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A Kidnapping, Rape, and Murder in Vietnam
On 17 November 1966, four infantrymen-Sergeant (SGT) David E. Gervase, and Privates First Class Steven C. Thomas, Cipriano S. Garcia, and Joseph C. Garcia-on a five-man reconnaissance patrol in South Vietnam entered a small village and kidnapped a twenty-year-old Vietnamese woman named Phan Thi Mao. The fifth man in the patrol, Private First Class (PFC) Robert M. Storeby, refused to participate in the abduction. He also refused to take part in the gang rape of Mao that followed the kidnapping. Storeby also had nothing to do with the murder of Mao the following day, when she was stabbed and then shot by
PFC Thomas to cover up crimes committed against her. What follows is the story of this horrific war crime and how, despite the trials by general courts-martial that followed this kidnapping, rape, and murder, justice very much was a casualty of war.1
On 16 November 1966, the five Soldiers, all members of C Company, 2d Battalion (Airborne), 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), were selected by their platoon leader for an "extremely dangerous" mission: recon-noitering an area in the Central Highlands around Hill 192, where it was thought that the Viet Cong were hiding out in a cave complex.2 The next day, SGT Gervase (the leader of the patrol mission) announced that, for the men to have a good time while on the patrol, "he was going to see that they found themselves a pretty girl and take her along for the morale of the squad."3
In the early morning of 18 November, when the five Soldiers began their reconnaissance mission, they entered a village of about a half-dozen "hootches."4 After finding Mao in a hootch she shared with her mother and sister, the men bound her wrists with rope, gagged her, and took her on the patrol with them.
Later that same day, after setting up headquarters in an abandoned hootch near Hill 192, Gervase announced that it was "time for some fun."5 Gervase then went into the hut, where Mao was resting, and sexually assaulted her. Private First Class Storeby, who refused to take part in the assault of Mao that day, would later say that during Gervase's rape of her, "a...