Battlefield atrocities by the NVA

[Peter H]

From An Oral History:No Shining Armor,The Marines at War in Vietnam,Otto Lehrach,1992.

Captain John Ripley,page 144

..This was the only time I pulled a grenade out and bit the pins for rapid pull.I did that because a friend of mine at Con Thien about four months before that had been caoptured and they skinned him alive and thre his skin back in the wire and I said,"That ain't happening to me".I knew if I really became disabled and couldn't fight,I was going to pull that damned pin out and take those bastards with me..

Ripley again,page 361:

..Nobody knows about the enemy atrocities.This fellow I was telling you about that got skinned.When we went up to aid Bravo 1/9,we found their radio operators for some reason had been nailed to trees by their shoulders,just the radio operators.They'd taken these big engineering nails and nailed them to the trees.Nobody's ever heard about these atrocities.It never appeared in Time magazine,it didn't in the official history..

PFC Jim Yost,page 278:

..I was in Japan,General Army Hospital,and I woke up to this inhuman sound.."Ooooh".So I asked the Army medic what had happened and he said that this Marine had been captured by the North Vietnamese.They cut his ears off,they poked out his eyes,they cut his nose off,they cut his hands off at the wrist and they stuck a bamboo shoot up through his rectum and punched it out through his stomach and left him to die.And he made it through and he couldn't talk and was blind.Was mute.And he was mutilated.And that's what the North Vietnamese did to Marines if they caught em..

[Peter H]

I don't know how true this is.

http://www.facesfromthewall.com/1967may.html

Richard G. Jones. Major USA Ret

The NVA were waiting for the team and ambushed them as they entered the village, Sig. was wounded in the leg and had been medevaced out. Sometime later I learned that he had died as a result of infection from the wound. It was common practice for the VC and NVA to smear their ammo with human feces which infected the wounds.

[Peter H]

A contrast:

http://library.uncw.edu/web/collections ... s/267.html


Rear Admiral David White, United States Navy (Retired)

Although it was difficult to capture NVA troops, we did medically evacuate some of their wounded. Word of this might have gotten back to NVA commanders, perhaps by their soldiers, or by Vietnamese villagers. The highly disciplined Marines of our unit rarely abused NVA wounded or dead.

You know the old saying: "What goes round comes round." For good or ill, whatever you do to your enemy will come back to you. During UNION II and SWIFT some Marine positions were overrun … and in isolated situations NVA solders assisted wounded Marines before breaking contact. Many Marines remembered such good deeds … and (I imagine) some NVA remembered the way we treated their wounded.

[Peter H]

Joseph Kinney, Notes from a Vietnam Veteran Father:

As a Marine in Vietnam, I knew that if captured, I would be tortured and killed because I was not an officer...I saw this evil firsthand. My platoon once found a missing Marine that had been decapitated and cut up and stacked like firewood.

[IvanSR]

Interesting, thanks.

[Peter H]

Operation Kingfisher 1967

http://thundering-third.org/4members/Op ... her29.html

The next morning at daylight we moved out heading north tracing our route from the day before. When we finally rejoined the rest of our Battalion the NVA had vacated the area. The lieutenant whom we had heard on the radio and several of his men had been caught in the open and were captured. The NVA hog-tied them with comm. wire and bayoneted them and eventually murdered them in their attempt to draw Corpsman and Marines into their killing zone. We had heard their screams the night before but passed them off as an NVA trick. All the time it was our own men being tortured to death.

[Peter H]

LZ Albany,November 1965

http://www.eleven-bravo.co.uk/the-war/a ... of-war.php

Leaving the bulk of the 2/7 US Cavalry trapped between and hopelessly intermingled with NVA forces hidden in the tall jungle grass, US forces at either end of the column regrouped into two separate perimeters. Virtually leaderless and under heavy US air and artillery attack, the surviving NVA troops, their hatred of Americans fueled by communist tales of US atrocities in South Vietnam and party exhortations to become Heroic killers of Americans, mindlessly slaughtered US wounded.

Vietnamese accounts of the battle give contorted explanations of why so many US soldiers were shot in the head or in the back. A postwar review reveals that NVA commanders knew what really happened. During the battle there were mistakes in implementing the NVA policy on taking prisoners of war. The NVA took no prisoners.

[Peter H]

BATTLE OF THE SLOPES,Hill 1338,June 1967

43 wounded executed---"That night, while anticipating an all out attack, the men heard shots punctuated by screams as the NVA executed the wounded. 43 out of 76 slain Sky Soldiers..."

http://www.charliesnow.com/BattleoftheSlopes.htm

On June 23, 1967 both B and C companies 2/503rd linked up to clear the battle field, police the area for all members of their units, WIA's, KIA's, and MIA's. They discovered a horrendous situation committed by the NVA's, over half the KIA's (43 personnel) had suffered head wounds inflicted at close range, indicating that the NVA had executed the wounded during the night. One MIA who was recovered alive had survived the ordeal. The coup de grace had merely stunned him, however his head was split open exposing the skull. The Sky Soldiers that were never in a firefight were sick and horrified.

[IvanSR]

Too bad that the American public was never informed about any of these horrible cases. The press, as mentioned hundreds of times before, SUCKED and didn't do it's job properly.

Peter, thank you again for informing us about this unknown attroicites. If it's either photos or info, you always do a great job.

[Peter H]

Thanks.

The sources seem reputable.John Ripley for example obtained later fame in 1972 in Vietnam:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_John_Ripley

While we should acknowledge that the NVA didn't have the facilities to deal with wounded,captured prisoners,their execution of such men is chilling.

[Peter H]

Operation Hastings 1966

http://www.vwam.com/client/contentclien ... Content=28

It was a harrowing night for Company I as NVA soldiers probed to within fifteen to twenty feet of the marines' perimeter. Corporal Mack Whieley remembered, "The Commies were so close we could hear them breathing heavily and hear them talking." For Private First Class Michael Bednar, it was hell. Struck by a bullet, he fell near another wounded marine just as some NVA soldiers emerged from a clump of trees. Both marines played dead, but the NVA wanted to make sure. After the soldiers plunged a bayonet into the marine beside Bednar and he groaned, they shot him through the head. Three times the soldiers jabbed Bednar with bayonets but he refused to cry out. Leaving him for dead, the soldiers snatched Bednar's cigarettes and watch and moved on to other wounded marines. According to another wounded survivor, Corporal Raymond Powell, "it was damn near like a massacre".

[Peter H]

Used as bait:

http://www.popasmoke.com/kia/incidents. ... dent_id=82

The only American to be rescued from Shark 03 was Charlie Wilklow. In is debriefing he provided the following information.

Immediately after the crash, he looked around and saw Billy Laney lying on the helicopter floor next to the Marine crewchief, Tim Bodden. SFC Laney had sustained a chest wound prior to boarding the aircraft and had a possible broken ankle while Sgt. Bodden had a broken back. Suddenly the Marine door gunner next to him, Frank Cius, was shot in the head and slumped over his machinegun. SFC Wilklow was shot in his right leg and rolled out of the helicopter. Capt. Hanson was outside the wreckage. He said he had to get something from the aircraft. SFC Wilklow crawled away, and as he did so, he became light-headed from the loss of blood. The gunfire abruptly stopped. With his strength gone, Charlie Wilklow collapsed. He looked up and for the first time saw an NVA soldier watching him from a 60-foot high platform next to a 12.7mm machinegun. Further, he realized there were gun emplacements all around him and he had crawled into the NVA's base camp. Enemy soldiers were everywhere. Charlie Wilklow expected to be seized, but NVA soldiers merely walked over, saw his condition and left him there. SFC Wilklow passed out. When he awoke, his web gear was gone and he'd been dragged a few yards into a clearing. An orange signal panel was laid out beside him and NVA gunners had their weapons trained on the clearing in the hope a rescue attempt would be made. As aircraft searched for the missing men, SFC Wilklow watched the NVA carry several American bodies away, decapitate them, than mount their heads on stakes like trophies. American POWs were also led past him, but he could not identify them. Lack of food and water kept his mind hazy and he slipped in and out of consciousness.

On the second day he saw two Caucasians in civilian clothes watching him from a distance. NVA officers were escorting them and he believed they were Russian advisors. The third day it rained for hours. On the fourth day he squirmed when he saw maggots crawling in his open wound. Barely clinging to life, the NVA no longer even watched him. That night SFC Wilklow found the strength to move and he crawled away from the enemy camp. The pain helped keep him lucid. By sunrise he had crawled and dragged himself nearly two miles. The sun was high when Charlie Wilklow heard a plane overhead. He found a signal panel the NVA missed and waved it before passing out. When he awoke, a shadowy figure was shaking his shoulders. It was SSgt. Lester Pace who had just repelled in to the area in response to the signal. Within minutes an ARVN helicopter appeared to pick them up.

[Peter H]

Philip Caputo:

..the Marine was dragged into a village,where he was beaten with rifle butts and clubs,then executed with a shot to the back of the head.The usual surgery was done on his genitals,which were then stuffed in his mouth.The body was tossed into a river.Apparently it wasn't weighed properly:it floated to the surface a few days later and was discovered by one of our patrols..

Long Time Passing ,Myra MacPherson,page 195.

[Penn44]

Operation Hastings 1966

http://www.vwam.com/client/contentclien ... Content=28

It was a harrowing night for Company I as NVA soldiers probed to within fifteen to twenty feet of the marines' perimeter. Corporal Mack Whieley remembered, "The Commies were so close we could hear them breathing heavily and hear them talking." For Private First Class Michael Bednar, it was hell. Struck by a bullet, he fell near another wounded marine just as some NVA soldiers emerged from a clump of trees. Both marines played dead, but the NVA wanted to make sure. After the soldiers plunged a bayonet into the marine beside Bednar and he groaned, they shot him through the head. Three times the soldiers jabbed Bednar with bayonets but he refused to cry out. Leaving him for dead, the soldiers snatched Bednar's cigarettes and watch and moved on to other wounded marines. According to another wounded survivor, Corporal Raymond Powell, "it was damn near like a massacre".

I do not know if this is a "war crime," or not. It is a gray zone. At night, not knowing whether the Americans were still armed and capable of resisting, I can see why the NVA shot them. Had the NVA knew they were wounded and incapable of resisting, then it is a war crime. However, I doubt that either the Americans or NVA received that level of law of land warfare training.

An old infantry company commander of mine, a 11D in the Vietnam War, broke the Law of Land of Warfare down like this to us with his "Nam" mindset. You can shot any enemy soldier in front of you, wounded or not, however, if you pass a wounded enemy soldier and he is not resisting, he is now under your "control" as you have secured the terrain around him, and therefore, you can not freely shoot him. I don't agree with his technical interpretation of the Law of Land Warfare from a strictly legal perspective, but that was his milieu in Nam.

Penn44

.

[South]

Good morning Peter H,

Not familiar with Major Jones' statement "common practice to smear ammo with human feces..".

I am very familiar that VC/NVA punji stakes -sharpened bamboo spikes strategically placed to cause Allied WIA were "sh*t dipped" so infection would immediatly occur.

Re the 8 Oct post "NVA took no prisoners";

I forgot the specifics but the USMC's Pvt Robert Garwood was a prisoner of the North Vietnamese.

Warm regards,

Bob