The term “fragging,” or the deliberate killing of your military colleagues,
was coined during the Vietnam War. It was a shockingly common phenomenon during that conflict,
but why? Why were American soldiers killing their own officers? What drove them to do
it? How did they get away with it? And what impact did this unprecedented level
of murderous insubordination have on how the military operates today?
Before we get to that, let’s talk a little bit about the Vietnam War and how it all began.
The Vietnam War lasted from 1955 to 1975, making it a 20-year-long hell
for all involved on both sides. It was a divisive conflict, and to this day,
many Americans question if the United States should have gotten involved.
The main driving force for the United States’ invasion of Vietnam was the Domino Theory,
the belief that if one country were to become communist, all of the neighboring countries
would do the same. The US feared communism would spread to South Vietnam and the rest of Asia. In
an attempt to stop this from happening, the U.S. government sent supplies, funding, and military
advisers to South Vietnam, involving the United States in what was, at the time, a civil war.
Ho Chi Minh was the leader of the Viet Minh, a Communist resistance army that fought against
the Japanese and French occupation. Ho Chi Minh wanted to unite Vietnam under a
communist government. The country had been under French colonial rule since the 19th century,
and during World War Two, the country had been invaded by Japan. When Japan was defeated in 1945,
they withdrew from Vietnam, and this would be the first domino
falling - if you’ll pardon the metaphor - that would lead to the Vietnam War.
Emperor Bao Dai was in control of the country until he abdicated in 1945 at
Ho Chi Minh’s urging, leaving the country in the hands of the Viet Minh. Bao Dai spent
a year as a supreme advisor to the Viet Minh until he left Vietnam for Hong Kong,
but the French and Viet Minh continued to unsuccessfully ask him for political support.
When a coalition of Vietnamese anti-communists formed a National Union,
they told Bao Dai they would support him, but only if he would seek independence for
Vietnam. Bao Dai would align himself with them. In 1955, Ngo Dinh Diem, a staunchly
anti-communist politician, became president of the Government of the Republic of Vietnam.
Both sides had the same goal of a United Vietnam but drastically different ideas on
what a unified Vietnam would look like politically. Ho Chi Minh and
his supporters wished for a Communist government, while Bao Dai and Ngo Dinh
Diem looked for a government closer to what existed in Western countries.
Diem’s forces received training and equipment from the United States military and the CIA,
and they would use this to punish Viet Minh sympathizers in the South. Diem would refer
to them as the Viet Cong, meaning Vietnamese Communists. He had 100,000 people arrested,
of which many were tortured and executed.
In the United States, America was equally divided on the war. The first substantial
student protest occurred in October 1963. At the time, the United States had only
sent American military advisers to Vietnam, but students across the United States were speaking
out. They were united under the belief that the Vietnam War was wrong. The protests grew
in strength as the conflict escalated, and some of the protests turned violent.
When American troops were sent to Vietnam, they were surrounded by death and cruelty. American
soldiers had to go up against the Viet Cong, who relied on guerrilla methods. They set traps in
the jungle, and would ambush American soldiers. And crucially to what will follow, many of the
American soldiers were also not there voluntarily but brought over due to the ongoing draft.
Out of 27 million eligible men, the United States drafted 2.2 million American men
during the Vietnam War. Although only 25 percent of the military were draftees,
it also spurred a lot of men into joining the military to avoid being drafted into
it. There were a lot of people who did everything in their power to avoid the
draft, including intentionally failing aptitude tests and fleeing to Canada.
It’s not surprising that resentment would build between soldiers and their superiors. Although the
total is incomplete, from 1969 to 1972, there were around 900 cases of known or suspected
fragging during the Vietnam War, which resulted in 99 deaths and an untold amount of injuries.
From 1970 to 1971, the incidents of fragging increased even as the
United States was withdrawing from Vietnam. But by the end of the war,
it’s believed that at least 450 officers and 600 United States soldiers had been
killed by fragging, and 1400 had died under mysterious circumstances.
Fragging was not new, as similar incidents had occurred prior to the 1960s, but it
became far more prevalent. It was a way for soldiers to discourage those in charge from
being too enthusiastic for combat. As the Vietnam War grew more and more unpopular,
the soldiers lost morale. They saw no reason to risk their lives for a losing
war that many of them didn’t support. There were a lot of soldiers who were
given a one-year tour of duty, and this meant there was less cohesion among units.
For some, it was self-preservation, killing their officers to ensure they might get out
of the Vietnam War alive. American soldiers were staring down the Viet Cong as the United
States was making little progress in the war. At times, fragging was used in order
to remove leaders that soldiers viewed as incompetent or a threat to their survival.
Soldiers resented that unit leaders would risk their soldiers' lives for personal gain.
Fragging had surprising consequences, such as an opium addiction among American soldiers. In some
units, soldiers used fragging in order to fight anti-drug policies. So, officers would tolerate
drug use and general insubordination among their soldiers due to a fear of fragging. Without any
restrictions on narcotics, drugs became freely available to the already traumatized soldiers.
There were incidents where unit leaders who were considered too strict would be given warnings
from their soldiers. When a unit leader would enforce discipline or regulations, sometimes
they would find a frag grenade with the safety pin left in and their name written on it in their
bunk. Other times, soldiers might have discharged a smoke grenade under their bunk. These always
had a loud and clear message, and unit leaders would back down due to the threat of fragging.
If you’re wondering if anyone was ever caught committing the offense,
it wasn’t many, and even fewer people were convicted of the crime. Lower-ranked GIs
united to protect their fellow soldiers, and they helped make
it difficult to identify the guilty party in incidents. Of those who had been convicted,
they were given incredibly light sentences. Some were sentenced to only ten months in jail.
There were some notable incidents. In 1969, after the assault on Hamburger Hill,
there was an underground G.I. newspaper that placed a $10,000 bounty on Lieutenant
Colonel Weldon Honeycutt’s head. Honeycutt had ordered and led the attack at Hamburger Hill,
and the bounty had led to several unsuccessful attempts on Honeycutt’s life.
Hamburger Hill was a 10-day battle where, in a remote valley in South Vietnam, American
troops fought for control of a 3,000-foot-tall hill. After days of a bloody and vicious battle,
they were able to take the hill, but they would abandon it only days later. After
they abandoned it, the North Vietnamese would return to reoccupy it. Many saw
it as a senseless loss of lives, and the debate continues to this day. Anger over
the loss of life most likely incentivized American soldiers to want Honeycutt dead.
In 1970, in Vietnam’s Quang Ngai province, 25-year-old Captain Scott Edward Schneider
was the commander of a United States Army artillery battery. At 1:40 AM on August 17,
he was killed when an American soldier threw a frag grenade into his quarters while he
slept. He died instantly. Private David K. Locklin would be charged with his murder.
19-year-old Locklin was described as a druggie, known for using hashish, LSD,
and meth. He was also known for consuming a 6-ounce bottle of Obesitol on a daily basis.
Obesitol was a drug that combined several amphetamine salts in order to treat obesity.
Locklin would spend most of his time in a nearby village with a group of marines.
One of his platoon mates recalled that he would spend his time smoking “opium with
the old men.” He was assigned menial chores, mostly due to his drug habit and absences,
and he was prohibited from operating complex artillery.
Schneider would eventually demote him from Specialist to a Private, or an E-4 to an
E-1. They believed that Locklin’s motive for the murder was a drug-induced grudge. Locklin would
plead guilty to unpremeditated murder, and he was sentenced to 25 years of hard labor. In 1979,
Locklin would be released, after just eight years and seven months of his sentence.
While drugs played a large part in fragging, racial tension was
also considered a motivating factor in some cases. On March 15, 1971,
at an army base in Bien Hoa, Lieutenants Thomas A. Dellwo and Richard E. Harlan,
two white men, were killed by a grenade being thrown into their sleeping quarters.
When Billy Dean Smith, a black private, was arrested for the crime,
the prosecution argued that Smith had actually meant to target Captain Randall
L. Rigby and 1st Sergeant Billie Willis due to their racist encounters with Smith.
When Smith’s case received international attention, it was moved from Vietnam to
Fort Ord, California. The defense argued that the grenade pin had been planted in
Smith’s pocket after the attack. They alleged he had been targeted due to his
antiwar statements prior to the murders. According to Black Scholar magazine,
Smith was the “logical guilty party” because he was “a black GI with a bad attitude.”
Billy Dean Smith was found not guilty.
It wasn’t unusual for the fragging incidents to miss their intended target. In 1969,
a new commander was put in charge of Battery D of the 11th Marines at Phu Lac. Due to his style of
discipline, he became unpopular with some of the Marines. On February 27, someone threw a
grenade into his sleeping quarters, hoping to frag him. But he wasn’t in his quarters that night.
Instead, the explosion would kill 1st Sergeant Warren R. Furse, who was scheduled to return
home to his family in just a few days. They never convicted anyone of his murder.
At the Quảng Trị Combat Base on April 21, 1969, someone threw a grenade into the company office
of K Company, 9th Marines. First Lieutenant Robert R. Rohweller would die as a result of
the explosion. Private Reginald F. Smith would go on to brag to a colleague about the murder,
which led to his being apprehended. As he told of his exploits, he still had the grenade ring
on his finger. Smith would plead guilty to the murder, and he was sentenced to 40 years. He
wouldn’t finish his time there, though. On July 25, 1982, he was murdered by a fellow inmate.
Army Captain and incoming commander of the 188th
Military Police Company Roy Moore was strict. When he arrived near Da Nang,
he would quickly discover that some of his MPs had developed addictions to drugs and alcohol.
Moore comfortably filed disciplinary charges against addicted and insubordinate soldiers.
Unsurprisingly, he received threats of fragging. One night, Moore was told that
one of his soldiers, Kidwell, a known drug user, had shot 1st Sergeant Howard
and planned to attack Moore next. Moore took precautions to defend himself against Kidwell,
only to discover he had already been taken into custody and was in his
office. Kidwell was court-martialed, and 1st Sergeant Howard survived the attack.
The United States Army wasn’t the only one contending with fragging. It was
prevalent in the Australian military as well.
Lieutenant Robert Thomas Convery of the 9th Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment died
on November 23, 1969, at the age of 22. After a night of heavy drinking with his battalion,
a grenade was placed in his tent in Nui Dat at around midnight. He was killed
when the grenade exploded as he slept. He was due to return home in five days.
Later on, Private Denzil Allen would be convicted of his murder and sentenced
to a life sentence in Risdon Prison, but he would only serve ten years and eight months.
In one case, a booby trap may have saved a man’s life!
Eugene Linden was an American author who once wrote about the demoralization of American
troops in Vietnam in a 1971 Saturday Review article. He told the story of
a company commander in the 23rd Infantry Division. The captain was injured when he
fell on a punji stick, a booby trap that is a simple spike made from sharpened bamboo.
It turns out this was a life-saving event as it removed him from combat. He was informed by a
medic that all of the men in his unit were most likely pleased that he’d fallen on that stick.
The medic explained to him that his unit felt he constantly put his men in danger and lacked
common sense. The men had been talking about fragging him until he fell on that punji stick.
Fragging statistics mostly cover incidents that involve explosives, typically grenades,
but there were also several hundred murders by firearms. In those cases,
it was typically men of equal rank shooting each other, though. According
to the statistics on hand, less than ten officers were killed by their colleagues
via firearms. There were rumors of enlisted soldiers deliberately killing officers and
non-commissioned officers using the chaos of the battlefield to get away with it.
Another incident in Nui Dat involved Private Paul Raymond Ferriday opening fire into the Sergeant’s
Mess of the Royal Australian Army Service Corps with his SLR rifle. On December 25,
1970, Ferriday shot and killed Sergeants Allan Brian Moss and Wallace James Galvin, and wounded
Sergeant Frederick Edwin Bowtell. He committed the crime after an all-day drinking session.
Ferriday was described as being paranoid and prone to fits of rage by an army psychiatrist
during his court-martial. Witnesses would state that Ferriday was aware of his own
actions, and they provided details of previous altercations with Ferriday.
Ferriday would be convicted on two counts of manslaughter and one
assault with a weapon. Of his ten-year sentence, Ferriday only served eight.
The United States military began to instill tougher restrictions on access to weapons to
try to minimize the number of fraggings. They would instill post-fragging lockdowns until
the investigation was completed. In May 1971, the United States Army had to temporarily stop
issuing grenades to all units in Vietnam, and they confiscated weapons, ammunition,
grenades, and knives. Despite their efforts, this didn’t reduce the amount of fragging incidents.
If they couldn’t get it from the American military, soldiers would
find weapons through the black market in Vietnam.
Fragging played a role in why the United States switched to an all-volunteer military,
dropping the draft altogether. Nixon signed the legislation to end conscription on September 28,
1971, but it wouldn’t go into effect until January 27,
1973. When Nixon ran for president in 1968, he had promised he would end the draft.
Nixon also believed ending the draft would put an end to the protests. He thought that
middle-class Americans would lose interest in the war if they didn’t fear that they,
or their loved ones, might be sent to fight. Despite running on that,
Nixon wouldn’t act on his promise for the first years of his presidency.
In fact, the draft was originally due to expire in June 1971. Instead of allowing it to expire,
Nixon asked Congress to approve a two-year extension on it. They had even compiled draft
priority numbers for men born in 1954, 1955, and 1956. Congress would not extend the draft, though.
Vietnam led to a great deal of resentment from American soldiers. Many soldiers were
also faced with Agent Orange, a mixture of herbicides that the United States used
to clear foliage. It was meant to take away the Viet Cong’s hiding places, but it’s believed that
nearly 3 million American soldiers may have been exposed to Agent Orange. Many of these soldiers
who were exposed later developed cancer or other medical problems, including Parkinson’s Disease.
In 1979, United States veterans were able to bring a class-action lawsuit against the
seven herbicide manufacturers who produced Agent Orange. They would settle out of court in 1984,
creating a $180 million fund to compensate the 250,000 victims and their families.
It’s also believed that exposure to Agent Orange is responsible for
abnormally high amounts of miscarriages, skin disease, cancers, birth defects,
and congenital malformations among Vietnamese people in the 1970s.
American soldiers not only witnessed brutality, they participated in it as well.
On March 16, 1968, the United States committed one of its darkest atrocities
during the Vietnam War in the village of My Lai. The village of 700 civilians was
invaded by the Charlie Company, 11th Brigade, Americal Division,
and they slaughtered 504 Vietnamese innocents, including children, within three hours.
There were no reports of opposing fire from the village, but Lt. William Calley,
the commander of the unit, ordered his troops to enter the village firing. Civilians were clubbed,
stabbed, and women were assaulted. The soldiers mutilated some of their victims
by carving “C Company” on their chests. Only one American was injured during the
massacre when he accidentally shot himself in the foot when he was clearing his pistol.
Robert Maples, one of the soldiers at My Lai, refused to open fire on Vietnamese civilians
in a ditch. His commanding officer trained his own weapon on him, and Maples still refused.
Meanwhile, helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson Jr. threatened to open fire on his fellow Americans,
desperate to protect the Vietnamese villagers from being massacred. He threatened to report
the massacre as well. He had blocked the American soldiers with his helicopter,
and he had his crew aim their guns at the American troops, and rescued villagers hiding in a bunker.
When Thompson noticed movement in one of the ditches, he landed so that his crew chief,
Glenn Andreotta, could rescue a young boy from the ditch. The boy was covered in blood,
but uninjured. Thompson would report the incident to his Army officers,
but while that did lead to a cease-fire, it also led to a cover-up.
The United States military would work diligently to keep what happened in My Lai a secret. L.
Mendel Rivers, the chairman of the House of Armed Services Committee,
would later claim that Thompson was the only guilty party there
that day since he was the one who had turned his gun on his fellow Americans.
It’s no surprise that Thompson would throw away the Distinguished Flying Cross that they
had awarded him for saving the lives of the Vietnamese villagers. When given the medal,
the citation made no mention that the hostile fire he faced was from the
American side. Thompson believed the United States military wanted to buy his silence.
He would receive the Soldier’s Medal in 1998,
but he refused to accept unless they also gave the award to his door gunner, Lawrence Colburn,
and the late Andreotta. Sadly, Glenn Andreotta had died in a crash three weeks after My Lai.
The United States military couldn’t keep the lid on My Lai forever,
especially after Ron Ridenhour, a 22-year-old gunner in another unit,
wrote letters to 30 congressional and military officials a year later.
Someone connected to the military called a part-time political columnist from The
Village Voice to tell them about a United States soldier being court-martialed for
the massacre at a Vietnamese village, but the Army didn’t want anyone reporting on it.
Naturally, the columnist, Geoffrey Cowan, was interested. He called a freelancer named Seymour
M. Hersh and told him about the story, and it was Hersh who would dig deeper into what had happened.
Hersh would fly out to Salt Lake City to meet with Calley’s lawyer, and he would travel to Fort
Benning, walking around the base until he found Calley to interview him. Hersh would uncover the
story for the American public, later winning the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.
When the public learned about the My Lai Massacre, anti-war sentiments rose further.
The investigation into the massacre uncovered widespread failures in leadership, discipline,
and morale. The United States military had lost many career soldiers over the
course of the ongoing war. If they hadn’t been rotated out or retired, they were killed. They
had been replaced with draftees, who lacked experience. Military officials blamed the
disappointing talent pool for the military deteriorating. They argued that if they had
more educated middle-class draftees, someone like Calley, an unemployed college dropout,
would have never been the leader of a unit. Although he had dropped out of college, in 1967,
Calley had managed to graduate from Officer's Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Calley would testify that he was ordered by Captain Ernest Medina to carry out the
slaughter in My Lai. However, all of the photographic and recorded evidence
pointed to Calley alone. Calley was sentenced to life in prison, but he was released in 1974.
He was given a dishonorable discharge, and entered the insurance business afterward.
The Vietnam War was, in hindsight, a travesty for all involved - With the flaws that cost
countless thousands their lives trickling down from the very top of leadership.
Fragging is just one more shade of red amidst the overall atmosphere of tragic, bloody chaos.
Now watch “Dirty Secrets of the Vietnam War You Didn’t Know About
“or “Most Insane Booby Traps Used During the Vietnam War.”