Here is a breaking news item, it may not be the talk of the town where you are, but it is here is the Washington, DC area. Though it is not exactly music related, there is no way I could see putting it up as a BS thread. I put it here for you comments and consideration--I am particularly interested in what those of you who were there have to say--
Published Wednesday April 25, 2001
Civilian Deaths in 1969 Assault Still Pain Kerrey BY C. DAVID KOTOK
COPYRIGHT ©2001 OMAHA WORLD-HERALD
Bob Kerrey is confronting another wound from Vietnam - one that left him with no physical scars but did leave Vietnamese women, children and old men dead.
Kerrey expressed anguish Tuesday over a nighttime assault he led Feb. 25, 1969, along the Mekong Delta. It left only civilians dead with no weapons captured or Viet Cong soldiers among the casualties his squad inflicted.
The heroics by Kerrey 17 days later remain an oft-told story of the action that cost him his right leg below the knee and earned him a Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military commendation.
Now, 32 years later, another tale of war has emerged - one the former two-term senator and Nebraska governor had hoped never to speak of.
"I'm not emotionally able to give you all the details," Kerrey said by telephone from New York, where he now serves as president of the New School University in New York.
One detail stands out. Kerrey was awarded a Bronze Star "for heroic achievement" for his actions Feb. 25, with a citation that refers to "twenty-one Viet Cong killed, two hootches (huts) destroyed and two enemy weapons captured."
Kerrey said late Tuesday, "the citation is different than what we reported" to military superiors.
His report, Kerrey said, referred to the civilian casualties. Even so, his superiors allowed him to continue to run the squad and later recommended him for the Medal of Honor for his actions March 14.
Kerrey had been in Vietnam since January 1969. He was a 25-year-old lieutenant leading an elite seven-man squad from the Navy's sea, air and land unit, known as the SEALs. The unconventional warfare unit specialized in capturing enemy officials.
Now is a particularly awkward time for Kerrey to tell friends, family and the public about what had been an unspeakable
memory of war. He has just begun a new career. He recently married writer Sarah Paley. They are expecting a child in October.
In addition, his name continues to pop up on lists of potential Democratic presidential candidates in 2004.
But he has been forced to speak now of the events by a former member of his SEAL squad, Gerhard Klann. Klann's account conflicts with Kerrey's version of events - that probable Viet Cong civilian sympathizers were inadvertently caught in a firefight during an assault on a suspected Viet Cong stronghold.
The squad was not looking to shoot at just any human life, Kerrey said. On two occasions, Kerrey said, he refused missions where civilians in Viet Cong-controlled areas had been the targets. In this case, intelligence suggested that a Viet Cong district meeting was to take place in the huts, Kerrey said.
Mike Ambrose of Houston, the top enlisted man in the squad, said Tuesday that he fully supported Kerrey's account. "We had a bad night," he said. "The result of the action was unfortunate."
Klann declined Tuesday to tell The World-Herald his version of the mission.
Knowing that Klann's version of events was bound to become public, Kerrey spoke out about that night for the first time in a speech last Wednesday at an ROTC leadership seminar on the campus of Virginia Military Institute.
Had it not been for Klann, an experienced member of Kerrey's squad who eventually completed 20 years with the elite Navy unit, Kerrey said, he never would have spoken of the civilians' deaths.
"I lived with this privately for 32 years," Kerrey said. "I felt it best to keep this memory private. I can't keep it private any more. My conscience tells me some good should come from this."
While acknowledging that Klann "tells a completely different version," Kerrey offered this account to The World-Herald and in his ROTC speech:
The seven-man squad, six enlisted men with Kerrey as the lone officer, operated out of Cam Ranh Bay along the coast. Kerrey chose to go on a mission to a free-fire zone, an area that had been cleared of civilians by the U.S. military and where anyone remaining was assumed to be the enemy.
This mission in the Mekong Delta was near Thanh Phu, also referred to a Than or Tanh Phu, Secret Zone. "The squad faced considerable danger," based on intelligence reports on the secret zone - another name for a free-fire zone.
Kerrey flew over the area to get a better idea of the terrain before the action.
"We entered two hours after sunset on a dark and moon-less night. It was the most risky mission I had led in my short time in country. My greatest fear was that some mistake on my part would end in the death of my men," he said.
When in doubt, Kerrey knew from his training, he was to use lethal force. "When we received fire (during the approach to the suspected Viet Cong post), we returned fire. But when the fire stopped, we found that we had killed only women, children and older men. It was not a military victory. It was a tragedy, and I had ordered it."
His strong belief that those slain that night were, at the least, Viet Cong sympathizers, has not helped. "Though it could be justified militarily, I could never make my own peace with what happened that night. I have been haunted by it for 32 years."
Ambrose said his recollection was identical to Kerrey's. The intelligence was thought to be good, Ambrose said. In the dark, enemy fire was met with fire, he said.
In the flash of rounds, no one could see who was in the area, Ambrose said. He assumed later that the Viet Cong were firing from behind the women, children and older men and then escaped.
"Bob's account is absolutely accurate," Ambrose said. "Unfortunately, the results weren't something we were proud of."
At 19 or 20 years old, Ambrose said, he and the others were not concerned with the big picture. "We were just operating and carrying out our mission and hoping to get out of there in one piece," he said.
The account of events that day are quite different in the official Bronze Star citation contained in Kerrey's official Navy biography obtained from the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C.
That citation, which Kerrey said he did not prepare, said Kerrey's squad returned fire "killing 14 Viet Cong." Then, as the squad waited to be evacuated, they came under fire again and killed seven more Viet Cong.
Ambrose said he did not recall that account and stuck with Kerrey's version. He said he was unaware that Kerrey had received a Bronze Star for action on that mission.
For many Americans old enough to recall the events of the Vietnam War, the thought of slain women, children and old men with American soldiers standing over them conjures recollections of My Lai, the execution of Vietnamese civilians by an Army platoon in March 1968.
But accidental civilian casualties are a part of war and were known to have occurred in Vietnam.
American military and intelligence units, along with South Vietnamese forces, were particularly aggressive in 1969 in trying to destroy the Viet Cong in their Mekong Delta strongholds south of Saigon.
The Viet Cong, or the guerrilla units made up of southern Vietnamese supplied by the northern communist regime, was viewed as vulnerable because of losses suffered during the 1968 Tet offensive.
The Phoenix Program, a controversial and effective effort "to neutralize" Viet Cong political operators and sympathizers, was under way. The U.S. Navy embarked on SEALORDS to aggressively disrupt enemy supply lines out of Cambodia by interdiction deep into the Viet Cong-controlled Delta region.
The Army's 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry fought the Battle of Thanh Phu against a dug-in Viet Cong unit on March 11, 1969.
Dwight Daigle of New Orleans, who served three tours in Vietnam as a Navy SEAL, said free-fire zones were just that and civilians should not have been in them. "Anybody in there were not our guys," Daigle said.
Women, youngsters and older men in Viet Cong-held areas typically were "couriers, mules and weapons tenders," Daigle said.
Daigle, who served in Kerrey's platoon but not in his squad, trained with Klann, roomed with him and had Klann stand up for him at his wedding. During all their conversations over the years, Daigle said, Klann never spoke to him about the action with the civilian casualties.
Another member of Kerrey's squad, Lee 'Doc' Schrier, said he had talked to his former squad leader and other members of the unit, with the exception of Klann. He said he understands there is a disagreement between Kerrey's and Klann's accounts but is not taking sides.
"I don't have any animosity to anybody - at this moment," Schrier said. "We wouldn't be in these kinds of messes if people wouldn't talk."
Just two years ago, Schrier, Daigle, Klann and other platoon members joined Kerrey in Washington to plant a tree near the Capitol. They were marking the 30th anniversary of the action for which Kerrey was awarded the Medal of Honor. Klann is shown in a picture with his hand on Kerrey's right shoulder.
When asked for his recollection of the killings, Klann said he did not want to discuss it further.
"Everybody's just taking things out of context," said Klann, whose account set off inquiries by CBS News and a writer for the New York Times. Neither news outlet has aired an account of Klann's version of events.
Kerrey said that the last time he talked to Klann the conversation ended abruptly.
As he tries to translate his public admissions into something positive, Kerrey said, "it hurts like hell."
Kerrey reminds himself that in 1969 he was only 25 years old, younger than his son, Ben. War, by its nature involves "killing people in such a brutal fashion you don't want to do it."
"I have said publicly, 'sometimes it is harder to kill for your country than to die for it,'" Kerrey said. In his mind when he has made that statement are the deaths of the women, children and old men.
Perhaps, Kerrey said, people need a reminder of the destructiveness of war "in this modern era where all the talk is of over the horizon weapons and smart bombs."
No matter how difficult the memories, they have not transformed him into a pacifist, he said. "Some times evil will not yield and, then, the end justifies the means."
World-Herald staff writers Paul Goodsell and Jake Thompson contributed to this report.