Being a Vietnam Veteran (in country 11/67-9/68) I heard a lot about fragging but had no close experiences with it; however I do have an alternate possibility for the disparity between the numbers from Vietnam and other wars. That is, in previous wars units trained, traveled and fought with one another for the duration of the war; but in Vietnam people rotated in and out of fighting units individually, having no bonds with each other or, and especially in this case, their officers.
It is a lot harder killing someone that has been through everything you had along with you, than it would be to kill a stranger you disagree with, especially if the disagreement is deep.
I think that what I am talking about becomes apparent when looking at the numbers and types of reunions spawned from WWII vets as compared with reunions of people serving together in Vietnam. Although they are growing far more infrequent now, there were many, many WWII reunions; but I have never been informed of any reunion from my unit, nor have I heard of any of my fellow Vietnam vets going to a reunion of their units, ether.
I think the word I am looking for is camaraderie - we didn’t have much of that in Vietnam. Fragging an officer was not hard and easy to get away with, hence the problems with statistics.
That’s just an opinion, of course, but one formed from the experience of being there.
Link to the column: Did soldiers really frag officers in Vietnam? - The Straight Dope
Interesting. I had always assumed that most fragging took place in the field, where the perpetrator could plausibly claim that the enemy was responsible.
I’m just now reading “Going After Cacciato,” by Tim O’Brien, who served in Vietnam from 1969-1970. There’s a fragging that takes place in the field, against a gung-ho lieutenant. Now, of course this is a novel, but it does make you wonder what O’Brien saw, or knew, or if he was just influenced by folklore around fragging, or if in fact he helped create some of it (though the novel was published in I think 1977, and from Cecil’s article it’s clear that fragging was pretty widely known already).
If there was less ‘fragging’ during the 2 WW’s than there was in Vietnam, it could be because troops as a whole were less subservient than soldiers of previous generations, and were beginning to question their roles on the battlefield more, instead of just reciting “Ours is not to question ‘Why?’. Ours is but to do or die.”?
Disclaimer: wasn’t there, and just about all my informants who were there were anti-war activists. If that could be held to color their testimony, well, there you have it.
But what I gleaned was that the issue was not so much personal like or dislike, but competence. Officers were eager to get into the war zone, there is nothing like leading men in combat to add lustre to an officer’s career potential. And just like the enlisted men, the officers would spend a year in-country, and rotate out. Which means that just about the time when they got some idea what the hell they were doing, they were gone.
Anyway, the thinking was explained to me like this: this guy was gonna get dead anyway, the only question was how many others he took with him.
Good column, Cecil and Una. I was very surprised to learn that (at least from the very limited data we have) most of the fraggers were volunteers. I always assumed that most if not all of them were sullen, pissed-off draftees.
And am I the only one who read the column and thought of Niedermeyer, the beast of an ROTC officer from Animal House? In the “where are they now” wrapup at the end of the movie, we’re told he was “Killed in Vietnam.” Pause. “By his own men.”
Remember the end of “Animal House” said that Neidermeyer, the ROTC dick, was “shot in Vietnam by his own troops”. A friend in Canada who skipped out rather than fulfill his ROTC duties mentioned that much of his graduating class of ROTC officers died in Vietnam. I suspected cynicism.
I recall reading an analysis - not sure where - about all that went wrong with Vietnam. (March of Folly??) Among the problems, as pointed out above, that newbies were dropped into existing units and did not develop camaraderies, was the issue that combat experience was essential to a successful career in the Pentagon. Thus, those “gung-ho” lieutenants, full of book larnin’ and eager to win things and push their career, were rotated into and out of units like mid-level managers in today’s corporations, with a similar degrees of arrogance and inexperience. Mix that with established bottom ranked troops’ desire to keep their heads down and avoid excitement, resulted in a mix that could be problematic in a firefight.
Still, what little information Cecil digs up seems to indicate the fragging was likelier not among the people on the frontline, but in the rear – from the column one gets a picture not of gung-ho green LTs being taken out before leading the troops to collective suicide, but of frustrated lower-quality officers and go-to-war-or-go-to-jail “volunteers” stuck in REMF jobs, being asses about it and taking it out on each other. Or if indeed it was hardass officers getting comeuppance, it was only once everyone was back in garrison, the urgency of field survival had passed, and the perps had time to stew in their juices (and in dope and booze).
Still, one of the key factors in taking such a step is if the subject cares about consequences – and in that sense, overall general poor morale does have an influence, if you have more people with a "WTH, my life is fcked anyway, can’t get worse"* attitude.
Sounds like a great idea for a video game.
Point of order–rear unit crimes are easy to report, & have plenty of witnesses, & often are very hard to explain away as enemy action, i.e.: How in the world did a VC sniper kill Colonel Whimwam in the shower? Inside Theatre HQ?
On the front lines, weapons are universal. As are explosives. As in enemy fire.
Who can tell who fire a shot, in the middle of a war?
This is why souvenir enemy weapons are prohibited.
Sure, but now you’re arguing, “Hey, it coulda happened,” where the question is, “Did it happen?”
No, I’m arguing that if it happened in the rear, where it was easy to catch, & stress levels lower, then it happened at the front, where stress was higher, weapons easier to get, & detection all but inheard-of.
Perhaps I’m missing your meaning, but weapons aren’t universal. An AK-47 round is not at all the same as an M-16 round. An autopsy (if done) would reveal that pretty quickly. Of course, autopsies weren’t usually done. Dead was dead. Souvenir weapons weren’t prohibited, but were supposed to be leaded/disabled.
I am aware of this.
AK-47 were used by US Forces in Vietnam, often in preference to early model M-16s.
Yeah, I suppose it would be easy enough to pick up a dead NVA’s weapon and turn it on a friendly. The early M-16 (before the A1 mod) was more a liability than a help, for sure. I always preferred the M-14 over all of them.
And in Twilight Zone: The Movie, the section with the ill-fated Vic Morrow finds him at one point in Vietnam during the war. He overhears a bunch of soldiers who are lost. One soldier says “I told you guys we shouldn’t have fragged Niedermayer!”
That segment was directed by the same John Landis who directed Animal House.
I find that difficult to believe. Sure combat is chaotic, but soldiers weren’t in firefights from the minute they left their base camp. You’re in a platoon of 40 guys with everyone tense and more or less on alert. Someone is going to see you try to frag the LT.
It may have happened, but I doubt it was with anywhere near the same frequency as in the rear.
In “Going After Cacciato,” all the soldiers had to agree, at least tacitly,before the more motivated ones pulled the pin. Again, a work of fiction, but by someone who was there and apparently is well known for putting a fairly thin veneer of fiction on his life experiences. Now, it doesn’t prove anything, but still interesting to consider.
I was part of the first combat troops officially in 'Nam - a Marine outfit that landed in Vietnam in March, 1965.
We set up around the outskirts of the airstrip in Da Nang.
My first experience with fragging (although I don’t remember if we called it that) was around May or June, 1965 when, one late night, a few of us in the “radio tent” heard a nearby explosion.
A little later another Marine came in laughing and said someone blew up the officer’s “outhouse” (we referred to it by another name).
We slapped hands and all laughed.
We assumed the reason for this was the unequal treatment of officers over us “peons” We had a wooden box with 4 holes in it placed over a 6’x6’x6’ foot hole. No walls… no privacy… just sitting out there in an open field.
I used to wait until nightfall to use it.
The officers had nice wooden outhouses built for them.
I ate my “B” rations under a big tent with no sides… drank warm water that was in 15 gallon containers sitting in the dirt and tried my best to flick the flies off of my food. I sat on a wooden bench and ate off a long wooden table.
100 feet away was the officer’s mess. It had screens on the sides. They had 3 containers on a table at the front of their tent. They were labeled water, kool aid, and something I can’t recall. They were so cold, I could see the sweat dripping off of them. Their long tables were covered in a white table cloth and there were Vietnamese girls who cleaned up after them.
I had no love for my officers.
Blowing up their outhouses was the least we could do to demostrate that lack of love.
Later I heard that an officer was was in one outhouse when it was fragged.
No one seemed to care.
I have always assumed that this was the beggining of the practice of fragging officers.