Dennis Stout

                   On my first operation we took this village, there wasn’t any resistance, but there had been some sniper fire.  We were told us to clear the bunkers.  But they were really bomb shelters because, there weren’t firing apertures for people to shoot from.  But I didn’t know any different and they put me with an old-timer and said, do what he does.  So we came up to a bunker and he went to the back I went to the front.  They told me to do what he did, so he held up a grenade and he pulled the pin, so I pulled the pin out of mine.  Then he yelled in English, “get out of there you dirty gooks,” then he threw his grenade in and I threw mine in.  When they exploded we heard these kids start screaming.  So, he pulled another grenade and threw it down and all the noise stopped inside. 

            We took like a lunch break, let the smoke clear and go down and count thebodies.  It was all mothers, small children and old people. There was nobody between the ages of 15 and 50, except mothers with children. They were just people hiding.  So I decided to learnVietnamese enough to talk people into surrendering because I didn’t want that to ever happen.again.  I learned to speak maybe 200 words of Vietnamese, maybe a total of ten phrases, because I learned a little Vietnamese, they wanted me to interrogate prisoners.  I couldn’t tell what these people were telling me.  I could ask a question, but I couldn’t really understand the answer.

            Occasionally they would send a real interpreter. Our interpreter was a guy we called Baron Von Phuc.  We were questioning this guy one time that we captured with his wife and two kids. I had talked them into surrendering. They had been hiding underground.  Our lieutenant said, ask him if he’s ever worked for the NVA or helped the NVA.  And Phuc asked him.  And the guy said, “Well yeah, they came here and they made me carry a bag of rice up into the jungle. They had guns and they told me I had to carry this rice for them. So I carried rice for two days and we left it in a clearing. They gave us a political lecture and paid us.  And so Phuc translated and said, “Yes, he did.”  So the captain said, shoot him.  Just as I turned around to argue with the Captain, Phuc pulled out his pistol and shot the guy.

            We were sweeping a village area and we were supposed to destroy all the crops. We found this garden and hacked up all these melons and squash. We were taking a break under some trees and one of the guys said, somebody’s out there in the garden. This old woman out there and they were going to shoot her.  And I said, no, no, no, I’ll go get her. She could barely walk.  She was stacking up pieces of squash and melon trying to put them back together again.  Nobody knew what to do with her.  What do you do with an old woman like that?  We were travelling in a company size unit then and had some G-2, intelligence people with us. One of the G-2 guys came up and said,” Okay, I’ll take care of her and you guys go ahead.”  We moved a little ways away and we heard this gunshot.  He shot her and reported her as a VC killed.

            Another time, we rounded up about 40-50 civilians in a field.  The people tried to save themselves by bunching up in the middle of the rice fields, so nobody would execute them all at once.  And our lieutenant ordered them shot.  And this colonel who was hovering overhead in a helicopter, landed and locked that lieutenant’s heels.  I thought he was going to chew him out for shooting civilians.  He said, don’t leave those bodies out here in the open where they can be seen.  Take them in the brush.  So, from then on everybody was supposed to take about ten of these people in the brush and shoot them.  And I just refused to do it.  And as far as I know I’m the only one that refused.

            Another time, we rounded up about 40-50 civilians in a field.  The people tried to save themselves by bunching up in the middle of the rice fields, so nobody would execute them all at once.  And our lieutenant ordered them shot.  And this colonel who was hovering overhead in a helicopter, landed and locked that lieutenant’s heels.  I thought he was going to chew him out for shooting civilians.  He said, don’t leave those bodies out here in the open where they can be seen.  Take them in the brush.  So, from then on everybody was supposed to take about ten of these people in the brush and shoot them.  And I just refused to do it.  And as far as I know I’m the only one that refused.