Rambo, Ortega and Seargent Alvarez:
The 'Fragging'
Of all of the historical sources that inspired my saga, that's the most surreal of them all.
Without this note, you would have accused me of being problematic, immoral and mean spirited, but it isn’t the case. This note, more than any other, explains why I decided to write down all of the historical facts that inspired me.
The US started to perceive the Vietnam war as a 'lost' war with the 1968 Tet offensive, even if that wasn’t the case on the field, and the conflict went on for another four years.
The problem is that dying for a war one already considers lost is very similar to 'dying for nothing'.
As the US commitment went on, soldier morale got progressively lower, until it gave way to racial riots, drugs abuse and increasingly more violent protests against everything. Entire platoons refused to obey orders and the number of crimes committed by soldiers rose to unbelievable levels.
The term 'fragging' (literally 'to destroy with grenade fragments') became the most popular method to 'self-defend' from incompetent high ranking officers (and so, very dangerous) or too audacious (the so called 'medal-hunters').
Every time an officer lost men he risked becoming a target himself, and wounding or killing him became the easiest way for the troops to get another, more expert, more prudent officer. Or at the very least, a less zealous one. Considering the mortality of US troops in Vietnam, many considered 'fragging' a legitimate form of self-defence: “if we don't get rid of him now, he's going to get us all killed'.
The most common method used to get rid of an officer (even if wounding them was enough to have them transferred elsewhere) was throwing a hand grenade inside his tent while he slept (hence the word 'fragging'). Hand grenades didn’t have a serial number, revealed no fingerprints after the fact and you could never really say it wasn’t just an accident.
There were however, other ways too.
Oftentimes, someone shot the officer in the back in battle, or you summoned him to some remote place and then faked an attack by some solitary sniper who, in all actuality, didn’t exist.
The most underhand method, yet nevertheless entirely legal, was making him run dangerous risks without him suspecting it in the least. An illustration of this could be having him called urgently to an area in which enemy snipers were present and waiting for US soldiers.
During the second half of the conflict, the US army became a very violent environment.
The act of revenge that Trautman asked Ortega and Rambo to carry out, referring to it as a 'personal favour', is an example of this violence. Even if it isn’t a standard illustration of ‘fragging’, it certainly isn’t impossible considering how often these events occur every day.
History books cite about two hundred verified fragging cases yearly.
Throughout the duration of the war, if we also include those cases considered suspect yet highly probable, the total hits one thousand and four hundred cases.
One in four soldiers had been an accomplice to, or known a victim of such a case.