At 92, He clearly remembered the day in Southern France in 1944, when he gave a group of German soldiers several chances to surrender. They refused. Hensleigh had no choice but to kill them to protect his own
platoon.
“When you take prisoners you get all the information off of all of them," he said. "I hate to admit it but they don’t end up with their watches rings and anything else." He says on the battlefield they often confiscated personal effects from the dead Germans, which he did. He put one of the enemy soldier’s belongings in his personal scrap book.
Another story was told by NBC Dateline about Vietnam veteran, Rich Luttrell. You might say Rich’s story is a case where truth is harder to believe than fiction.
Here’s a transcript from NBC
telling how it all began.
LUTTRELL: Out of the corner of my right eye I see movement ... I could see an NVA soldier leaning over with an AK 47, squatting.
KEITH MORRISON, Dateline NBC: First time you'd ever seen a North Vietnamese soldier.
LUTTRELL: Right, in my whole life, ever seen one.
He was barely 18, suddenly
flooded with fear. His body seemed to freeze. He couldn't let it.
LUTTRELL: I had to react. I had to do something, it was my decision.
He was in the enemy's gun sight. Death was a heartbeat away.
He turned, and looked the enemy soldier full in the face.
LUTTRELL: It seemed like we stared at each other for a long
time.
And then, like it was all in slow motion, he pulled the trigger.
LUTTRELL: And I just started firing, full automatic. And he went down.
As you might guess by now, Luttrell took a photo off the body of the man he killed. But this story is far more consequential than one man’s quest for forgiveness. It’s connects history with the experience of
soldiers today, men and women, returning home now and coping, or not coping, with their role in combat.
You can read the full transcript of the story, or
watch it on video here.
