Incident on Hill 192

The incident on Hill 192 refers to the kidnap, gang rape, and murder of Phan Thi Mao, a young Vietnamese woman on November 19, 1966 by an American squad during the Vietnam War. Though news of the incident reached state-side shortly after the soldiers' trials, the story gained widespread notoriety through Daniel Lang's 1969 article for The New Yorker and a subsequent book. In 1970 Michael Verhoeven made the film o.k., based on the incident. In 1989 Brian De Palma directed the film Casualties of War, which was based on Lang's Book.

On November 17, 1966, Sergeant David E. Gervase (20) and Private First Class Steven Cabbot Thomas (21)—both members of C Company, 2nd Battalion (Airborne), 8th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division—talked to three other squad members (PFC’s Robert M. Storeby, 22; cousins Cipriano S. Garcia, 21, and Joseph C. Garcia, 20) about plans to kidnap a “pretty girl” during their reconnaissance mission planned for the next day. When interviewed by Lang in 1968, PFC Robert M. Storeby (under the alias of Sven Erikson) said “[Gervase] stated that we would get the woman for the purpose of boom-boom, or sexual intercourse, and at the end of five days we would kill her.” Storeby also recalled that Gervase claimed it would be “good for the morale of the squad.”

At approximately 5:00 on the morning of November 18, the squad entered the tiny village of Cat Tuong, in the Phu My District, looking for a woman. After finding Phan Thi Mao (21), they bound her wrists with rope, gagged her and took her on the mission. Later, after setting up camp in an abandoned hooch, four of the soldiers (excluding PFC Storeby) took turns raping Mao. The following day, in the midst of a firefight with the Viet Cong, Thomas and Gervase became worried that the woman would be seen with the squad. Thomas took Mao into a brushy area and although he stabbed her three times with his hunting knife, he failed to kill her. When she tried to flee, three of the soldiers chased after her. Thomas caught her and shot her in the head with his M16 rifle.

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