H. Palmer Hall: Killing People

We Really Shouldn't Be Killing People

On the occasion of our murdering another man on death row here in Texas Thursday night, I thought I might tell you about the day I killed a man. Oh, I did not pull the trigger, but had I not been there a young man named Bao would not have died.

I had been in Vietnam for only a couple of months, first in Chu Lai and then in Pleiku. During the previous few weeks, the VC and NVA had been carrying out massive attacks on the highland base at Dak To (only a couple of miles from the tri-border area of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam). For a week or so after the battle, American convoys making supply runs from Dak To to Pleiku were ambushed almost every day. We knew it was going to happen because we were intercepting messages from someone spying on the base camp at Dak To. The reports always indicated the time the convoy left Dak To and the number of vehicles (three jeeps, five big trucks, three personnel carriers and so one) in the convoy. Somewhere on Highway 14 (Duong So Muoi Bon) that convoy would be attacked.

I was sent to Dak To, feet dangling out of a HUEY as I looked down on, first, rice paddies, and then the densely jungled hills and on mountains with strange names like Ngok Rinh Rua and on Hill 875 where most of the fighting in and around Dak To had occurred. The first night I was there, the VC dropped mortars and rockets on the camp and I pretty much spent the night in a reinforced bunker.

The next day, I got to work. I was able to triangulate Bao's position using an Army radio and DF gear, though I had to fly to two other areas while he was broadcasting in order to get a firm fix. Finally, though, I had the site. Bao was on a hill overlooking the camp and about a klick away. Now, we already knew he could see the camp, but it was totally surrounded by hills and we had no idea which one he was hiding on until I was able to fix his position.

The next morning, the camp commander sent out a pre-arranged convoy and I listened to the radio on Bao's frequency. When he began to broadcast, I signaled the Colonel and then walked outside. Within moments, American jets dropped napalm all over the spot I had indicated and then circled back to strafe the whole area. If you have not seen napalm except in movies like Apocalypse Now, then you have no idea of the sheer beauty this death bringer can display. It opens up like those old Disney movies that show a flower blooming as if it the blossom developed in only a few second. Napalm blossoms work the same way only no ultra slow motion is needed,

I stayed the next day when the Colonel sent out another convoy. He wanted to be sure the millions of dollars in assets he had spent had killed one young man. The convoy went out and there was not even a carrier sound on Bao's frequency. Oh, yes, I am not certain Bao was his real name. "Bao chi" is Vietnamese for "reporter," but he ended all his messages with "Het Roi! Bao." "That's all, Bao."

For years, I have thought back about that incident: about the young man at the other end of my radio, about napalm blossoms, about responsibility. I pointed the finger at Bao, the Colonel ordered the attack on him, three pilots dropped the napalm and strafed the area, congress sanctioned the whole thing, the President bore some responsibility, taxpayers bore the rest. But, ultimately, I think I'm the one who pulled the trigger. I pointed the gun when I pointed my finger, the pilots were only the physical triggers, part of my weapon.

And, I suspect that I am also responsible for what is going to happen Thursday night when a man with only one witness against him, whose attorney slept through most of the proceedings, who could be cleared with DNA tests since no other physical evidence convicts him, will have an IV inserted in a vein and will fall asleep without waking up.

I often thought, while marching in demonstrations against the war, almost as soon as I got to Washington, D.C., that I was really marching for Bao as much as for the American soldiers who would still die in the war. People are marching today in Austin and in Huntsville, Texas, against another kind of government-sanctioned killing, but I am not going to that march though I should. Perhaps it's age and cynicism, perhaps it's that there have been too many such demonstrations and too few results. I came home from Vietnam in 1968, after the Tet Offensive had pretty much demonstrated that we were not going to win that little war and, only a short time later, a man running for president indicated that he had a "secret plan" to end the war. More Americans and Vietnamese died after he became president than had died before that date.

This is going nowhere. But it's what I'm thinking about, rambling though the thoughts may be on this day, just two days before we kill Gary Graham. The injection will not be as spectacular as that day when I watched a whole hillside light up with deep red napalm blossoms, but the result will be identical.