Why American Soldiers Started Killing Their Own Officers in Vietnam

Into the Shadows
Into the Shadows
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143
My dad was a combat medic 68-69. They drafted him 4 months after he graduated high school. When he got to Vietnam he was 19. I remember finding his high school year book when I was a kid and seeing his senior year picture. I couldn't believe that was him. He looked so happy and full of life. The man I knew had a kind of permanent sadness about him, it was in his eyes. He passed back in 2019. Sure do miss ya pop.
5K
My uncle ,a medic during the Vietnam war, had only ONE memory he would share with us kids /family about his time in Vietnam. That memory was of him being dragged off by by a panicked old man to a place where a young female was having a hard time delivering her baby. As soon as he helped her deliver her tiny baby girl safely. An elderly woman shoved a package of food at him, said some happy words he could not understand and got led back to where they found him by the old man. He always carried it as the one kinda- happy memory when he in Vietnam, helped bring life into the world instead of helplessly watching it leave. He wouldn't share any other stories. Telling us, " It's just wasn't a good thing".
2.1K
I remember a line from a dark fantasy novel I read a while back... "There is no better place to kill someone than on a battlefield. This goes double if you are on the same side."
1.6K
Gosh. It’s almost like forcing people to fight and die in a war they didn’t volunteer for is a bad idea.
222
in ‘74 i moved to my own apt. down the hall was an ex soldier who partied hard. he would tell horror stories when really high. he was a corporal i think and took a squad out for recon. after losing half his guys for 6 months and the upper echelon ignoring his reports, he decided to quit. he would scout out a very safe space and he would take his guys camping for a week. then go back and tell the officers what they wanted to hear. he was proud that he didn’t lose a man in his last 6 months. sad that he didn’t think of it earlier. war sucks.
1.5K
The troops didn't consider the fragger to be a psychopath they considered those trying to force them into deadly situations for nothing as the psychopaths.
2.3K
"It tastes great!" He says as he is actively gagging after drinking it.
3.4K
I don't see fraggers as psychopaths. I see fragging as a rational response to an intolerable situation
450
Frag your inner second lieutenant with an AG1 gut grenade.
987
Years ago I was drinking with an old world war two veteran for whom I had the utmost respect. In the course of the conversation he said: you know, those kids over in Vietnam didn't invent fragging, they just came up with a name for it.
948
Oh look, another piece of American history I learned on YouTube from an English fella, and was never once mentioned when I was in high school. Gotta love it.
5.1K
One aspect not mentioned here was that in 1969 the "Pentagon Papers" (a history of the American War in Vietnam) were made public. The critical fact we learned was that as early as 1965 the U.S. had concluded that the war could not be won, but simply kept sending more conscripted troops.
243
Command is corrupt as hell too. We act like it's a Russian or Chinese thing. It. Is. Not.
1.1K
"It tastes great" struggling to contain the gag reflex 😂
1.2K
I recall hearing from a relative who served as a combat engineer in Vietnam about a young Lt. who was trying to order his men across a bridge they had determined was obviously booby trapped and would not take "No" for an answer. That poor clumsy bastard had a fatal fall in front of a moving motor grader shortly thereafter.
942
My Dad said he got his draft letter and reported for duty only to wander around an empty building and eventually be found and told the war was over as of yesterday. He said it was a crazy feeling wandering around that huge empty building wondering what the heck was going on
28
My father in law was diagnosed with severe colon cancer during Vietnam and they basically removed most of his large intestines. When go out of surgery and with only weeks of recovery an officer told him to suck it up and re-deployed him after he was gutted. He was out for only a few days before he was sent back to medical and when they reviewed his case were like "WHO RE-DEPLOYED YOU? Go home" so many officers were clueless
128
My step dad served in the early to mid 60s in Vietnam in the Marine Corps, and told the story of a lieutenant who was leading their squad right into trouble, and he spoke up to warn him, an argument ensued, and he promptly decked the lieutenant. He was reprimanded but got to fly back to the US when his service was thru. The officer did not make it back alive.
123
I believe every politician and rich person's children should be drafted before anyone else. We dont start wars, the rich and in power do
829
0:26 absolutely dying after having 1 teeny sip 🤣
173
I deployed twice. We had an officer I would have stormed the gates of hell for. But we also had a 1st Sgt who everyone loathed. Everyone had an agreement: if he got wounded, we would leave him for the enemy to take.
1K
0:01 if you ever wonder why simon is sitting in every video sponsored by AG1, its because the man is violently shitting himself after drinking AG1. Allegedly
898
Awesome. Too bad it wasn't the politicians that caught a frag with a message: "You conscripted us. Here is your thanks".
716
My father never spoke of his service other than happy or funny stories. I was a teenager before my grandmother slipped and mentioned his Purple Heart. I eventually learned I was named after a friend he met in country. Years later after I was married and had children I asked him if he was ever going to tell me about Vietnam. His response was, “It’s a place to be from and not at.”
13
"Carter, hand me my thinking grenades"
584
The ghost of fragging was still around in GWOT. When I was in Iraq there was an officer and an NCO in adjacent companies who had grenade sized bricks thrown through their windows in the middle of their sleep times, the troopers in those companies stopped doing pointless training in the middle of the day in the Baghdad summer.
307
"Fun" fact, soldiers had an actual unofficial warning system for the officers they were contemplating fragging. First they would leave a smoke grenade on the officer's bunk or foot locker, if the officer in question didn't change their ways then the next step was to leave a tear gas grenade. if the officer was still not getting the message then the final warning was leaving just a grenade pin, meaning an incoming grenade was imminent. So more often than not these officers had fair warning.
428
The moment you are being sent to die by force is the moment your "superiors" become the exact same as the enemy. No cause can ever justify the wholesale slaughter and torture of your own troops.
110
Anyone who has seen or experienced heroin addiction and knows what sudden withdrawal looks like can understand why taking an addicts whole stash is dangerous, now combine that with ptsd inducing war and you're just asking to be killed.
910
I remember hearing about soldiers "fragging" their commanding officers when I was a teenager. Who could forget about Hamburger Hill? Those hills helped instigate fragging. I turned 18 in 1973 right when we were pulling out of Nam. I felt super lucky because I wasn't a "fortunate son" and would have had to go had the the draft and war not ended the year I turned 18.
986
I was once told by a veteran that the other more prevalent version of "fraging" was to wait till an officer who was disliked/not trusted got them into a fire fight then shoot him through the knee while he was distracted. Almost never an investigation and they got rid of the officer.
5
Robert Graves wrote ‘ Good Bye to All That’ in 1929 . Memoirs of his time in the British Army during WW1 (good read, very moving, very raw). In his book he talks of any incident when an officer came to the front to give / enforce orders to go ‘over the top’. He was supposed to bring an alcoholic drink for Dutch courage for the men but he came empty handed. They drowned the officer in the mud.
230
Many decades ago I visited the traveling Viet Nam wall. I wanted to pay homage to a class mate. Like the big Washington wall, they were many cards, notes, and flowers. I happened to see a note that said something along the lines of, "Yes, we fragged you." I, fortunately, never got drafted. I remember well after losing my student deferment because I had graduated from college. My wife and I deciding that I would go to prison if drafted, instead of going to Canada. This war so fucked up my generation. Years later I met a Black man as roommate. I used to hear him talking aloud at night reliving his time as a radio operator. He struggled in life, and years later I understood this new PTSD thing. Became my best male friend ever. He died ten years ago. God, did I cry. I love you Stan.
237
Don't forget the other way that soldiers removed their officers. Just pointing out the officer to enemy snipers was another common method used
350
When I was in high school (1969 or 1970?) my history class had a substitute teacher (son of the minister at my church) that had returned from viet nam. He said they had fragged the officer who made them go on too many patrols (they threw a grenade into the jungle where the officer had gone in to go to the bathroom). The substitute spent the entire class drawing the booby traps they came across and explaining his year in viet nam. very interesting class that day....
17
A Bulgarian builder who worked on my house in London once told me that he had been a sniper in the Russia/Afghanistan days in the 1980s and the Russian soldiers would band together and offer lucrative contracts to him and his unit to kill particularly brutal Russian officers and NCO's. He told me his unit shot more Russians than Afghans and that he made so much cash that after his draft ended he came to London to start a new life.
417
16:16 I knew a guy who told me that he did it. The officer in question was volunteering the unit for more missions than needed. He was going to get people killed so he could get promoted.
270
One of my college professors was a Vietnam veteran and he was a crotchety SOB, but he was also one of my favorite professors as I think back. I dropped a heavy portfolio behind him once, and he whirled around with his fist, ready to throw a punch and then he stopped, chewed me out a little, but then apologized. He didn’t tolerate BS, but I remember struggling with a project and telling him that if this assignment was on some kind of job board, I wouldn’t take the job because it’s not something I even enjoy and he just said something like “yeah I understand that“ and then gave me suggestions for how to turn in something halfway decent. I haven’t thought about him in years.
32
"Sir, No Sir" is a must watch documentary here on Youtube. Air force pilots would literally go off course and deny orders. People just dont get that america started its empire with direct attacks on civilians in Japan. The school of americas bring in tyrants from all over the world and LITERALLY train them on how to attack civilian targets. Those murdered girls in the iranian school were not an 'accident'. Murder of civilians is literally the backbone of american military dominance. If you havent watched that documentary, you really have no clue about what went on in Vietnam, its a great documentary.
11