thedrifter
11-29-03, 10:41 AM
Issue Date: July 07, 2003
Fragging unheard-of since Vietnam War
By Bryant Jordan
Times staff writer
frag (frag) vt. fragged, frag’ging [< frag(mentation grenade)] [Mil. Slang] to intentionally kill or wound (one’s superior officer, etc.) esp. with a hand grenade
— Webster’s New World Dictionary of American English, Third College Edition, Prentice Hall
It came, like so much other baggage, out of the Vietnam War. Not that a soldier killing his commanding officer or NCO was something new or unique to Vietnam.
Marine Col. Robert D. Heinl Jr., in an Armed Forces Journal article published in June 1971, noted that the earliest confirmed murder of an American officer by his own troops occurred Jan. 1, 1781, when Pennsylvania soldiers of the Continental Army killed one of their captains.
And in “Fragging and other Withdrawal Symptoms” [Saturday Review, Jan. 8, 1972], author Eugene Linden pointed out that officers were killed by their own troops in every war in the 20th century. During World War I, the military courts-martialed 370 enlisted men charged with killing or attempting to kill their superiors — a small number considering there were 4.7 million people in uniform at the time.
Nor are such killings unique to American troops. Ernest Hemingway, in his semi-autobiographical World War I novel, “A Farewell to Arms,” writes of Italian soldiers killing their commanders. At the same time, as Czarist Russia collapsed, its army fell into chaos and there, also, soldiers murdered officers.
But “fragging” — the word stems from the use of the fragmentation grenade as the weapon of choice — entered the lexicon because of Vietnam, where more than 500 such murders occurred between 1969 and 1972, according to Defense Department figures.
Heinl, a Marine officer, author and historian, noted in “The Collapse of the Armed Forces” [Armed Forces Journal, June 7, 1971], that word “of the deaths of officers will bring cheers at troop movies or in bivouacs of certain units.”
Fraggings were estimated to be running one a week in the “morale-plagued” Americal Division in 1971, he wrote, while bounties running anywhere from $50 to $1,000 “were being widely reported as put on the heads of leaders whom the privates and Sp4s want to rub out.”
Martha Rudd, a spokeswoman for the Army, said the Army has no knowledge of fraggings since that time. And so the deaths of Army Capt. Christopher Seifert and Air National Guard Maj. Gregory Stone in Kuwait on March 23 exploded like an echo from Vietnam. Siefert died from a gunshot wound, but shrapnel from a grenade killed Stone, a medical examiner testified.
Suddenly, “fragging” is in the news once more.
The fragging case involving Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar, however, appears different from those from Vietnam, which, according to Linden and Heinl, typically involved younger, junior-enlisted troops. Generally, they did not want to be in the military or in Vietnam.
Akbar, of the 326th Engineer Battalion, is 32 years old, a sergeant and serving willingly. A motive for the alleged killings — which also wounded 14 — has yet to be determined. Akbar is a Muslim, though officials say there is no evidence indicating his alleged actions were connected to Islam.
Fraggings in Vietnam were aimed at sending messages to officers to keep their people out of harm’s way, Linden said. He learned from interviews with an Army judge who presided over fragging trials that the practice was “influential to the point that virtually all officers and NCOs have to take into account the possibility of fragging before giving an order to the men under them.”
It was “the troops’ way of controlling officers,” and it was “deadly effective,” Linden wrote, quoting Capt. Barry Steinberg, the Army judge.
Linden, in a telephone interview June 19, said the Vietnam fraggings had to do with racism, drug use and, to a greater extent, “ambivalence about the mission.
“No one could explain, especially at end of war, why they were still there.”
But the leadership, including NCOs, he said, increasingly lost control and fraggings “became epidemic.”
Today is different, he said, because the military is all volunteer and has made great strides in addressing racism. Also, the missions since Vietnam generally have been more focused and not long term.
“Unless we’re stuck in Iraq for a long time, I’d be surprised if fragging emerges as a problem like it did in Vietnam,” he said.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/archivepaper.php?f=0-MARINEPAPER-1966375.php
Sempers,
Roger
:marine:
Fragging unheard-of since Vietnam War
By Bryant Jordan
Times staff writer
frag (frag) vt. fragged, frag’ging [< frag(mentation grenade)] [Mil. Slang] to intentionally kill or wound (one’s superior officer, etc.) esp. with a hand grenade
— Webster’s New World Dictionary of American English, Third College Edition, Prentice Hall
It came, like so much other baggage, out of the Vietnam War. Not that a soldier killing his commanding officer or NCO was something new or unique to Vietnam.
Marine Col. Robert D. Heinl Jr., in an Armed Forces Journal article published in June 1971, noted that the earliest confirmed murder of an American officer by his own troops occurred Jan. 1, 1781, when Pennsylvania soldiers of the Continental Army killed one of their captains.
And in “Fragging and other Withdrawal Symptoms” [Saturday Review, Jan. 8, 1972], author Eugene Linden pointed out that officers were killed by their own troops in every war in the 20th century. During World War I, the military courts-martialed 370 enlisted men charged with killing or attempting to kill their superiors — a small number considering there were 4.7 million people in uniform at the time.
Nor are such killings unique to American troops. Ernest Hemingway, in his semi-autobiographical World War I novel, “A Farewell to Arms,” writes of Italian soldiers killing their commanders. At the same time, as Czarist Russia collapsed, its army fell into chaos and there, also, soldiers murdered officers.
But “fragging” — the word stems from the use of the fragmentation grenade as the weapon of choice — entered the lexicon because of Vietnam, where more than 500 such murders occurred between 1969 and 1972, according to Defense Department figures.
Heinl, a Marine officer, author and historian, noted in “The Collapse of the Armed Forces” [Armed Forces Journal, June 7, 1971], that word “of the deaths of officers will bring cheers at troop movies or in bivouacs of certain units.”
Fraggings were estimated to be running one a week in the “morale-plagued” Americal Division in 1971, he wrote, while bounties running anywhere from $50 to $1,000 “were being widely reported as put on the heads of leaders whom the privates and Sp4s want to rub out.”
Martha Rudd, a spokeswoman for the Army, said the Army has no knowledge of fraggings since that time. And so the deaths of Army Capt. Christopher Seifert and Air National Guard Maj. Gregory Stone in Kuwait on March 23 exploded like an echo from Vietnam. Siefert died from a gunshot wound, but shrapnel from a grenade killed Stone, a medical examiner testified.
Suddenly, “fragging” is in the news once more.
The fragging case involving Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar, however, appears different from those from Vietnam, which, according to Linden and Heinl, typically involved younger, junior-enlisted troops. Generally, they did not want to be in the military or in Vietnam.
Akbar, of the 326th Engineer Battalion, is 32 years old, a sergeant and serving willingly. A motive for the alleged killings — which also wounded 14 — has yet to be determined. Akbar is a Muslim, though officials say there is no evidence indicating his alleged actions were connected to Islam.
Fraggings in Vietnam were aimed at sending messages to officers to keep their people out of harm’s way, Linden said. He learned from interviews with an Army judge who presided over fragging trials that the practice was “influential to the point that virtually all officers and NCOs have to take into account the possibility of fragging before giving an order to the men under them.”
It was “the troops’ way of controlling officers,” and it was “deadly effective,” Linden wrote, quoting Capt. Barry Steinberg, the Army judge.
Linden, in a telephone interview June 19, said the Vietnam fraggings had to do with racism, drug use and, to a greater extent, “ambivalence about the mission.
“No one could explain, especially at end of war, why they were still there.”
But the leadership, including NCOs, he said, increasingly lost control and fraggings “became epidemic.”
Today is different, he said, because the military is all volunteer and has made great strides in addressing racism. Also, the missions since Vietnam generally have been more focused and not long term.
“Unless we’re stuck in Iraq for a long time, I’d be surprised if fragging emerges as a problem like it did in Vietnam,” he said.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/archivepaper.php?f=0-MARINEPAPER-1966375.php
Sempers,
Roger
:marine: