Chieu Hoi: I Surrender!

This young Vietnamese had given himself up with the condition that he would be released if he led the Marines to a cache of arms.

He led a pair of interrogators to a cache of buried arms. Guess what? They were no longer there. Nor in several other locations.

The Marine security squad thinks that the interrogators waited to long before they went back to the village and others from the young mans Vietcong team had moved the cache.

The interrogators, a Marine sergeant and Vietnamese soldier, commenced to beat the shit out of the young fellow. Only problem was they did it in front of the entire village. Then they took him into his family home after they threw out the family and continued to beat up the fellow.

I had been asked to come along on the operation by the Marine squad that was providing security. I had been on a patrol with them in the past. This time no was was happy with what was going on.

I started to photograph the interrogators as they were beating the young man and suddenly the Marine sergeant came out of the family hut and pointed his 45 in my face and demanded the film. This was no joking matter. I didn't know whether to shit or swim.

When the Marine squad saw what was happening they then raised their weapons. Now we had a standoff between the security squad and the interrogators.

The standoff ended with the squad and myself leaving the village but not before the squad leader apologized to the village chief.

The two interrogators were told that they were on their own. They could stay or leave with the squad. They left.

I didn't give up my film then but latter I was ordered by my boss to do so.

All the good stuff, including the sergeant pointing his 45 at me was on a roll of black-and-white film. They didn't realize I also had color film. Unfortunately the color photographs don't show anything that went on in the village.

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