What do you think?
Rate this book
Son Thang: An American War Crime
In this engrossing true courtroom drama, Gary D. Solis, a former Marine combat officer who teaches law at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, draws on his considerable experience to describe the Marine Corps' worst known war crime in Vietnam. Although overshadowed by the infamous My Lai massacre, the murder of sixteen women and children by five Marines at Son Thang-4 raised serious questions for the Corps and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Were the five Marines of the self-styled killer team sent to Son Thang-4 on 19 February 1970 carrying out orders to punish the hamlet or reacting to snipers when they opened fire on noncombatant civilians at point-blank range? Were their actions simply a consequence of weeks of unrelenting combat in which fellow Marines were killed by the invisible Viet Cong and their boobytraps? Using trial records and extensive interviews, Solis brings to life the host of military and civilian attorneys, judges, and juries who wrestled with these and other thorny questions in the midst of a combat zone. Here for the first time is the full story of what happened at Son Thang-4, including the controversial deliberations and verdicts--a study as pertinent today as it was more than twenty-five years ago.
416 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published September 1, 1998
50 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 30, 2022
In his book, Gary D. Solis chronicles the story of a war crime that was committed by American Marines in Vietnam less than two years after the My Lai Massacre and the subsequent court-martials that convicted four of the five Marines involved.
On February 19, 1970, a Marine "killer team" of five men, led and incited by Private Randy Herrod, who had never previously served on such a team, shot and murdered sixteen Vietnamese women and children, aged from three to fifty, in three different areas of an obscure South Vietnamese hamlet located southwest of Da Nang that was known to the Marines as Son Thang. The term killer team, as the author explains, was local to the conflict and to the regiment. There was no agreed definition, except to kill the enemy. The team had been told to shoot first and ask questions later. As the team lader put it: "We'd fire instinctively, just the way we were trained." They were trained to believe that since the Viet Cong did not recognize non-combatants, they should not either.
Such monstrosities as a killer squad, the author suggests, stemmed from Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara's infamous body count policy, which was not gone even after McNamara left the administration. The motto of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, to which the members of the killer team belonged, was "Get some," and in front of the battalion headquarters, there was a "Kill Board", on which the body count was noted. When the battalion was to leave Vietnam, "Get Some" was crossed out and replaced by "Got some."
The Son Thang killer team and those who commanded it were a recipe for disaster from the beginning. If a Hollywood production team had assembled such a cast for a Vietnam war movie, they would have been accused of using worn-out clichés: a new and ambitious battalion commander, a tough, overly aggresive company commander, an inexperienced, newly arrived platoon leader, a battle-wise platoon sergeant, an African-American with a criminal record, and a twenty-year-old who was part Native American. Those men, who had not known each other prior to their joining of the killer team, harbored mistrust for each other, which was fostered by their conflicting personalities and diverse backgrounds. Furthermore, they had received no training whatsoever in the laws of war and counterinsurgency. Their selection for the team was random at worst and based on qualities such as bravery and aggressiveness at best.
The appointment of Randy Herrod out of all people for the post of the team leader only aggravated the already atrocity-producing situation. Herrod, who wrote a memoir, BLUE'S BASTARDS, in which he portrays himself as a calm, benevolent person, was in reality a different person. According to his fellow Marines, the machinegunner was cool under fire and aggressive. Lieutenant Carney, who assembled the killer team, called him a natural leader with experience in such matters and claimed that Herrod had served on killer teams before. Herrod had never served on a killer team prior to Son Thang, though, and his taking over the leadership of the squad was a huge mistake. He combined the calculated aggression of Charlie Company's Mad Dog Medina with inexperience. According to Solis, he bore the bulk of the responsibility for the massacre. However, at the trials, he was represented by four civilian lawyers from America in addition to his assigned military counsel. He was the first, and only, one of the killer team's members to testify that enemy machine gun fire had been heard when the team patrolled Son Thang. This was an outright lie, just like his claims, which he voices in his memoir, that he had mistook the sixteen women and children for Viet Cong men when he had ordered his team to fire. The court still believed Herrod, though, and he was acquitted.
The author also accounts for the other four trials, which, unlike Liuetenant Calley's trial after My Lai for instance, occurred not in America, but in combat zone, where there were almost no reporters, and therefore media coverage could be successfully avoided. The last thing the American Army needed so shortly after the My Lai massacre was another wave of international outrage against it. Solis believes that the lack of news coverage was the reason why in this trial American public opinion favored the guilty Marines. The results of the trial were no less discouraging than those of the My Lai trials. Private Michael Schwarz, who was tried first and found guilty for participation in the murder of twelve victims, was sentenced to imprisonment for life, but his sentence was eventually reduced to one year. Private Samuel Green was convicted of participating in the murder of fifteen of the victims, but was sentenced to on,y five years, of which he served less than one. Private Thomas Boyd was acquitted, and an anonymous member of the killer team, who claimed to have fired over the heads of the Vietnamese villagers and testified for the prosecution, was not even tried.
The Son Thang massacre and the outcome of the war crime trials that succeeded it are an uncomfortable reminder that neither the My Lai massacre was an abberration, as the American Army claimed, nor any lessons had been learned from what happened in Pinkville in March 1968. The fact that Marine Corps commanders could consider assembling a killer team is telling enough. If everyone who fights a war is tasked with killing the enemy, why have a separate killer team? What distinguishes the members of a killer squad from regular Marines if both are killing the enemy? Or is the killer team allowed to kill indiscriminately?
SON THANG is to be read as an antidote to Herrod's memoir. Solis had done an outstanding job with both research and writing. As someone who has served in the Marine Corps for twenty-six years, he knows whereof he speaks, and it shows. This book is an engaging, insighful, and well-researched account of the Son Thang massacre. I highly recommend it.
On February 19, 1970, a Marine "killer team" of five men, led and incited by Private Randy Herrod, who had never previously served on such a team, shot and murdered sixteen Vietnamese women and children, aged from three to fifty, in three different areas of an obscure South Vietnamese hamlet located southwest of Da Nang that was known to the Marines as Son Thang. The term killer team, as the author explains, was local to the conflict and to the regiment. There was no agreed definition, except to kill the enemy. The team had been told to shoot first and ask questions later. As the team lader put it: "We'd fire instinctively, just the way we were trained." They were trained to believe that since the Viet Cong did not recognize non-combatants, they should not either.
Such monstrosities as a killer squad, the author suggests, stemmed from Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara's infamous body count policy, which was not gone even after McNamara left the administration. The motto of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, to which the members of the killer team belonged, was "Get some," and in front of the battalion headquarters, there was a "Kill Board", on which the body count was noted. When the battalion was to leave Vietnam, "Get Some" was crossed out and replaced by "Got some."
The Son Thang killer team and those who commanded it were a recipe for disaster from the beginning. If a Hollywood production team had assembled such a cast for a Vietnam war movie, they would have been accused of using worn-out clichés: a new and ambitious battalion commander, a tough, overly aggresive company commander, an inexperienced, newly arrived platoon leader, a battle-wise platoon sergeant, an African-American with a criminal record, and a twenty-year-old who was part Native American. Those men, who had not known each other prior to their joining of the killer team, harbored mistrust for each other, which was fostered by their conflicting personalities and diverse backgrounds. Furthermore, they had received no training whatsoever in the laws of war and counterinsurgency. Their selection for the team was random at worst and based on qualities such as bravery and aggressiveness at best.
The appointment of Randy Herrod out of all people for the post of the team leader only aggravated the already atrocity-producing situation. Herrod, who wrote a memoir, BLUE'S BASTARDS, in which he portrays himself as a calm, benevolent person, was in reality a different person. According to his fellow Marines, the machinegunner was cool under fire and aggressive. Lieutenant Carney, who assembled the killer team, called him a natural leader with experience in such matters and claimed that Herrod had served on killer teams before. Herrod had never served on a killer team prior to Son Thang, though, and his taking over the leadership of the squad was a huge mistake. He combined the calculated aggression of Charlie Company's Mad Dog Medina with inexperience. According to Solis, he bore the bulk of the responsibility for the massacre. However, at the trials, he was represented by four civilian lawyers from America in addition to his assigned military counsel. He was the first, and only, one of the killer team's members to testify that enemy machine gun fire had been heard when the team patrolled Son Thang. This was an outright lie, just like his claims, which he voices in his memoir, that he had mistook the sixteen women and children for Viet Cong men when he had ordered his team to fire. The court still believed Herrod, though, and he was acquitted.
The author also accounts for the other four trials, which, unlike Liuetenant Calley's trial after My Lai for instance, occurred not in America, but in combat zone, where there were almost no reporters, and therefore media coverage could be successfully avoided. The last thing the American Army needed so shortly after the My Lai massacre was another wave of international outrage against it. Solis believes that the lack of news coverage was the reason why in this trial American public opinion favored the guilty Marines. The results of the trial were no less discouraging than those of the My Lai trials. Private Michael Schwarz, who was tried first and found guilty for participation in the murder of twelve victims, was sentenced to imprisonment for life, but his sentence was eventually reduced to one year. Private Samuel Green was convicted of participating in the murder of fifteen of the victims, but was sentenced to on,y five years, of which he served less than one. Private Thomas Boyd was acquitted, and an anonymous member of the killer team, who claimed to have fired over the heads of the Vietnamese villagers and testified for the prosecution, was not even tried.
The Son Thang massacre and the outcome of the war crime trials that succeeded it are an uncomfortable reminder that neither the My Lai massacre was an abberration, as the American Army claimed, nor any lessons had been learned from what happened in Pinkville in March 1968. The fact that Marine Corps commanders could consider assembling a killer team is telling enough. If everyone who fights a war is tasked with killing the enemy, why have a separate killer team? What distinguishes the members of a killer squad from regular Marines if both are killing the enemy? Or is the killer team allowed to kill indiscriminately?
SON THANG is to be read as an antidote to Herrod's memoir. Solis had done an outstanding job with both research and writing. As someone who has served in the Marine Corps for twenty-six years, he knows whereof he speaks, and it shows. This book is an engaging, insighful, and well-researched account of the Son Thang massacre. I highly recommend it.
April 19, 2008
Less publicized than the My Lai massacre, Son Thang was the site where five marines murdered sixteen women and children during the Vietnam War. The book provides a detailed account of the incident, a survey of the applicable military laws, and an analysis of the trials, deliberations, and verdicts that followed. My favorite quote: "[W]ar is not a series of case studies that can be scrutinized with objectivity ... War is the suffering and death of people you know, set against a background of suffering and death of people you do not."
June 25, 2022
Very well done. Solis does a great job walking you through the crime, the evidence, command decisions, unit culture, and all of the follow on actions that happen after the trial. He also explores the justice and fairness of different outcomes in a very candid and objective way. Military lawyers—prosecution, defense, and SJA alike—should probably read this.
June 4, 2020
This is one of the scariest books I have ever read, not for the story itself, but that this could happen.
September 6, 2014
I used this book over 10 years ago to teach a course in Military Law at the U.S. Naval Academy and found it quite useful in illustrating issues in operational law and for explaining the military justice process. It is written in a way that makes it readable and comprehendible by the non-layer. LtCol. Solis is an exceptional military and legal scholar who can not only document and explain, but does not shy away from questioning and challenging the institution and the reader.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews