fellows knew about law, Eriksson said. And wasnt it just possible that the victim might not necessarily be Eriksson himself but, rather, his new bride? in his stead. Greenacre might react disapprovingly, as the fellows in the platoon hador, for all Eriksson knew, Greenacre might turn out to be Meserves best friend. [12][13], Gervase died on March 23, 1981. A: Well, no, sir, until theyvenot until they serve their sentence. leading men on fifty, sixty, seventy patrols, and gave it as his opinion that this incident did not occur as the normal incident. Making his chief point, Meserves lawyer told the court, Theres one thing that stands out about this particular offense. Q : You feel that the government has done you a grave injustice in bringing you here today for trial? I knew I had cut myself off from the rest of my patrol, refusing to go into that hootch, and I had this idea that the fellows were watching the place from the brush, waiting for me to make just one false move with Mao. Between us, weve taken care of that whole family., Eriksson never did become a door gunner. The experts findings established conclusively that Mao had been stabbed three times, in the rib cage and the neck, and that her skull presented a crushed appearance, showing the shattering effects of two high-velocity-missile wounds. Classifying her racial stock as Mongoloid, Professor Furue placed Maos age at between eighteen and twenty and her height at five feet four and a half inchessomewhat greater than Eriksson had estimated it to be in talking with me. That this weak, coughing girl had overpowered me? That was how my hunch went, and I didnt dare change it in any way. Eriksson moved cautiously. In any event, Eriksson went on, he lost little time in seeking out his friend Curly Rowan to tell him the story of Mao. He was 34 years old. It was also noted that, like Meserve, Clark was the product of an impoverished and broken home. His manner became momentarily subdued when Meserve waved him in as the third man, but Clark was his jaunty self again when he returned. She began to weep, and backed away, cringing. Other soldiers, he said, might just as easily have betrayed the weakness that the four men had betrayed on Hill 192, but it had fallen to Meserve and Clark and Rafe and Manuel in particular to act as they had. One of them, I know, goofed on his interrogation of Manuelhe forgot to read off one of Manuels rights before he started asking questions. In addition, Eriksson told me, he would have appreciated it if the prosecutorwhom he looked upon as his lawyerhad tutored him slightly in how to conduct himself in court; despite his status as the Armys chief witness, Eriksson said, he took the stand practically cold. Things will get sorted out, he said. All rights reserved. Just as the prosecutor had foreseen, the defense attorneys did try to make Eriksson look odd, but that was among the milder of their insinuations. As the others clustered around it, Eriksson withdrew to the fringes of the circle, made uncomfortable by everyones purposeful curiosity. Another board might have found differently, a colonel in the Judge Advocate Generals office told me.) Mrs. Eriksson, who was once more plying her husband and me with coffee and cake, put in, Sven and I are Lutherans. Lets kill her and get it over with, he said, according to the court record. A: No, sir, Ive got nothing against the government. Eriksson told me that he himself reacted silently but that after Meserve and the men had broken up to go their separate ways until morning he sought out his friend Corporal Curly Rowan, a West Virginian, who had been in Vietnam, and with the platoon, just as long as Meserve had. In Vietnam, the jurors petition urging clemency for Clark had been acted upon, with the result that the G.I.s life sentence had been commuted to a sentence of twenty years.