SwiftVets.com

[baldeagl]

Joe Bangert enlists in 1968, and serves in VMO-6, an aviation unit that flies very small observation planes. Banger does not state his MOS (Military Occupational Specialty), but almost all the enlisted men in these units were maintenance types - fix airplanes, attach bombs, fix radios, etc. They usually did not fly, and they saw very little combat.

Bangert says he sees a truck load of Marines murder a bunch of children on his first day with two officers present. Then he sees bodies "crucified" on perimeter wire, apparently cut up with knives and hung on the wire. Then he has a friend who is CIA who takes him somewhere, murders a woman with twenty shots, then cuts open her ******, takes out her organs and skins her. The perpetrator was a former military officer, and two other field grade officers knew about it.

Then Bangert works with the pacification program in Vietnam, and travels extensively through Quang Tri Province. He sees approximately twenty deformed infants under the age of one.

Bangert sees journalists, specifically women journalists who were readily welcomed into the unit. There was always this whitewashing thing. Well, sometimes these people would go right past the bodies and come into our base to get a story. They were kept away from the enlisted men, away from the people who were involved. The typical thing was to take them down to the Officers Club, get them soused.

Elsewhere in his testimony, Bangert claims to be a door gunner with two helo units.

Anybody who believes these tall tales is awfully gullible. Bangert worked for a light observation squadron - very little combat. The men worked like coolies, often 16 hours a day 7 days a week, servicing planes, refueling, rearming, preparing, cleaning, maintaining. Usually they did not fly. They did not get to wander off on secret CIA missions. They did not participate in the CAP program - these were separate small units who lived permanently in villages, protecting the villages from the VC. They did not get to wander around Quang Tri looking at deformed kids. He states on his first day he sees a bunch of kids murdered on Route 1 -- this the main thoroughfare through the area, not some remote area. Can you imagine the press coverage? He says the press saw the crucified bodies, but were wooed with booze and did not report on this. Come on, get real.

So how much is the rest fabricated? Some no doubt is true. When a story is limited, it is more credible. But a lot of it is people telling tales, pathological liars and just plain liars. Bangert leads a rich fantasy life suitable for Stephen King.

He was a founder of VVAW and is a strong supporter of Kerry. With all the vets reading this board, somebody reading must have served with him - in the same unit - near enough to know if he's lying about this stuff.
_________________
antimedia
USN OST-6 68-74
http://antimedia.blogspot.com/

[JCCremer]

Baldeagl, I ran through your 107 posts and just have a comment. It seems you are looking for information from first hand witnesses and informal public sources. Maybe some Navy administrative type would volunteer some suggestions on how to document and reinforce your searches with official documents rather than heresay. I don't know about the Navy system, but no one goes through the Army without leaving unit footprints in the domains of orders, unit histories, readiness reports, after action reports, etc. I don't think that getting this stuff would require the permission of any individual under the privacy cover, but I could be wrong there. On the down side, it would be a lot of work and probably take a lot of time.
Anyway, keep up the good work.
John
_________________
First tour 1965-66, 173rd Airborne Bde (Sep)
Second tour 1969-70, MACV (SOG)
Retired 1987, Grade 0-6, US Army
Let the truth be known. I'm with you guys and Kerry insulted all of us with his anti-war activities. Let's hold him accountable.

[AMOS]

I was USMC Viet Nam 1968, Quang Tri area. From what Bangert has said, you can tell I didn't serve with him because he's not been shot.

BTW, the only deformed V.N. kid I saw was on the USS Sanctuary with a club foot that our doctors fixed. He was having some pain, so I asked the corpsman to give him a Darvon. He sat straight up in bed and stared ahead. Probably the wildest "trip" that kid ever had.

Semper Fidelis.

[eliptak]

How is it that a few VVAW types, including Superman Kerry, saw all these atrocities on a dialy basis, but the other 2 -3,000,000 of us who passed through there didn't see them?

If you asked Kerry, he would say all 3,000,000 of us are liars and involved in a conspiracy to cover up the atoricites. Only he is telling the truth. This guy is a sociopath.
_________________
Ed Liptak
B/2/502
101st Abn Div
1966-1967

[baldeagl]