After writing about the mini-mutiny of a U.S. platoon in Iraq , I found this analysis of the state of U.S. armed forces in the closing years of the Vietnam War. Clearly, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet, this time around:
“Frag incidents” or just “fragging” is current soldier slang in Vietnam for the murder or attempted murder of strict, unpopular, or just aggressive officers and NCOs. With extreme reluctance (after a young West Pointer from Senator Mike Mansfield’s Montana was fragged in his sleep) the Pentagon has now disclosed that fraggings in (109) have more than doubled those of (96).
Word of the deaths of officers will bring cheers at troop movies or in bivouacs of certain units. In one such division — the morale plagued Americal — fraggings during have been authoritatively estimated to be running about one a week.…
Bounties, raised by common subscription in amounts running anywhere from $50 to $1,000, have been widely reported put on the heads of leaders whom the privates and Sp4s want to rub out.…
As early as , however, an entire company of the 196th Light Infantry Brigade publicly sat down on the battlefield. Later that year, another rifle company, from the famed 1st Air Cavalry Division, flatly refused — on CBS-TV — to advance down a dangerous trail.…
“Search and evade” (meaning tacit avoidance of combat by units in the field) is now virtually a principle of war, vividly expressed by the GI phrase, “CYA (cover your ass) and get home!”…
Symbolic anti-war fasts (such as the one at Pleiku where an entire medical unit, led by its officers, refused Thanksgiving turkey), peace symbols, “V”-signs not for victory but for peace, booing and cursing of officers and even of hapless entertainers such as Bob Hope, are unhappily commonplace.…
One militant West Coast Group, Movement for a Democratic Military (MDM), has specialized in weapons theft from military bases in California. During , large armory thefts were successfully perpetrated against Oakland Army Base, Fts Cronkhite and Ord, and even the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton, where a team wearing Marine uniforms got away with nine M-16 rifles and an M-79 grenade launcher.
Operating in the middle West, three soldiers from Ft Carson, Colo., home of the Army’s permissive experimental unit, the 4th Mechanized Division, were recently indicted by a federal grand jury for dynamiting the telephone exchange, power plant and water works of another Army installation, Camp McCoy, Wis., on .
It’s a fascinating look at a part of American history that is frequently overlooked both by the Vietnam hawks who think that the military was doing just fine if only the civilians hadn’t gotten in the way, and the Vietnam doves, who tend to overemphasize the role of stateside protest and play down the role of dissention in the ranks. Recommended reading.
