Battlion? I saw it myself in Staging

Moderator. How many guys in Marine Staging saw this-the last day in Battalion. All those who saw it please raise your hands again.

Moderator. The question for those who didn't hear it was in reference to the skinning of a rabbit as an example of "this is how it's done in Vietnam" or "this is what happens in Vietnam." In answer to the question, most of the Marines here did see it.

Question. This is still part of Basic Training? Are we to understand that this is part of the course before combat in Vietnam?

Moderator. This is part of the Staging Battalion which is the last day before you go to Vietnam. Could we have the show of hands again?

(Note: A majority of hands were raised.)

Question. Are there officers present at this?

Panelist . Yes. It usually was a company formation. They made quite a spectacle of this. They made a moccasin out of the skin. A couple of dudes were playing with the organs. It was a really cool thing, I guess.

David Bishop, 21, L/Cpl., "H" Co., 2nd Bn., 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division.

I didn't say it in the testimony, but it's written on my testimony sheet. The operation was Meade River, a very large scale operation. ROK (Korean) Marines were involved, U.S. Marines and Army were involved, and the ARVNs were involved. A cordon was set up outside of Da Nang and a big squeeze was put on right outside the airport. There were quite a few body counts as far as the enemy went. It was something like 1,300. The allies had something like 700 or 800 or so called dead-we never know. On part of the operation, we had just gotten through making a bunker system. It was a large bunker system and we found hospitals. We came across four NVA nurses that were hiding out in one of the bunkers. They were nurses, we found medical supplies on them and they had black uniforms on. The ROK Marines came up to us and one of their officers asked us if they could have the NVA nurses, that they would take care of them because we were sweeping through the area, and that we couldn't

take care of any POWs. So, I imagine, that instead of killing them, we handed them over to the ROK Marines. Well we were still in the area when the ROK Marines started tying them down to the ground.

They tied their hands to the ground, they spread-eagled them; they raped all four. There was like maybe ten or twenty ROK Marines involved. They tortured them, they sliced off their breasts, they used machetes and cut off parts of their fingers and things like this. When that was over, they took pop-up flares (which are aluminum canisters you hit with your hand; it'll shoot maybe 100-200 feet in the air)-they stuck they up their vaginas-all four of them-and they blew the top of their heads off.

Scott Camile, 24, Sgt. (E-5), 1st Bn., 11th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division (August 1966 to September 1967).

I was a Sgt. attached to Charley 1/1. I was a forward observer in Vietnam. I went in right after high school and I'm a student right now.

All right. The calling in of artillery for games, the way it was worked would be the mortar forward observers would pick out certain houses in villages, and the mortar forward observers would call in mortars until they destroyed that house and then the artillery forward observer would call in artillery until he destroyed another house and whoever used the least amount of artillery, they won. And when we got back someone would have to buy someone else beers. The cutting off of heads-on Operation Stone-there was a Lt. Colonel there and two people had their heads cut off and put on stakes and stuck in the middle of a field. And we were notified that there was press covering the Operation and that we couldn't do that anymore. Before we went out on the Operation we were told not to waste our heat tablets on food but to save them for the villages because we were going to destroy all the villages and we didn't give the people any time to get out of the villages. We just went in and burned them and if people were in the villages yelling and screaming, we didn't help them. We just burned the houses as we went.