How do I check my Dad's Vietnam war story?

Factual Questions
1

For a myriad of reasons unrelated to this question, I am estranged from my father. Several years ago, he told me a story about his time in Vietnam. Is there a way to verify the veracity of the story, which sounds unbelievable to me?

He says he went there on a normal tour of duty as an enlisted Marine. At first, he understood and followed the missions, which were focused on a clear goal of attacking the communists*.

Then, they got a new Platoon leader, who was much more sadistic, and clearly interested in body counts (which meant killing women and children, too). The platoon, my dad told me (and he only told me this once in my life; he did generally avoid talking about his service in Vietnam, as proud as he may be as an ex-Marine), drew straws, and my dad was selected to kill this rogue, out-of-control leader.

Which he did.

After shooting and killing his Commanding Officer, he was removed stateside, where he got a desk job at Quantico, Virginia, to ride out his tour of duty.

I don’t believe this.

My dad did get an honorable discharge (I’ve seen the “diploma” framed in his office). And I tend to believe that he spent time in Virginia after being in Vietnam. But this sounds like it would have precipitated an investigation, a trial, or something. Not just a quiet retreat to obscurity.

Is there a way to conclusively confirm or deny this story?

*I have strong disagreements with my father’s take on politics and that war; this is a paraphrase, and not something I agree with, nor wish to debate here.

2

In an interview oft quoted when that guy killed a bunch of his comrades early on in the Iraq war. Terry Anderson of Texas A+M claimed:

If that 1400 was available as a list (along with their unit and date of death) you could see if any of them fit.

3

Thank you very much for finding that.

But is it plausible that the shooter would then just get a quiet, Honorable discharge?

My dad is a bit of a sociopath, so he does mentally rewrite his own history to fit his mental image. Maybe he’s transposing himself with a fellow soldier.

4

It does seem a little fishy. But it seems that if a death was “suspicious” but there was no evidence to build a case for court martial against anyone in particular, they could opt to send the suspect home to avoid the same thing happening again (rather than sending the officer’s replacement into the same unit and a expect him to lead the same soldiers who had possibly just killed his predecessor)

But I am no expert in Vietnam era military justice.

5

Let’s assume he actually did this (and I have a hard time believing it). It’s completely unlikely that anyone outside of his platoon (or a small number of people within said platoon) knew anything about his involvement. No ranking or responsible NCO or officer would look the other way on such a thing. He would have ended up in Leavenworth, or been executed for treason. If you can get a look at his DD214 (separation document), it will tell you where he was stationed and the duration of the tours during his service. You could probably find it in his house within an hour or so. Veterans never throw that document away. If he was short-toured out of 'Nam, it could have been because he’s mentally unstable, or was injured in some fashion. His medical record would tell you about either. Gaining access to those documents is another story, of course.

6

It is possable.

My brother was the CO’s driver for about 6 months, he was more afraid of getting fragged with the CO, the by being killed by the emeny.

I have a friend who drew down on his Lt with a M16, helped the Lt make the proper descision. When they got back to base no one made a coment about his action.

There was a engineer’s unit in Wshington getting ready to go to Vietman when the sargent asked the CO, Say Lt you going to Vietman with us? When he answered Ya why wouldn"t I, the sargent then asked are you comming back. they left the next day with a new CO.

It could have happened, but if no one talked and the officer was a AH, they it would be hard to get a conviction.

7

Only if higher ups had reason to believe it was murder. I suspect many of these fraggings took place on patrol, and could be reported as the result of enemy action.

8

I’d imagine that there should at least be records of what unit your father served in, who the officers in charge of that unit were, and what became of them. It still couldn’t completely verify your father’s story (“Platoon leader dead of gunshot wounds while on patrol” could of course be from enemy action), but it might disprove it (if all of your dad’s lieutenants came home outside a body bag).

9

Your motives seem pretty clearly intent of punishing or humiliating him in some manner if you can get the goods on him. Your dad may be a bad father and a conservative jackass, but your intent to confirm if he murdered someone so you will have ammunition to go after him is pretty squicky son behavior at best.

There are some things that are best left alone.

10

If you know what his unit was (you’d need to know company, battalion, and regiment) you can order the monthly rosters from the Marine Corps. Check the names of the officers to see if any were shot and killed. You can do this on any of the several “virtual walls” on the net. If there were none killed shortly before he left the company you can pretty much discount his story.
While it’s possible he did indeed kill the officer there is just about exactly zero chance he got sent home and given a cushy job for it. And as for the story about straws, that’s got bullshit written all over it. There would have been 30-45 men in the platoon, you couldn’t get that many men to agree on what to have for lunch let alone who should kill someone.

You got a whack job for a father, bummer.

11

Really? You don’t think that maybe he just wants to find out if his father’s fantastic story is true? I would.

12

To what end? If I am estranged from my father with whom I have variety of political and personal disagreements, the incentive to go digging into some “darkest night of the soul” confession of a wartime murder is hardly a bit of whimsy, it’s a weapon to beat someone over the head.

13

[Moderating]

I don’t think debating a person’s motivations for asking a question is particularly appropriate for GQ. Let’s stick to discussion of (legal) ways to confirm or disprove this story.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

14

If this action is in the OP’s father’s records, they would have gone after him and prosecuted him. Since they didn’t, it isn’t. Which really proves nothing, either. How many guys would kill their CO, and walk over to another officer and turn themselves in? Even if it happened, it’s likely in the category of 1400 ‘suspicious’ deaths.

And so looking at the record is not likely to prove anything beyond where he was based and when.

Does an individual’s service record include the names of all his commanding officers? I dunno, but even if it does I would guess that it wouldn’t include an explanation of why he had one commanding officer one week, and a different one the next week. So there’s a good chance the OP would also have to look up the service records of every commanding officer to find out what happened to them.

This is a page of the Vietname memorial website where you can look up a name and see if it is on the wall, which theoretically includes all Vietnam casualties. So you can find out if any names in the records were casualties, but not the cause of death AFAIK.

15

Cecil covered fragging a few months ago: Did soldiers really frag officers in Vietnam? - The Straight Dope

16

You could track down the roster of men in his platoon as suggested by SandyHook and try to contact some of them to see if they can confirm or deny anything. Official records probably won’t give you anything conclusive, so other first-hand accounts are probably all you have.

Of course, this would be involving other people who might want to leave things in the past, so I’m not advocating this approach.

17

Out of respect for this posting, I won’t comment further on this line of commentary (sorry to be late to the party), except to say that 1920s Style "Death Ray correctly stated my motive.

It sounds to be a more daunting task then I realized, and isn’t worth my time to really dig deeper into. I do recall that my Dad (in this one, off kilter confessional he engaged me in) said he kept in touch with his unit (I might be misremembering terms like unit or platoon), and some had committed suicide. May it was just never reported by the men who witnessed it.

Thanks for the food for thought.

18

“I reckon so. I guess we all died a little in that damn war.”

Josey Wales.

In a movie, about a different war.

But they are all the same war. Experienced at separate times, by different generations.

19

Especially things that could get them into serious trouble if true.

I’ve no idea if your dad’s case is true, but I will say that about 1/3 of the Vietnam vets I’ve known have had fragging stories about a sadistic non-com they served under who either they killed or somebody in the platoon did and no questions were asked or whatever so I take them with a grain of salt.

I can tell you that you do not have access to his military records. After he is dead, if they still exist (the 1973 fire mainly destroyed WW2 and WW1 records but took some Vietnam records as well while other lesser disasters and mishaps and still classified statuses have made a lot of military records Swiss cheese), you can request them as next-of-kin, but there are many reasons why they can legally deny you access even then.

20

Not exactly true. Anyone can make a request for someones military records under the Freedom of Information Act. It won’t be the full record but you can get the basic information. The OPs father may be completely full of shit and his record may prove he was not where he said he was. Or it might.

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