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By NANCY JOHNSON
Tribune Staff Writer

A commando raid in Vietnam left more than a dozen civilians dead. Former Sen. Bob Kerrey, the raid's leader, has gone on record with what happened, but a former squad member tells a dramatically different account.

In the meantime, observers wonder how it can be that two people can have such different versions of a wartime event.

Psychology experts aren't surprised, though.

Two people can truthfully give widely divergent descriptions of an event, whether traumatic or not, they said. That's because the brain can repress,

distort or erase memories, especially painful ones.

Late last month, Kerrey acknowledged that civilians were killed when he led his U.S. Navy SEAL team in a midnight commando raid on the village of Thanh Phong 32 years ago.

Kerrey, the former Nebraska governor and senator, and five former members of his squad have said the raid he led as a 25-year-old officer on Feb. 25, 1969, resulted in the "mistaken" killing of 12 to 14 Vietnamese civilians. They said as they approached two huts on a moonless night, they were fired upon, then returned fire. Afterward, they say, they discovered the dead were civilians of all ages.

However, one former squad member, Gerhard Klann, disputes Kerrey's account, saying the civilians were herded into a group and massacred at Kerrey's order.

It's hard to understand how people can have different memories of one event, but in terrible situations it happens a lot, said John Violanti, a professor of criminal justice at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y.

In traumatic situations, the brain processes memories of the event in fragments into the conscious and subconscious. "The sequence can be out of order, one part can be magnified, and the worst part might be forgotten completely," he said. "I've seen this happen with police officers involved in traumatic shootings."

In addition, the number of traumatic events the person was previously exposed to can influence the memory of the event, so there is a cumulative effect on memory, he added.

Stressful situations literally change the brain's chemistry, which in turn alters memory, according to Blair Justice, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston.

When a person is under stress, the adrenal glands produce a high level of a stress chemical, cortisol, which affects the memory-storage areas of the brain if it circulates in the bloodstream at high levels over time, Justice said.

Not only that, but the same traumatic event can affect two people in different ways based on how well they were able to cope with the event, Justice said.

The whole issue of memory and trauma came up in the early '90s in the area of treating sexual abuse survivors, said Sharon DeVinney, a staff psychologist at Madison Center and Hospital in South Bend. "Now the research is very clear that memories are stored in different ways and that memories change over time," she said.

DeVinney has counseled combat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, which has symptoms that can include anxiety, depression, insomnia, painful memories resurfacing in nightmares and flashbacks, and amnesia of specific details of traumatic events. "There are huge aftereffects from being in a combat situation that can be lifelong," she said.

Post-traumatic stress disorder certainly can play into this, and the bigger the trauma, the bigger the memory distortion may be for the active person in the event, said Newton Hightower, a therapist and director of the Center for Anger Resolution in Houston.

"You, me, all of us distort the past to fit with our self-image," said Hightower, who used to counsel Vietnam veterans when he worked at a veterans medical center in Houston. Kerrey's unit "may be distorting the past to live with the pain," he added.

Even though Kerrey's and Klann's accounts are so dramatically different, it is possible that they are both telling the truth as they

recall it, said Paul J. Yoder, a psychologist at Oaklawn Psychiatric Center Inc. in Goshen.

One possibility is that the person who describes the event as a massacre is the closest to what really happened and the others are sticking to the account in the official report, Yoder said. Another possibility is that what went into the report was closer to the truth, and the other man found that firing into a hut, killing innocent people, was so appalling that over time it became his true memory, he added.

Regardless of what really happened, Hightower feels compassion for all involved.

"All these people are struggling with an incredible amount of pain over this," he said.

By TERRENCE BLAND
Tribune Staff Writer

Dennis "Mike" Swanson can sympathize with former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey.

After all, Swanson, too, experienced many of the same incidents as a 19-year-old Marine corporal stationed near the demilitarized zone.

"It's reactionary," Swanson said. "You don't look to see who's shooting. You just fire back."

Kerrey has revealed that several civilians were killed in a Feb. 25, 1969, raid in the Mekong Delta in which he took part. Kerrey said he and his six-member squad began shooting only after they were shot at in a free-fire zone -- an area cleared of civilians by the U.S. military.

"Anything that moved was free game" in free-fire zones because it was widely assumed that, once all civilians were cleared out, only Viet Cong military or sympathizers remained, Swanson said.

Swanson said the military tried to use discretion when soldiers would come upon villages populated with women and children. Much of the time the villagers would be taken into custody and turned over to Vietnamese troops.

However, it wasn't always clear who was a danger and who wasn't.

"Identifying who your enemy was was a problem," said Swanson, now commander of the St. Joseph County Special Crimes Unit. "Kids would shoot at you. Women would shoot at you. It wasn't uncommon."

Swanson said it was often difficult to determine the age of many Vietnamese because of their slight build. Someone thought to be older might be a child and vice versa.

"It was unique to that particular war," said Swanson, who served in Vietnam as a squad leader for ground troops in 1966-67.

However, there was one thing nearly all soldiers had in common.

"The majority of the guys that were there had one desire, and that was to survive at any cost," Swanson said.

Some carried calendars in their pockets, marking off each day in anticipation of returning home.

Swanson's comments were echoed by Norval Williams, a retired city police officer who served in Vietnam from October 1967 to November 1968. Williams served in a helicopter squadron.

"We brought back a bunch of dead and wounded," Williams recalled. "You do what you have to do to come back home.

"I just didn't want to die in that country," he said. "If it meant taking someone's life in an act of war, then all is fair in love and war."

Williams said he doesn't condemn Kerrey for what he did. There has been some speculation that Kerrey wanted to make the incident known because he may plan another run for president. But Williams offered another reason.

"It's like a sore," he said of the Vietnam War. "It may have been festering inside him and maybe he just wanted to get it off his chest."

Williams also supports Kerrey's decision to retain his Bronze Star.

"He deserves to keep the medal," Williams said. "He earned it."

Commentary
By BILL MOOR

It is almost embarrassing to admit now. Especially now.

A couple of buddies and I, with our web gear hanging over our shoulders and our empty M-16s stuck between our legs, would crane our necks out the back of the Army truck to see if we could catch a glimpse of him.

We knew where he lived and we thought we had seen him outside in his yard one early morning.

It was late 1972 and we were young Army officers going to Infantry school at Fort Benning, Ga. Hardly any of us in our training company would end up going to Vietnam and because that war effort was winding down, many of us would go right into the Reserves for eight years as "90-day wonders."

He was one of the reasons we were relieved that our country's efforts in Vietnam were almost over.

He was William Calley, the Army lieutenant held most responsible for the massacre at My Lai in 1968. He was the man found guilty of the murders of 22 Vietnam civilians -- although the loss of life was in the hundreds that day -- when he had his platoon open fire on unarmed men, women and children. He was the one they talked about in whispers around Benning that fall.

And he was the one we craned our necks to see -- wondering what demons possessed him on that day in March of 1968 and also wondering what he had been like when he was going through the same kind of training as us.

Calley was originally sentenced to a life of hard labor in March 1971. That was eventually reduced to 20 years ... and then 10 years ... and then he was freed after less than four years of house arrest at Fort Benning.

House arrest -- and we knew the house.

It seems almost ghoulish now that we would even try to catch a glimpse of him. And yet Vietnam was my generation's war. Maybe we had an excuse for peeking -- since we wore the same uniform and lieutenant's bars as he did and needed to know that war can turn some men into monsters.

Maybe.

Calley's name has resurfaced now because of the recent revelations by Bob Kerrey, the former Nebraska senator and governor who said that a Navy SEAL unit he commanded killed civilians in a 1969 mission in Vietnam.

One member of that unit even went so far as to say that the civilians were lined up and shot. After 32 years, it is hard to know what really happened that night.

Unlike Calley, Kerrey had a distinguished military career that ended when he lost a leg during a mission for which he won the Medal of Honor. He has always been considered a hero of the highest level.

And now he comes under scrutiny, too, so many years later.

Is it fair for his reputation to be put on the line? At this point in time, he may be the only one who can answer that fairly.

War has done strange things to people. It made Calley into a butcher and cost Kerrey his leg -- and who knows how much of his peace of mind.

Calley is remembered as a pariah and Kerrey as a courageous warrior. And yet who really knows how much different they were when the strains of war weighed heavily on their shoulders.

I never fought in a war. Ninety-four percent of those under 65 in our country have never worn a military uniform. We will never understand what wartime soldiers went through, what ran through their minds when the enemy was always near.

We hope that we would not have turned into Calley. We hope that Kerrey didn't either.

But that was 32 years ago. Do we really need to rub against the scar tissue left behind by the Vietnam War? Or, on the other hand, do we occasionally need a reminder how ugly and brutal war is and how it can turn some humans into people they might not even recognize?

I don't know the answers.

I do know that I tried to catch a look at William Calley, now the manager of a jewelry store in Columbus, Ga., in the same way that others are now trying to peek into Bob Kerrey's past. It is human nature. It is easy to do.

Second-guessers, after all, usually don't have to venture behind enemy lines.

Survivor: Pleas went unheard
By TINI TRAN
Associated Press Writer

THANH PHONG, Vietnam -- Bui Thi Luom says she was 12 years old when seven Americans with guns stormed into her Mekong Delta village, rounding up women and children. She says she watched helplessly as the soldiers opened fire, despite her grandmother's pleadings for mercy.

She was the only survivor in her hut of 16 people -- 11 children and five women, she said.

Luom's account follows the public acknowledgment last week by former U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., that civilians were killed during a commando raid by his U.S. Navy SEAL team on this coastal village 32 years ago.

Kerrey said he has been privately haunted ever since by the memory of killing civilians, but he insisted the SEALS opened fire only after being fired on.

However, The New York Times and CBS-TV's "60 Minutes II," in a joint reporting project, quoted another ex-SEAL, Gerhard Klann, as saying the civilians were herded into a group and massacred at Thanh Phon.

Kerrey, who later served as Nebraska governor and senator and ran for president in 1992, received a Bronze Star medal for the Feb. 25, 1969 raid.

Now the president of New York's New School University, Kerrey says the village was a declared "free-fire zone" where everyone was regarded as hostile. The attack was prompted by intelligence reports saying Viet Cong officials planned a meeting there that night and that no civilians would be present, he says.

"We fired because we were fired upon," Kerrey said. "We did not go out on a mission to kill innocent people. I feel guilty about what happened."

Although Kerrey insists that his written after-action report mentioned civilian deaths, SEAL message exchanges later that day -- and his Bronze Star citation -- refer only to 21 Viet Cong killed. Radio logs two days later said 24 died, 13 civilians and 11 VC.

Luom, now 44, told reporters there were no Viet Cong in Thanh Phong, and only the Americans fired weapons. "They only killed civilians, women and children. No VC," she said. Altogether, 20 people were killed, she said.

A small woman with a shy smile, Luom lives with her husband and five children in a nearby fishing village.

Local officials arranged for Luom and another witness, Pham Thi Lanh, to meet with foreign reporters. A provincial official was present during the interviews.

The Mekong Delta was the wartime stronghold of the National Liberation Front -- the Viet Cong -- the home-grown Communist insurgency that sought to overthrow the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government.

Thanh Phong is a tiny cluster of thatched-roof huts on the coast 100 miles (160 kilometers) southeast of Ho Chi Minh City. Lush groves of coconut and banana trees line the red-dirt road that connects it to Ben Tre province.

In 1969, it was even poorer, Luom said. There were no men -- many had been killed in bombing raids and others had joined the Viet Cong, she said. Viet Cong sympathies were strong, other residents say. One recalled that the first sea shipment of arms from Communist North Vietnam to the south arrived in Thanh Phong in 1964.

The second witness, Lanh, 62, said she hid in a banana grove as the intruders killed an elderly couple and their three grandchildren. The adults, Bui Van Vat, 65, and Luu Thi Canh, 62, were decapitated, she claimed.

"They killed her first. I saw the soldiers cutting off her head. Then he started screaming and they killed him," Lanh said. "He was wearing a scarf, and you could still see the skin hanging on his neck."

She said she ran to her house and stuffed her children's mouths with cloth to keep them quiet. After the incident, she said, she found a pile of bodies, including eight of her relatives. The next morning, she and other survivors gathered the bodies, wrapped them in straw mats and buried them in a common grave. "We didn't even have coffins for them," she said.

Lanh, whose account had several inconsistencies, said she could not positively identify the men as Americans.

"They spoke a language I didn't understand, and they wore helmets and big clothes," she said.