Do pigs fly? Shockingly, the extremely liberal Huffington Post on Sunday actually published a story involving Republican senate nominee Judge Roy Moore of Alabama that sounded almost positive...or at least not overtly hostile. The reason seems to be that the author, Hamilton Gregory, is a Vietnam veteran and his emphasis was on the practice of fragging during that war. Moore comes into the story mainly because he was under a fragging threat due to his insistence of enforcing discipline upon his troops, many of whom were drug abusers.
The headline was "The Forgotten History Of ‘Fragging’ In Vietnam: Senate candidate Roy Moore was reportedly among those officers targeted by their own men."
Fragging – the murder of officers and sergeants by their own troops – was in the news recently when it was reported that Roy Moore, currently campaigning in Alabama for a U.S. Senate seat, risked being killed by some of his subordinates in Vietnam.
After graduating from West Point in 1969, Moore served in Germany as a lieutenant and then he was promoted to captain and given command of the 188th Military Police Company in Vietnam in 1971. This came during the final years of the war when men who were violent, drug-addled, or disturbed became a significant presence in the Army and Marine Corps, causing a serious breakdown of discipline. In 1971, Colonel Robert D. Heinl wrote in Armed Forces Journal, “Our Army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers, drug-ridden, and dispirited where not near-mutinous.”
Two paragraphs in and still no harsh condemnation of Roy Moore. Do miracles never cease?
The term “fragging” was derived from the fact that a fragmentation grenade was rolled into the area where an officer or NCO was sleeping. When it exploded, no fingerprints could be found. The target was often a leader who was hated because he was incompetent in leading men, or excessively harsh in his discipline, or overly aggressive in waging war (putting the lives of soldiers and Marines at unnecessary risk just so that he could gain glory and advance his own career).
In addition to thousands of threats that were never carried out, there were confirmed reports of at least 800 fraggings or attempted fraggings in the Army and Marine Corps, with 86 men killed and an estimated 700 wounded. “But this was probably only the tip of a deadly iceberg,” says historian James Westheider. The true figure may never be known.
Huffington Post readers were probably wondering at this point when Moore would get fragged in print.
According to Westheider, many officers felt unsafe simply because they were authority figures. During his second tour in Vietnam at Duc Pho in 1968-1969, Major Colin Powell (later a four-star general) said he was “living in a large tent and I moved my cot every night, partly to thwart Viet Cong informants who might be tracking me, but also because I did not rule out attacks on authority from within the battalion itself.”
So not only Roy Moore but even liberal icons such as Colin Powell feared being fragged in Vietnam.
In his autobiography So Help Me God, Roy Moore said that when he took command of his company in Vietnam, “drug use was widespread and insubordination was commonplace.” He immediately enforced strict discipline. “I administered many Article Fifteens, disciplinary charges filed against insubordinate or disobedient soldiers,” especially drug users.
As a result, he said, he received threats of death by fragging. “I became a marked man,” he said. Claiming that he was not intimidated, he refused to soften his discipline. He did, however, take precautionary measures to reinforce his sleeping area. “I placed sandbags under the bed and in the walls of my quarters.”
Moore learned that “a known drug user by the name of Kidwell” was planning to kill him. “Several weeks passed before I was called one evening and informed that Kidwell had shot First Sergeant Howard and was coming for me. Armed with an automatic rifle and my 45-caliber pistol, I proceeded to company headquarters, only to find that Kidwell had been taken into custody and was sitting in my office. I made arrangements for a prompt court martial and was relieved that First Sergeant Howard had survived.”
Noooooo! This not only came suspiciously close to portraying Moore as an able officer who enforced discipline on a company riddled with drug use and insubordination but also made him sound almost compassionate in his relief that his sergeant survived a shooting.
Who stole the angry mean Roy Moore?
