Dennis Stout

Staff Sergeant Dennis Stout was among the first U.S. soldiers to report atrocities committed by American troops during the Vietnam War.

He arrived in Vietnam in September 1966 to join the 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, which had deployed to Quảng Ngãi province in the Central Highlands. After being wounded three times, he became the battalion's press officer. During the spring of 1967, he witnessed systematic atrocities committed by soldiers in both Tiger Force, a long-range reconnaissance unit, and the broader 101st Airborne Division in the Central Highlands. While still serving, Stout reported the crimes to his superiors but was told to ignore them.

Days after his 1969 discharge, he contacted reporters at several Arizona newspapers and repeated his account, drawing a visit from agents of the Army's Criminal Investigation Division (CID), to whom he again turned over evidence. On June 8, 1969, he spoke at an anti-war rally in Phoenix, publicly disclosing what he had witnessed for the first time; two days before the speech, CID agents visited him again and threatened him.

The Army opened an internal inquiry, later called the "Stout Allegation," that ran four and a half years and substantiated 20 war crimes involving 18 soldiers, but resulted in no charges.

Background

Reports of war crimes by U.S. troops surfaced well before the Mỹ Lai massacre of March 1968. The earliest and best known came from Master Sergeant Donald W. Duncan, a decorated Army Special Forces soldier who appeared on the cover of the February 1966 issue of Ramparts announcing "I quit!" Duncan described numerous atrocities, including interrogation torture and the use of Vietnamese proxies to summarily execute prisoners. One of them, Private Dennis Mora, defended the Vietnamese people's right to self-defense and refused to take part in what he called the extermination of a whole people. In early 1967, Army doctor Captain Howard Levy refused to train Green Beret medics headed to Vietnam, arguing the Army was using them to win over villages it was simultaneously destroying.

War crimes

On his first combat operation, Stout was paired with an experienced soldier and told to follow his lead. In a small village, the soldier threw a grenade into a shelter and had Stout throw a second one in; when children could be heard screaming after the blasts, the soldier threw a third grenade, silencing them. The hut was later found to contain the bodies of mothers, small children, and elderly people. a designation now considered to violate the laws of war. Officers in the field applied the term literally, telling their men there were no friendlies and to shoot anything that moved.

Stout also witnessed the gang rape and murder of a captured Vietnamese teenager, carried out by most of the platoon over two days; he, the medic, and one other soldier did not participate. When he reported the incident to his battalion sergeant major, he was told to forget it. He then brought the Army chaplain to raise it again, but the sergeant major dismissed the chaplain and warned Stout that if he raised the matter again, he would not return from his next operation.

Accusations confirmed

Stout's allegations remained hidden by the Army for decades until the 2003 Toledo Blade investigation documented and confirmed them. The Blade found that between 1971 and 1975 the Army's Criminal Investigation Command had investigated Tiger Force for alleged war crimes committed between May and November 1967. the wearing of necklaces made from them, He eventually tried to leave the country, only to discover when he applied for a passport that he had been placed on a list of foreign agents; he was unable to obtain one for eight years.