Better Times Than These (56 page)

“The question here is rape, and no firm evidence has been presented, in the witnesses’ testimony or otherwise, that a rape actually occurred. The witness, Private Miter, who spent some time himself in the foxhole with those women, testified that what he saw was rape. Yet his conclusion was by inference only. The witness, Private Poats, who admitted being engaged in a sexual group thing with a Vietnamese woman two weeks earlier, was unable to identify a single one of the accused as being present on his visit to the Second Platoon positions. Sergeant Moon, who went down to check, did not think it was rape, and the medic, Conway, freely admitted that his training was inadequate for him to form a decision as to whether or not a rape had occurred.

“Reasonable doubt,” Gore said, letting the words hang on his tongue while he surveyed the court. “If these soldiers are to be found guilty of this most serious of crimes, it must be proved
beyond a reasonable doubt.

“It is not incumbent on them to explain what happened out there that dark rainy night. It is up to the prosecution to prove
beyond a reasonable doubt
that rape did occur. So far what the prosecution has done is throw up a smoke screen of ‘torn clothing’ and ‘moaning.’ How do we know
beyond a reasonable doubt
that these were not signs of ecstasy?
Beyond a reasonable doubt.

“No matter how repugnant the idea may be, it is necessary for you to consider the character of the women in question. The fact that they were killed has no bearing on the case at hand. These men are charged in a rape—not in murder—and no evidence whatsoever suggests that they were in any way involved in the killings. These two females were in custody as Viet Cong prisoners—not innocent civilians as the prosecution has suggested. All of you are aware that teen-aged males and females can be as dangerous to the American soldier here as the most hardened North Vietnamese. Perhaps more so because their danger is insidious and unexpected.

“Finally, I ask you to consider the character of the female population of this very town. The entire country has been referred to as ‘a vast brothel.’ Is it not true that every night hundreds if not thousands of young women—many of them barely in their teens—emerge to solicit money for sex from the troops stationed here—and that on a given night, they might take on all comers in exchange for a prostitute’s fee?

“What I am suggesting is that a reasonable doubt exists. The prosecution has not established rape; it has only hinted at it. And hints are not enough to send men to prison and ruin their future lives.”

Captain Gore returned to his chair. He did not look at the six men at his table, or at the glare he received from the Judge Advocate, Captain Fox.

Two hours later the verdict was returned. Kahn was not present in the courtroom when it was announced and received word of it from Gore in his office later in the afternoon. The court had found Groutman and Maranto guilty of “taking lewd and indecent liberties with the person of a female,” a lesser included charge, and sentenced them to three years each at hard labor, forfeiture of pay and bad-conduct discharges. The rest were acquitted and sent back to the Company. No one was convicted of rape, and the case was officially closed except for the trial of Kahn, which was scheduled for the following afternoon.

“It’s hard to believe,” Kahn said, but Gore ignored the comment and remained uncommunicative during the conversation except to go over some of the questions he planned to ask him on the witness stand. When he was satisfied, he put away his note pad and shut the filing cabinet, turning over a sign that read
OPEN
so that it said
CLOSED.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. “It’s at thirteen hundred, but be a little early.” He turned off the light and preceded Kahn to the door.

“You going for a drink?” Kahn asked.

“Yeah,”

“The air base?”

“I guess so.”

“Want some company?”

“Not really,” Gore said. He removed his glasses and began wiping them with a handkerchief. “I think I’m going to drink by myself tonight.”

“Oh,” Kahn said. He followed Gore down the hall, walking just a pace behind. “Listen,” he said, “I didn’t do anything to piss you off, did I?”

Gore put the glasses on again and tried to smile. “No, you didn’t piss me off. I just don’t feel very good right now. As a matter of fact, I think I feel sick,” he said.

34

T
he same day Kahn went to trial, the new Commander of Bravo Company, Lieutenant C. Francis Holden III, was inspecting his forward positions. He was passing by one of the observation posts when DiGeorgio pointed out something he had been observing with puzzlement most of the afternoon.

“I don’t know if it means nothin’, sir,” DiGeorgio said, “but they been comin’ and goin’ down there for three, four hours.”

Holden brought the binoculars down on a cluster of huts at the edge of the paddy, about five hundred yards away. He focused on perhaps a dozen women with rice baskets balanced on their heads, walking along a dike. Each woman would enter one of the huts and emerge minutes later with an empty basket, then return along the dike.

“What do you make of it?” Holden said curiously.

“Beats me, sir,” DiGeorgio said. “Looks like they storing the rice down there. I don’t know; they never done this before.”

Holden zeroed in again. It seemed harmless enough. He raised the glasses to the far end of the valley where a dark mass of rain clouds was gathering above the mountains, blotting out the sun which had shone most of the morning and part of the afternoon. Then he swept across the valley floor. Everything seemed normal. A few people were moving around in the large hamlet, and there was a stillness in the air of the kind that sometimes precedes a storm, and the black clouds on the horizon gave every indication that they were in for weather during the night.

“Let’s keep an eye on them,” Holden said to the men in the lookout. “It’s a little late now; in the morning I’ll get a squad together to go down there and find out what plays.”

Holden had taken over a company in limbo. Ever since the murders, the collective behavior of Bravo Company had resembled that of a person with inner-ear trouble—things were thoroughly and seriously off. Although the mood of violence and hostility had diminished in the aftermath, it had been replaced by a hazy twilight of guilt. Anyone who had been near the scene was affected by this, and it spread in the days following to almost everyone in the Company. Those on trial had become sour martyrs of a sort. If no one was guilty, everyone was guilty; if everyone was guilty, no one was guilty. The shame existed on various levels, and no small amount of it was due to the knowledge that they were all on Battalion’s shit list and probably would be for some time to come.

Holden, nevertheless, was enjoying his role as Commanding Officer. On Patch’s orders, he had engineered the moving of the Company position downhill, and finally was beginning to feel that he was in the war. In all these months he had never really come to grips with its essential scheme; the politics, the strategy, the viciousness: none of it had ever really jogged his interest. What did intrigue him was whether or not he would be able to function honorably and well. Moreover, Becky was dominating his thoughts less and less now. She was still there, of course, and he knew it wasn’t finished entirely. He would have to do something himself to break it off for good, and once he had, she would be gone forever. In the meantime, running the Company gave him something to keep his mind off it.

Two shirtless men were digging in a trench in the new positions beside a disassembled machine gun. One of them stopped Holden as he passed by.

“Hey, sir, we talk to you a minute?”

“What’s up?” Holden said.

“See that little rise over there, Lieutenant?”

“Yeah,” Holden said, squinting downhill where the man was pointing.

“You said to hold up the perimeter here, but we ain’t going to have no interlocking fire if we do. We put out the aiming stakes a while ago, and that rise defilades a big hole coming uphill.”

“Yes,” Holden said, “I see what you mean. You . . . ah . . . what’s your name, by the way?”

“Muntz, sir.”

“Well, Muntz, you bring up a good point. What do you think we ought to do about it?”

“Only thing I can think of is to move the perimeter down some or either to get some people to shave off that rise with shovels or something.”

“That’s a good idea, Muntz—better than disturbing the integrity of the perimeter. How long do you think it would take?”

“Dunno, sir; maybe three, four hours, if we had a squad on it.”

“Okay, Muntz,” Holden said. “Good idea. I’ll send some people down first thing in the morning and I want you to get it done. First thing, all right?”

“Right, sir,” Muntz said darkly, and after Holden walked away he threw down his entrenching tool in disgust and said to the other man, “What’d I tell you?—Them fucking jerk-off officers—say to do something one minute and change it the next. Lookit that goddamned Brill—we ain’t never gonna get outta here because of the shit he pulled. Officers don’t know their asses from live steam.”

“Whatya expect?” the other man said. “You such a dumb bastard you think officers know what they’re doing?”

Muntz snatched up the shovel and resumed furious digging. After a while he stopped and turned to the other man as though he had had a revelation.

“That’s
Mister
Bastard to you, scumbag.”

In the eyes of the United States Army, Lieutenant William Kahn had sinned, and sinned mightily, and what remained was the formality of establishing his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and punishing him. The
Manual for Courts-Martial
contains a depressing list of charges and specifications ranging from minor offenses, such as drinking liquor with a prisoner or using provoking words and gestures, to major ones, such as being a spy or murderer. In between are a hundred and nine other offenses covering practically every vice known to man, and it was from among these that Captain Fox selected the four issues he intended to prove at trial.

The former Commander of Bravo Company stood at attention before the same court that had tried the other six (except that the three sergeants had been replaced by two captains and a major) while Fox intoned his crimes:

“One—Dereliction of his duties during the period six February by negligently failing to enforce adequate safeguards to protect female Oriental prisoners then in custody of his unit from physical maltreatment.

“Two—Failure to obey a lawful regulation—paragraph three, USARV regulation thirty-three dash three: Failure to report the nonbattle death of an Oriental human being.

“Three—Making false statements under oath to an officer lawfully investigating a crime.

“Four—Misprision of a felony, to wit: having knowledge that a member of or members of his command had committed a felony and wrongfully concealing such felony by failing to make same known to authorities.”

A fifth charge, “Conduct Unbecoming an Officer and a Gentleman,” had been dropped by Fox the morning after Gore chided him for overkill.

Many of the witnesses who had testified at the earlier trial were put on the stand by Fox to establish that crimes against the girls had been committed. They told the same grisly story of the rape-murders for the benefit of the new members of the court. In addition, Spudhead Miter recounted his conversation with Kahn several days after the incident, and the investigating officer testified that Kahn had sworn to him that he had no knowledge of rapes and murders. Finally, Fox introduced into evidence a deposition taken by Colonel Patch which attested that he had never received a formal report of the incident from Kahn and that his knowledge of it was limited to a cursory exchange the day afterward when he had come to inspect the Company.

Gore let all of this pass without comment or cross-examination. The light outside was fading through the lone little window in the courtroom when he rose to his feet to present his case. His first and only witness was the accused.

“Going back several weeks before the incident with the prisoners, how would you describe the mood of your men, Lieutenant?” Gore said.

“It was very bad. Morale was rock bottom.”

“To what did you attribute this?”

“A lot of things, but I think when the First Sergeant was killed and then we were losing a lot of men and that started the real—”

“Objection!” Fox exclaimed. “We are talking about alleged misconduct by this officer on and after February sixth—not the ‘mood’ of anybody weeks before.”

“Can you indicate what you’re driving at, Captain Gore?” Colonel Maitland said patiently.

“Sir, I am trying to show that Lieutenant Kahn was under incredible pressure at the time these events occurred and that his behavior was most assuredly colored by that condition.”

“Is counsel trying to raise an insanity defense?” Fox asked.

“Not at all. I’m simply trying to put the action in its proper context.”

Maitland turned to Gore. “Defense counsel well knows that at this time we are attempting to establish facts: did this officer do what he is charged with, or did he not? Any extraneous subject matter can be brought up later, but first let’s find out what happened. Resume your questioning in a different vein.”