Bangert: There were two super-secret, I know they were field grade officers, who were with MACV in Quant Tri Provinces in the area. They knew about it.

Jack Bronaugh, 21, Pvt. (E-1), 1st Marine Air Wing, 1st Marine Division (February 1968 to October 1969).

I was attached with...Battalion FSEC.

Moderator : Which is the Fire Control center?

Bronaugh , Right. It co-ordinates everything for the Battalion Artillery and troop movement and everything. I had some spare time this particular day so I left the compound and went to a bridge where people usually go and swim and they had a detachment on this bridge, in total about two platoons of people. A 2nd Lt. in charge of the bridge and a gunnery Sergeant that was staff NCO of the bridge. There were people from mortars platoon, weapons platoon, there was a tank, there were a couple of mules with 160 recoilless rifles, two snipers, and assorted machinegun crews. This particular day I was going to go swimming and I was at this bridge and they had sent a patrol out from our battalion CP. They had gone north of the CP for about a half a mile or a mile. There was a few huts that comprised a small village north of the compound.

The bridge got a radio call that they had supposedly received a sniper round from this village. So the Lt. on the bridge told them to sweep the ville. They swept the ville and they called back that there was nothing found. There was nothing found, I mean, there were just people in the ville and so the Lt. told them to burn the ville. From my position, which was about 150 to 200 yards away, and there was a tree line in the way, smoke started coming up over the tree line and about this time, I guess about three minutes after the smoke started showing, there was a lot of screaming and just chaos coming from the direction of the village and a lot of people started running out of the tree line. From where I was standing, I saw maybe two or three male villagers and the rest were women and children-some of the children walking and some of them young enough to be carried, I would say under a year, maybe. The last thing I heard as a command was the gunnery sergeant told them to open fire to keep them back. Their village was on fire and they were in panic; they didn't stop, so they just cut down the women and children with mortars, machine guns, tank, snipers were....

Moderator. There was a tank there also?

Bronaugh. Yes. Well, the tank, the 90 millimeter gun wasn't used because, I mean, it was too close a range, but they used the 50 and 30 off the tank and all the troops that were at the bridge with M16s. The officer, a Lt., a few got close enough to where he used his .45. They used a few frag hand grenades.

Moderator. The fifty caliber. That was used specifically against the people?

Bronaugh. Yes...Yes.

Moderator. Right. Just for general information, the 50 caliber machine gun is specifically forbidden to be used against people. It's an anti-vehicular weapon.

Bronaugh. Yes, it was used in automatic and single fire, against human beings.

Moderator. There are many different types of ways that we have head of people being mutilated, of villagers being killed, but there is one way that affects the people afterwards. They don't physically shoot them or hurt them at the moment and this is the use of chemicals. And Mr. Bangert, I think, has a good example here where he shows twenty deformed babies resulting from Agent Orange Defoliant Spray. Could you tell us what Agent Orange is and the type of deformity that was the result?

Bangert. I used to work with the pacification program in Vietnam and I traveled extensively through Quang Tri Province. Specifically in the area of Quang Tri City and west, Trieu Phong District. I saw approximately, during my tour, twenty deformed infants under the age of one. It never made sense to me. I thought it was congenital or something, from venereal disease, because they had flippers and things. I didn't understand what I saw until approximately six months ago I read a report that was put out by Stanford which talked about the thalidomide content within Agent Orange and it was common knowledge that Agent Orange was sprayed in the area and we used to see it about every three to four days where I was in Quang Tri Province. If I could get back to the Vietnamese woman I saw that was mutilated so horribly by that person, it didn't really shock me because I think I talked about my first day in Vietnam.

You can check with the Marines who have been to Vietnam-your last day in the States at staging battalion at Camp Pendleton you have a little lesson and it's called the rabbit lesson, where the staff NCO comes out and he has a rabbit and he's talking to you about escape and evasion and survival in the jungle. He has this rabbit and then in a couple of seconds after just about everyone falls in love with it, not falls in love with it, but, you know, they're humane there, he cracks it in the neck, skins it, disembowels it, just like I testified that this happened to a woman-he does this to the rabbit-and then they throw the guts out into the audience. You can get anything out of that you want, but that's your last lesson you catch in the United States before you leave for Vietnam where they take that rabbit and they kill it, and they skin it, and they play with its organs as if its trash and they throw the organs all over the place and then these guys are put on the plane next day and sent to Vietnam.