TOLEDO - An elite unit of American soldiers mutilated and killed hundreds of unarmed villagers over seven months in 1967 during the Vietnam War, and an Army investigation was closed with no charges filed, The Blade reported yesterday.
Soldiers of the Tiger Force unit of the Army's 101st Airborne Division dropped grenades into bunkers where villagers - including women and children - hid, and shot farmers without warning, the newspaper reported. Soldiers told The Blade that they severed ears from the dead and strung them on shoelaces to wear around their necks.
The Army's 4 1/2 year investigation, never before made public, was initiated by a soldier outraged at the killings. The probe substantiated 20 war crimes by 18 soldiers and reached the Pentagon and White House before it was closed in 1975, The Blade said.
William Doyle, a former Tiger Force sergeant now living in Willow Springs, Mo., said he killed so many civilians in 1967 he lost count.
We didn't expect to live. Nobody out there with any brains expected to live
he told the newspaper. The way to live is to kill because you don't have to worry about anybody who's dead.
In an eight-month investigation, The Blade reviewed thousands of classified Army documents, National Archive records and radio logs and interviewed former members of the unit and relatives of those who died. 17
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