My first assignment in Vietnam was as the Platoon Leader, 3rd Platoon, C Company, 504th Military Police Bn.  My platoon was assigned to support the 1st Cavalry Division at their base camp in An Khe in the Central Highlands.  The 1st Cav's M.P.'s policed Camp Radcliffe and my platoon was responsible for policing the village of An Khe and patrolling the highway from the middle of An Khe Pass to the middle of Mang Yang Pass.

The 3^rd Platoon compound was in the village of An Khe. An Khe was the district capital of An Tuc District and our compound was adjacent to the District Chief's headquarters. This was also the Vietnamese National Police (Cahn Sat) district headquarters. We had several buildings on our compound all built by the Army with a cement pad for a floor, wooden siding and corrugated tin roofs. One was the barracks building for the platoon members, another was a barracks for the non-commissioned officers, the third was a shower, and the last was a combination M.P. station, platoon leader's office and platoon leader's quarters. The M.P station was at the front of the building and consisted of an open area just inside the door and a head high wooden barrier that we called the Desk Sergeant's Desk. The Desk Sergeant sat behind it with a radio operator. This was where they kept the daily police blotter and processed police paper work and maintained contact with our M.P. patrols. Behind this area was a small office for the platoon leader and behind that was a room used for quarters for the platoon leader.

One night, shortly after my assumption of the command of the 3^rd Platoon, I was asleep in my quarters.  At a little after 0300 hours, PFC Clint Pazdera, the Desk Sergeant woke me up to tell me that a Vietnamese civilian had come to the M.P. station to report that U.S. soldiers were making trouble in his village which was a couple of miles away just off the Highway 19 on the way to Pleiku. I told PFC Pazdera to send an M.P. to investigate and he sent PFC Ray Sullivan.  I went back to sleep only to be awakened again, at about 0400.  PFC Sullivan had called in on the radio and reported that there had been a murder. I got up, dressed, and took a jeep and drove to the village.  When I arrived I found that PFC Sullivan had apprehended a suspect.

The village, B Hamlet, An Son Village, An Tuc District, was about 50 meters from the highway where there was a bridge which was being guarded by soldiers from the 1^st Cavalry Division. There was a path from the highway to the village and the village had a 7-8 foot bamboo fence around it. When I arrived the body of the dead villager, a Vietnamese woman who appeared to be in her 70's, was lying on the ground, just outside the doorway to her hut. There was a pool of blood all around her head. She had been shot. PFC Sullivan had apprehended a suspect, a soldier from the unit that was guarding the bridge. I asked if there were any witnesses. One of the men from the village came forward.  Neither PFC Sullivan nor I could speak Vietnamese but we knew a lot of words and through the use of English, French and Vietnamese words, drawing pictures and hand gestures I pieced together the witness' story.  The suspect had come from the bridge with his M-16 rifle and was outside the bamboo fence peering in and shouting "VC" over and over. The victim, hearing a commotion outside had come out of her hut holding a lantern up and trying to see what was happening.  When the suspect saw her come out of her hut he poked his rifle through the bamboo fence and fired it at the old woman.

PFC Sullivan had interviewed members of the bridge unit and determined that the suspect had been drinking heavily and had left the bridge and walked toward the village.

PFC Sullivan and I had been at the crime scene for about an hour and had identified the victim and the witnesses and gotten their description of what had happened when a Major from the 1^st Cavalry Division arrived. He was the Executive Officer of the battalion to which the bridge unit belonged. Before we realized he was there or what he was doing he began to interrogate the suspect without advising him of his rights. PFC Sullivan came and told me what was going on. I went out to find out what the Major was doing. He told me he was taking charge. I told him that this was a crime scene and as the senior Military Police officer I was in charge of the crime scene and advised him to back off. I told him I would be prepared to arrest him for obstructing me from doing my duty. He withdrew to the bridge. After the Major's departure PFC Sullivan and I finished our evidence gathering and took the suspect back to our M.P. station. It was already about 3 or 4 in the morning and after turning the suspect over to the Desk Sergeant we went to sleep. Later in the morning NCO's from the suspect's unit came to take him into their custody. This was the way things functioned in the Army. The military police did not have the capability of imprisoning anyone for an extended period of time. Apprehended suspects were turned over to their units which would then be responsible for keeping them under guard until they could be tried. A soldier who needed to be imprisoned would have to be sent to an Army stockade, which in this case would have been Long Binh on the outskirts of Saigon, known to G.I.'s serving in Vietnam as LBJ for Long Binh Jail.

PFC Sullivan and I spent the morning writing up our reports which would be submitted to the 1^st Cavalry Division and to the Provost Marshal, Vietnam. We never heard anything more about this case, which now after all these years seems to be a strange thing. A soldier accused of committing a murder would have to be either turned over to the local authorities for trial or tried by general court marshal.  I would have expected a soldier accused of committing murder to be court marshaled as it would be highly unlikely the Army would turn a soldier over to the Vietnamese authorities.  If a court marshal had been held, PFC Sullivan and I, as the military police investigating the murder, should have been called to testify and we never were.  I suspect there never was a court marshal and the suspect was set free without having to stand trial for murder.  To this day, this bothers me a lot.  I sometimes wish I would not have been as naïve about some things as I was.  Had I been less naïve I might have tried to track down the disposition of the case, but by the time I realized what had probably happened it was too late.  If I ever were to go back to Vietnam it would be to try to find that village and possible survivors and to tell them I was sorry that I had not been knowledgeable enough to bring a murderer to justice.