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Killing the gooks ...and GI's

To get another perspective on the controversy over the alleged killing of six GI's by New Zealand soldiers in Vietnam, Salient interviewed Ron Eckrich, an American who served in Vietnam

Salient: What were your reactions when you first heard about this?

Eckrich; My initial reaction was what the hell's all the fuss about? I didn't think it was a particularly unusual thing to happen in Vietnam. It also struck me that New Zealanders kill Americans and it hits front pages, while in Vietnam, people are being killed tortured everyday and it takes a helluva lot of work to get any kind of public reaction. It doesn't strike me as a big deal. I can understand that the guy—the New Zealand soldier—had to get it off his chest and that's not an unusual thing. It's happened with a lot of American Vietnam veterans. Not so much ringing up actual talkbacks. It occurs mainly in the States with Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) a lot of whom have had the same kind of problem—been involved with killing Vietnamese or other soldiers or killing their officers—but have been able to talk it out with other veterans.

Do you actually believe what was said on the talk back show?

I think it's certainly a possibility. Whether its actually true or not I couldn't say for sure, but it probably is. It's a pretty incredible story not to be true.

All the questions being asked about the insignia, about helicopters about all this, do you actually think these are relevant questions? Surely the most important thing is that someone has come back from Vietnam and has wanted to say all these things, whether they are true or not?

Whether or not the facts in this particular instance are true is a bit irrelevant because the sort of thing described certainly did happen. I know of occasions where American soldiers have killed South Vietnamese soldiers (Avrns) or vice versa. That sort of thing happened a lot especially when you consider the fact that most soldiers consider all Vietnamese as "gooks". They just don't consider them people and they get pissed off. Things are always tense enough—they just might kill some of them. It's happened before.

You say that American soldiers didn't consider the other side to the people. Do you think this had quite an influence on the war dragging on? It's not as though they are killing someone of the same race or background, they're only killing 'gooks'.

It certainly contributes. It's a way of making the enemy "others" They're not the same as you. But Vietnam was a progression from the time of WWII. Korea was bad, the same sort of thing was happening. But it seems to be getting worse because wars are more and more racist all the time.

What actual experience have you had of such atrocities and the interrogation which was described?

Well I don't have any visual experiential knowledge but I was in an Intelligence unit which I got to see quite a lot of interrogation reports, and a lot of the people I came Into contact with were interrogators, helicopter pilots—a whole range of people. At the time, I didn't necessarily have strong opinions about whether we should be in Vietnam or not. If anything, I would have probably leaned to being there. I can remember a helicopter pilot who was in my unit who told me about several instances where in his actual helicopter suspected VC prisoners were dropped out of the helicopter. And that happened a lot. He also told me he had a door gunner, he was just pretty freaked, I guess, he'd been there quite a while—who just liked to kill. The helicopter pilot said that he had got so bad before they had to get rid of him, that they had to take the barrel of the gun until they were in an area where they wanted him to shoot because he would just shoot at every thing. Buffalos, Americans, Arvn's it didn't make any different to him, he just liked to kill

One Incident that sticks in my mind is one of a marine unit that came across a bunker with North Vietnamese nurses. After they had raped them and tortured them they took a weapon similar to a bazooka, stuck it in their vaginas and blew their heads off. That sort of thing, you know, is not at all unusual.

One of the things that the man on the radio said was that when he got to Vietnam he saw many things that make you realise that everything you read in the papers is not true. He said a lot of what goes on the public just doesn't realise How far would you agree with that?

A hundred percent. When I was in Vietnam I was getting my home-town papers sent to me and it was just amazing the reports you would read. They were nothing like reality, particularly reports about area missions. Particularly things like, "such and such was ambushed". There may not have been an ambush at all, but it sounds better if you lose an ambush than a battle. Crazy things like that. The majority of the stuff that I was aware of was really twisted in the papers.

Why do you think that every one is so keen to write this thing off as a hoax?

Oh well, you know that it is not very good for New Zealanders to do the sorts of things that Americans did. I think if New Zealanders had simply saved the lives of those Vietnamese and no Americans ware killed, not very many people would try to call it a hoax at all. Killing—wounded Americans just doesn't look very good. It just shows what kind of things wars can do to people, in particular, what kind of things the war in Vietnam did to people.

It certainly shows that New Zealand soldiers do the same sort of thing. Do you have any personal experience or know of any instances of New Zealand soldiers being involved in torturing the Vietnamese?

I think that's one of the reasons this has obviously been blown up. There's no other instances known of New Zealanders doing anything like that. I seriously doubt though that this is the worst thing any New Zealandar did in Vietnam. I think you'll find perhaps now that perhaps more New Zealand soldiers may start talking about some of the things they saw in Vietnam. It will be very interesting to see just what does come out about that.

Previous to this particular talkback call, war was something people occasionally saw on the TV, and as often as not they'd turn it off. But on this occasion last weak, I think it had impact because it went right into people's kitchens on the radio that they listen to every morning and the full horror was described in detail by this soldier, Do you think that this is a good or a bad thing that the war is corning into people's kitchens?

I think it's a good thing that it's come out particularly in New Zealand, I hope that some more evidence comes out to prove that it's not a hoax. I just find that a helluva lot of New Zealanders, the people on the street, although they're willing to relate to Vietnam a little bit, they don't really consider it to be part of their problem. I don't think they really feel the impact of what's happened in Vietnam. New Zealand troops were there. That was one thing. They think New Zealanders didn't really do any harm in Vietnam, We've got them out and that's all we can do. And I think something like this may help to jolt more of a recognisance about the fact that New Zealanders have to contribute a lot more because they're responsible at least to some extent for allowing what's happened to happen. I think once they realise New Zealand played a fairly large part in it, at least in the numbers they had there and the contribution the government made to keeping people there, perhaps organisations like RAVPOC and Amnesty will get more support in New Zealand.