Torture "wasn't even in our frame of mind," O'Malley says. "'Do unto others as you would have others do unto you' - that was our standard."Ī standard that, unlike the "war on terror" today, included avoiding the use of torture. The prisoners were given food, toiletries - "all the amenities of living," he says. sailors," O'Malley says today, with some pride.
Detours in pittsburgh cracked#
'I cracked this case because these prisoners were so impressed with the humane treatment that they received during the interrogation,'" O'Malley recalls hearing. because of the brilliant work that he did. explained to me that they got promoted and one of them got a commission. But, "As the interrogation wound down, my roommate and his buddy. "He wasn't divulging state secrets to me," O'Malley says. One of the Marine Corps interrogators charged with debriefing the prisoners bunked with O'Malley. I saw them two or three times a day, the whole time they were there." "The vast majority of the time they're sleeping, sitting at desks. "The prisoners weren't asking for anything at first" - in fact, they were hoarding the food, which was typical Navy chow but came in a "deluge" of typical American portions. "This was the comfortable part of the ship," he recalls - it was air-conditioned, for one. 45s and clubs to a dozen sailors, overseeing their work as guards. The officers' quarters on one troop transport were jury-rigged as a prison. "It would be like sitting in a matchbox in a pond," he says. Having seen aircraft carriers and battleships from a PT boat when he was stationed in San Diego, O'Malley can only marvel at their chutzpah. The next thing he knows, a dozen North Vietnamese sailors have been captured after trying to torpedo the U.S. "So somebody in North Vietnam comes up with this idea: 'Let's throw a brush-back pitch at the 7th Fleet,'" O'Malley says. The vessels started patrolling closer and closer to the coast. That summer, the 7th Fleet provided a platform for jets to attack North Vietnam - and a way to rescue pilots who were trained to head to sea "and then punch out you don't have to go to the North Vietnamese POW camp." Bush's service record was under its greatest scrutiny yet, O'Malley was happy to display his own discharge papers from the fall of 1966. When he marches against the current war, he wears a "Vietnam Veteran" ballcap. O'Malley's passion about the experience of war can be almost that hot today. But this a war story.Īs in many war stories, the names and dates have faded, but the weather is still almost palpable. Today, O'Malley jokes about talking like a sailor. "He would say to me" - through a subordinate, of course - "'Lieutenant O'Malley, make sure these sailors don't go out and fuck up the ship,' and the captain would say, 'Don't you let these sailors fuck up my ship.'"
"The admiral technically owned these sailors," recalls O'Malley. Greenfield native Marty O'Malley - then a Navy lieutenant, now a borough councilor in east suburban Forest Hills - oversaw some of the troops who slept in these ships by night and built the piers by day.
But it had many troop transport ships in the 7th Fleet, cruising the western Pacific or anchored in Danang harbor. Navy was short of living spaces for personnel in its port support facility at Danang, Vietnam, which was then under construction.
0 kommentar(er)
