Vietnam killing spree revelations shock US - Atrocity to rival My Lai is exposed - after 36 years
Tiger Force operated out of control in the Vietnamese highlands for seven months in 1967. Moving across the region, the platoon of 45 paratroops slaughtered unarmed farmers and their wives and children. They tortured and mutilated victims. A litany of horror has emerged - a baby decapitated for the necklace he wore, a teenage boy for his tennis shoes. A former Tiger Force sergeant, William Doyle, told reporters of a scalp he took off a young nurse to decorate his rifle. The Blade investigation concluded that hundreds probably died. 'We weren't keeping count,' Ken Kerney, a former soldier who is now a California firefighter, told the paper. 'I knew it was wrong, but it was an acceptable practice.' Another, Rion Causey, then a 19-year-old medic and now a nuclear physicist, talked of how villagers were routinely shot: 'If they ran we shot them, and if they didn't run we shot them anyway.'
The killing spree was either ignored or encouraged by army top brass, but when an inquiry did take place it lasted for four years. No one was charged. Details were not released to the public, and are still classified. Bill Carpenter, a former special infantryman with Tiger Force, believes the self-styled death squad's former commander, Lt James Hawkins, should be held accountable. He 'thoroughly enjoyed killing' and, now retired to Florida, still defiantly defends his platoon's wartime activities. 'I don't regret nothing,' Hawkins has said.
JUXTAPOSED WITH:
Soldiers don't show any emotion when they kill people. That comes afterwards, when their brains begin to process what they have seen and done.
At the barbecue, I chat to Doc as he perches on the bonnet of his Ford Mustang, his six-year-old daughter sitting on his knee. He was awarded the Silver Star for using his body to shield a wounded soldier when the company was caught in an Iraqi counter-attack. For him, there is no longer a horror of violence. Instead, he seems to be revelling in the power that he enjoyed in Iraq.
"There was one time when we were on checkpoint, and this Iraqi came up to me, and he's all 'ladiladiladi'. You know, shouting Arabic stuff," he says. "I pushed him away, but he came back. So I touched my pistol, but he carried on talking. I pulled out the gun and held it to his nose, but still he keeps shouting. Then I pistol-whipped him, cut him across the cheek. That's what I miss."