THE WITNESS:
Would you repeat the question?
BY MR. TILSEN:
Q The question is to describe what the search and destroy missions were
as they related to the homes in the villages.
A When we entered a village, we entered each individual home, searching it.
Each individual home has a bomb shelter located in what would be the most secure
position. The general procedure was to holler at the people in there to bring
up an interpreter and to ask anyone to come out. If noises were heard still
down in there
or if people were heard down in there, the next thing was to throw a grenade
in and walk on.
Q What about the house itself?
A If we had received any sniper fire, or depending on the individual captain
or lieutenant in charge, or sergeant, he would give the order to burn or not
to burn. It was just indiscriminate, how he felt about it.
Q Burn or not to burn what?
A The homes they lived in.
Q Did you participate in a number of search and destroy missions in which the
homes of the people were burned?
A Yes, I did.
Q Would this be all the homes in the village or hamlet?
A As many as we had matches for.
Q Were search and destroy missions of this type a daily or almost daily function
of the battalion with which you were connected?
A When we were in the bush, yes.
Q What would happen to the people who lived in the village
under those circumstances?
THE COURT: I will sustain the objection to that.
You have had him describe generally what the search and destroy
mission was and how it worked and what he had to do with it. I
will sustain the
Government's objection to anything further.
BY MR. TILSEN:
Q You described the throwing of a grenade into a hut, or sometimes you call
it a hutch?
A Hutch.
Q Would you describe a hutch?
THE COURT: I am going to sustain the objection to anything
further along that line.
BY MR. TILSEN:
Q Could you describe what happens when you throw a grenade into
a hutch in which there are people?
THE COURT: I will sustain the objection to that.
MR. TILSEN: I am not quite sure,
Your Honor, how it fits with the limitation that I understood you
wanted me to follow.
THE COURT: I am not sure how this fits with whether
these men on July 10th went into the draft office in Little Falls,
except that I know they have a feeling about the Viet Nam War,
and a general description of this by this witness I have permitted.
As to individual details and what happens when you throw a grenade,
and things that everybody knows are atrocities in war, I am not
going to receive any evidence on that.
MR. TILSEN: I am not talking
about atrocities. I am talking about official
United States policy.
THE COURT: You are talking about this man's individual
policy. He is one out of many many thousands.
MR. TILSEN: No, Your Honor, I am not.
THE COURT: Well, that is the Court's ruling.
BY MR. TILSEN:
Q Were the actions that you have described, to the extent
you have been able to describe them, were they in accordance with the
instructions and training you were given in boot camp and subsequent
training, or were they in violation of these instructions and training
that you were given?
A No.
Q No, what?
A No, they were not in violation. It was just the other direction;
I mean, you were a better
Marine if you did more fantastic things,
if you could burn more hutches, if you could be more, you know,
it was just the whole idea of when you were in boot camp,
the meaner you could be,
the more gooks you could kill,
and the whole idea continued on into the field.
Q Did the throwing of grenades, search and destroy
missions, the burning of villages, take place at the direction of
people, of officers?
A In some cases, yes, and in some cases it was the chain of command. If the
sergeant told you to burn a hutch, you burned the hutch. If a sergeant told
you not to burn it, you didn't burn it.
Q Did you at any time have any duty that related to prisoners?
A Only once.
Q What was that duty?
A It was on my first operation, and I helped interrogate a prisoner.
Q Without telling us -- I guess the Court doesn't want the details of the interrogation.
Was the person - well, did he live through the interrogation?
A I don't know.
Q Is there some doubt about it?
A We only put him on a helicopter, and whether they got back
or not, I don't know.
Q What is the effect of the kind of duty that you had in Vietnam upon yourself
and the other persons who had that same kind of obligation?
A Well, speaking for myself -
MR. ANDERSON: Excuse me. First, can
we limit this to himself?
THE COURT: Yes.
THE WITNESS:
In dealing with myself,
coming back and thinking that I was right and thinking that the
things I had done were right because it was what I had been taught
in boot camp, and then viewing it from the other side, a side
that instead of being a gook, it was a human being, instead of
being a hutch, it was a home, that really socked it to my head.
It really blew my mind, because I had never thought of a hutch as being a home,
it was just an old grass hutch, and they were peasants, they weren't people.
It hasn't been until just in the past year, in 1970, that I have been able
to sleep at nights and have been able to live a normal or what would be normal
if I had not been in the service, sort of live without hassling about it, forgetting
it.
It comes up at night, and stuff like that.
Q If you were permitted, there are incidents that you told me about when we
talked involving individual person to-person stories that involved injury
or death to Vietnamese people, are there not?
A Yes, there are.
Q Is it even at this time, three years afterwards, difficult for you to discuss
those incidents or your role in them?
A Yes, it is.
MR. TILSEN: I take it that the Court doesn't want me to go
into that, under the Court's instructions?
THE COURT: No, I do not.
