They Dare not Speak its Name - Army at war with itself - 109 in '70

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http://www.bloomingtonpeaceactioncoalition.org/primary%20files/fragging.html

They Dare not Speak its Name


U.S. Army officials have been quick to spin the puzzling, horrifying attack on his own superiors allegedly perpetrated by "Muslim soldier" Sgt. Asam Akbar, described as a disgruntled platoon leader with an "attitude." The assault by fragmentation grenades and automatic rifle fire left 12 soldiers wounded and one dead at Camp Pennsylvania, a 101st Airborne base camp at Kuwait City, Kuwait on the Iraqi border.


The next day George Heath, a civilian spokesman for the 101st, spoke from the unit's Fort Campbell, Kentucky headquarters, "Incidents of this nature are abnormalities throughout the Army, specifically the 101st." I'll leave it for someone else to figure out how accurate Heath's statement is regarding today's Army. However, I can tell you that not that long ago attacks, very similar to the one at Camp Pennsylvania, on U.S. Army officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) by their own men were common even in the 101st Airborne.
I haven't been reading about or listening to or watching much of the Warnography being transmitted by America's mainstream media lately, but after Camp Pennsylvania, I ratcheted up my news consumption because it rekindled memories that are not that distant. But as I listened and read and watched quite a bit more intently these past couple of days, no writer, no newscaster, no politician, pundit, or cabinet member, no so-called analyst once wrote or uttered the magic word that is, in my opinion, a key to the Akbar Case: Fragging.


When an American soldier killed or attempted to kill one of his superiors in Vietnam the act was called fragging because the weapon of choice, as is the case in Kuwait City, was a fragmentation grenade. As the Vietnam conflict dragged on the Army rank and file, including many draftees, resorted to a variety of methods to endeavor to kill their superiors, so fragging became a comprehensive term that indicated any attempt on the life of an officer or non-commissioned officer (NCO) by one or more of their subordinates. These attempts, as you shall see, were often successful.
Despite strident denials of its existence that continue to this day, fragging is a significant part of America's involvement in the Vietnam war, espeically the latter years of that involvement.


According to 27-year army vet and former Vietnam combat commander Lt. Col. Robert Heinl Jr. writing in 1971 in ARMED FORCES JOURNAL, "With extreme reluctance (after a young West Pointer from . . .Montana was fragged in his sleep) the Pentagon has now disclosed that fraggings in 1970 have more than doubled (to 109) from the previous year."
Texas A&M historian Terry Anderson adds, "During the years of '69 down to '73 we have incidents of fragging--that is shooting or hand grenading your NCO or officer who orders you out into the field. The U.S. Army itself does not know exactly how many . . .officers were murdered, but they know of at least 600 cases, and they have another 1400 who died mysteriously." According to Anderson, in the latter stages of America's stay in Vietnam, the Army was not at war with a Vietnamese enemy but with itself.

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1. sound familar ? ...say Iraq 2003 ?

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It should be noted that fraggings and other insubordination in the Army spiked at a time when, according to Col. Heinl, writing in '71, "The morale, discipline and battleworthiness of the U.S. Armed Forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at anytime in the century and possibly in the history of the United States. By every conceivable indicator, our Army that remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having . . .refused combat, murdering their own officers and NCOs, drug-ridden and dispirited when not mutinous."


Today's "All Volunteer Army of One" often seems to be the antithesis of the preceding description or so we are told, so it seems, every minute of every day. To be fair, saturation television coverage has given me the impression that many of today's soldiers are dedicated, disciplined, sharp, committed to the mission.


But there are negative universals in all warfare. Lousy nutrition. Cramped, dirty, awful living conditions. Terrible weather. Unreasonable often senseless demands made by supervisors. And what Michael Herr describes in DISPATCHES his new journalism account of Vietnam, " . . .long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror." Therefore, I'm not quite ready to write off the alleged murder and maiming at Camp Pennsylvania as an "anomaly" (as it's now being called by the television networks). It took years of bad policy, pointless bloodshed and half-witted cowboy field commanders in Nam for fragging to manifest itself. In the Iraqi theater a fragging has occurred three days into the war. I think I'll wait and see before I accept the "isolated incident/abnormality" explanation.



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2. Winter Soldier Investigation -testimony 1971

http://lists.village.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Winter_Soldier/WS_06_1Marine.html

Testimony given in Detroit, Michigan, on January 31, 1971,
February 1 and 2, 1971

MODERATOR. Mr. Kenny, you mentioned earlier that shooting of unarmed civilians. You weren't supposed to shoot civilians at all unless you found that they were armed. Could you go into this and explain how they explained the dead bodies if there were no arms on them?

KENNY. Yes, in many instances, particularly Operation Brave Armada which took place in Quang Ngai Province in the summer of '69, circumstances would come up where there would be a patrol walking along, a single person or a small group of persons would be sighted at a distance of anywhere from, like, one to maybe five hundred meters. The standard procedure was to holler "Dong Lai!" which is "Stop." A lot of times the civilians or Vietnamese couldn't hear at that distance and if they didn't respond immediately, the procedure was to have the squad or platoon open up on these people. Upon approaching the bodies it was usually found that these people had no weapons at all; that the only reason they hadn't stopped was that they hadn't heard or were frightened, and in order to explain these civilian bodies it was standard procedure to carry several extra fragmentation grenades in the field and these would be planted on the bodies in order to make them a Viet Cong rather than a civilian.

MODERATOR. Do you know whether this went on in other units besides yourselves? I realize this is hearsay, but from things that other people have told you.

KENNY. Yes, I understand from other people I have talked to that this was fairly standard operating procedure.

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VET RESPONSE. Excuse me, would that be in reference to like fragging that's been in the newspapers lately where they throw hand grenades at their own officers an staff NCOs?

VET RESPONSE. The question was if some sort of value was put on men who were inadequate in the field. What I was basically familiar with was newer personnel coming in country and taking the place of somebody who was more experienced in the field and maybe causing unnecessary deaths in the field or something like this and the men felt that if they put a little money together somebody would have the guts to wound them or something so they'd be drawn out of the outfit.

QUESTION. Did you actually ever witness that happening?

VET RESPONSE. Yes, I have.

MODERATOR. Any of you gentlemen here on the panel, could you release any incidents of fragging that you ever heard of or saw? Mr. Campbell.

CAMPBELL. In January of 1969, a couple of miles northeast of An Hoa, in the Arizona territory, my unit was temporarily assigned to Operation Taylor Common. We moved out, we waited until dark and moved out into a very heavily booby-trapped area. The lead platoon hit a booby trap. The word was passed back that it was the platoon commander that hit it and then the CO went up to check to see how the platoon commander was and there was another explosion. The initial word came back that the CO hit a booby trap.

Now from the first blast, the first booby trap that was hit, the platoon commander's radio man was also hit. He went to the hospital and was back to the unit about two weeks later. He told me and several other people, two or three other people privately, that the second booby trap was not a booby trap but that one of the men from the platoon of the commander who hit the first booby trap fragged the company commander because he was very upset about the platoon commander hitting the booby trap. He was upset about the CO waiting until dark to move out. He thought it was a stupid move and figured that got his platoon commander, and the men in that platoon were pretty tight with that platoon commander. I witnessed the explosion. I witnessed the flash, but it was dark. I couldn't see the guy throw the grenade. I didn't know that he threw it until the platoon radio man explained this to me.

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