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Who Are The Real Enemies Of GIs In Nam
Washington (AP) - A medical researcher, said in Senate testimony today that interviews with 60 ex-Marines convinced him that they were more hosatile toward the South Vietnamese army and their own officers than toward the Viet Cong.
Dr. Charles J. Levy, a research associate at Harvard Medical School, quoted a former Marine as telling how one man killed an oficer with an truck, and another put a booby trap in his commanding officer's tent.
"They talked in terms of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army not being the primary focus of their hostility," Levy said in testimony prepared for the Senate Veteran Affairs Subcommittee.
Levy said the Marines expressed hostility toward two central targets: the South Vietnamese army, and American non-commissioned and commissioned officers.
He said his research over a two-year period involved 60 former Marines, all of whom enlisted, and all of whom were promoted while serving in Vietnam.
One Marine, Levy said, told of an Army officer disciplining a Marine who was driving a truck in enemy territory.
"So the lifer went behind the truck. And K released the brake. Rolled the truck back and crushed the lifer between his truckk and K's truck. And killed him. They couldn't prove he did it on purpose."
Still another was quoted in the Levy testimony as telling how a Marine put a booby trap in the tent of his commanding officer after the officer ordered an embankment moved 50 yards and shone spotlights on the men as they worked at the project.
"And so one night this guy H booby trapped his tent ... It wasn't the CO who got it. it was the executive officer."
A Four Year Bummer, vol. 2, no. 10