

  Bowman didn’t know if the villager was a holy man, but it appeared he was at least an elder. The man was not carrying any weapons. Standing over him, Bowman could see the villager’s intestines were exposed through the torn flesh. The man’s moans were growing louder and more pained. There was a time Bowman would have reached into his medic kit for bandages and morphine. It didn’t matter whether the wounded man was a Vietnamese or American soldier; that was Bowman’s job. But the moaning was too much. It was actually making Bowman angry—angry at everything: the war, the Army, the Vietnamese. It was all a horrible nightmare, a wail and a screech and a caterwaul and all of it just getting louder and louder and louder.

  He lifted his M16, pointed it at the man’s head, and, to the surprise of other Tigers, pulled the trigger.

  He had never killed an unarmed villager before. He had been tempted but had refused. Just a month earlier, Trout had ordered him to kill a wounded prisoner in the Song Ve and Bowman had said no.

  He turned around and walked away. Six other bloodied villagers were pulled from huts. As Bowman moved around the wounded, he felt better. He reached down and wrapped gauze around a young girl’s leg, and then one by one helped the others. He then walked to the edge of the clearing. For him, the war had changed; his entire reason for fighting altered. It was no longer about winning. It was now about surviving. And all he wanted to do was go home.

  Hawkins wanted to keep moving. It didn’t matter that the sun would set in an hour over the Que Son Valley, and the men would be hard-pressed to walk the trails in the dark. “Saddle up,” he said. “We’re riding.”

  Carpenter looked at Hawkins in disbelief. So did Barnett. “We can’t go back out there now,” Barnett protested. “It’s going to be night. It’s the worst time to move.” With the assistance of the Vietcong, the NVA knew the terrain and the Tigers didn’t. Any movements by the platoon at night could draw the enemy’s attention in an area already inundated with snipers and booby traps. But Hawkins insisted.

  “This guy is going to get us killed,” Carpenter complained.

  Carpenter argued they were safer setting up camp and a security perimeter at night, and moving during the day when they could at least call in air support and reinforcements. “I’m telling you these gooks already know where we are,” he said. But the commander didn’t want to hear it. “You move when I tell you to move!” Hawkins shouted back. It was his belief that the soldiers needed to keep moving to stay alive. The longer they were in one place, the longer they became targets.

  For the Tigers, the pace was maddening. They were going from one dizzying skirmish to another. At least in the Song Ve Valley, they had a goal: clear the land and get the people out. The Tigers were part of a larger operation—one designed to win the war. Here, it was the opposite: they were bouncing around like pinballs. The jungle terrain was stifling, and snipers were everywhere. Find the enemy base camp? Which one? To the commanders back at Chu Lai, everything was on a wall map, with pins and flags showing suspected enemy positions. But in the field, the entire operations area seemed to be one big enemy encampment—with the Tigers in the crosshairs.

  Sooner or later, the stress was going to take its toll unless the Tigers took a break and returned to Chu Lai for stand-down. No one was sleeping, or even eating for that matter. Their stomachs were in knots.

  For now, the Tigers were fighting in a vacuum—and just trying to survive. Something happens to soldiers when they are forced into a survival mode. They take no chances. They are more apt to fire without discretion, sometimes out of sheer desperation. That’s what was happening to the Tigers.

  With flickers of daylight still streaming through the trees, the Tigers began walking back to the trail that followed the Son Ly River. Their maps showed nothing but jungle for at least a mile, but when they reached the top of a hill, the Tigers came in sight of a village about twenty-five meters away. In the little daylight that was left, Ybarra spotted several villagers bolting from their huts and running into the nearby brush. He immediately stopped and passed the word that people were in the hamlet.

  With rifles raised, the Tigers walked quickly into the clearing but now didn’t see anyone. They broke into teams and began going hut to hut. “Didi Mau,” the soldiers said at each entranceway, ordering the occupants to get out. But each hut was empty.

  Some Tigers began circling the hamlet, looking for the villagers who had run for cover, but they couldn’t find anyone. Angry, Hawkins announced, “Saddle up. We’re leaving.” Once more, Carpenter asked his commander if the Tigers could set up camp for the night. Hawkins ignored him.

  Just as they were leaving, the Tigers spotted a Vietnamese man carrying a rucksack, running between the huts. Without hesitation, several Tigers opened fire and shot him. Trout ordered the men to search the rucksack. Inside were papers in Vietnamese, but no one knew for sure what they represented. The Tigers began searching the huts again, and behind a table in one of the larger hooches they were surprised to find an elderly man who looked to be in his seventies wearing a white conical hat. As he was led out of the hut, the old man looked over at the body on the ground and began shaking. Several Tigers guessed the man was related to the dead Vietnamese.

  As Trout rushed over to the old man, the other Tigers turned away. They knew what was coming, and this time, no one was going to say anything. No one was going to call a chopper or even protest. They were tired and just wanted to go back to the base.

  Trout turned to Private James Cogan, a nineteen-year-old combat engineer, and shouted, “Grease him!” Cogan looked around but didn’t know what to do.

  “Just get it over with,” said Kerrigan.

  Cogan waited for someone else to say something. The other platoon members turned and walked away.

  Cogan was all alone. Slowly, he led the old man behind a hut.

  He had only been with the Tigers less than a month and knew what he was doing was wrong. The line companies didn’t do this—they wouldn’t get away with it. But who was going to say anything out here? He pulled out a .45-caliber handgun from his waistband, stuck the barrel in the old man’s mouth, and fired. The man fell backward to the ground.

  Some of the Tigers came from around the hut and gathered around the villager, noticing he was gurgling, his hands and feet shaking. Cogan leaned over and tensed up, but now he couldn’t pull the trigger.

  Carpenter cringed. He watched from ten meters away, listening to the man choking on blood. He could tell Cogan wasn’t going to shoot. Carpenter abruptly walked over and, pointing the barrel of his gun at the man’s throat, squeezed the trigger.

  Cogan and another Tiger watched the shooting, and no one said anything. They were surprised that Carpenter would finish the job; it wasn’t like him. He was “good-time Bill,” as some of the soldiers called him, a country boy from Ohio who liked to get drunk and laid and would reminisce about barhopping on High Street in Columbus and heading to the Horseshoe to watch the Buckeyes. He could be goofy and at the same time dependable—a guy who would break the tension with a joke, but also scurry to the front of the line if need be. He was one of the few souls trusted by Wood. In fact, he was Wood’s confidant—a fellow midwesterner who wasn’t like the crackers: Barnett, Trout, and most of all Hawkins. What he had just done could be construed as a mercy killing. But it also could be seen as cold-blooded murder. The medics noted that Carpenter, Cogan, and Bowman were suddenly shooting unarmed Vietnamese—acts they once condemned. The dominoes were falling. One by one, the men were breaking down, many through fear and intimidation. This didn’t happen in just one night. It was a gradual erosion. No one could have predicted when Carpenter or Cogan or Bowman w
as going to break. It just happened.

  In every war, soldiers carry their own unique moral code and tolerance to outside pressures. Much of this code is formed by several factors, including background and upbringing. What kind of family raised this soldier? Did the soldier have a strong, supportive father or mother? Was he deeply influenced by religion? Ultimately, all of these traits provide the fiber a soldier needs to resist crossing the line. At the same time, everyone has a breaking point when it comes to survival. If a soldier watches his fellow soldiers being killed and he fears for his life, he may look to his team leader to stay alive. If the team leader is killing civilians, the soldier will feel pressured to follow suit. He may even begin justifying his actions. If this team leader is keeping me alive, he must be doing the right thing. Soon, the soldier is joining in the slaughters.

  The platoon members gathered in the clearing, fell into line, and began slowly walking away from the hamlet. It was now dark, and the Tigers had no idea where Hawkins was leading them. Several Tigers began complaining it was difficult to see the trail. “This is crazy,” said Barnett. “We can’t see a thing.” Carpenter angrily shook his head. “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.” It was clear Hawkins wasn’t listening to them, whatever they said. In the past, that hadn’t mattered. But here, in a place that was so concentrated with enemy soldiers, to ask the Tigers to move in the dark, without knowing precisely where they were, surrounded by NVA, was suicide.

  Carpenter recalled he and others came up with a grim solution: if they were going to stop the night maneuvers, they needed to kill Hawkins.