Tiger Force Recon Scandal

Tiger Force entered the pantheon of elite U.S. military units in the early days of America's war in Vietnam. Faced with significant enemy resistance in the central highlands of South Vietnam, U.S. Army leaders ordered the creation and training of a reconnaissance-attack force to operate there in 1965. Volunteers from the 101st Airborne division were formally assigned to headquarters company but actually attached to the 1st battalion, 327th regiment, as two “Tiger Force” platoons (named for their tiger-striped uniforms that were, according to author David Hackworth, “scrounged from the Green Berets”). The 327th, operationally commanded by Maj. David Hackworth, was deployed in Kon Tum province in the central region of South Vietnam to detect and engage enemy forces. For the next several years its companies and the Tiger Force platoons confronted the enemy frequently. Two Tiger Force members, 1st Lieut. James Gardner and Staff Sgt. John Gertsch, were posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for conspicuous acts of courage. Tiger Force entered the toy soldier arena in 1988 when the “G.I. Joe” model toy company created a “Tiger Force” group. The real Tiger Force members of the 101st saw action in the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War. In late 2003 elements of the Tigers were guarding oil pipelines against insurgents there near Mosul. But in that same year the American public learned of charges that war crimes had been committed by one Tiger Force reconnaissance platoon in the summer and fall of 1967, charges that tarnished this elite force's name.

Tiger Force engaged the enemy in fierce firefights at Qui Nohn, My Cahn, and Dak To in 1966. Lieut. Col. Gerald Morse assumed command of the 1/327 in early 1967. In early May one of the Tiger Force platoons was deployed to the east near the coast in Quang Ngai province when experienced sniper fire and booby traps. On May 15 the platoon was ambushed near Duc Pho by elements of a North Vietnamese battalion: two men were killed and 25 wounded. Specialist 5 Lonnie Butz, a medical aidman, performed so fearlessly and effectively in that engagement that he was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. But shortly thereafter the damage to Tiger Force's honor began.

Soon after the Duc Pho ambush, Lieut. James Hawkins arrived with more than 20 replacements and assumed command of the platoon, which moved north into the Song Ve valley, a rice-growing region, to see to the removal of the farmers there. Leaflets had been dropped throughout the region calling on the inhabitants to move to relocation camps being created for them to deny the enemy the rice harvest. For the most part, the residents of the valley refused to move, even when military aircraft began spraying some of their rice paddies with defoliants in early August. The area was declared a free-fire zone, which meant that, there being no other friendly forces in the region, the local officer-incharge no longer had to communicate with either U.S. or South Vietnamese authorities to obtain clearance to fire on suspected enemy positions.

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