The officers assumed the blast was an attack by the Viet Cong and quickly prepared to defend themselves but strangely, there were no sounds of further hostilities. when the sounds of an explosion ripped through the base. The relaxed atmosphere was suddenly shattered around 1 a.m. On the night of March 15, 1971, a group of American artillery officers stationed at the Bien Hoa Air Force base were enjoying a rare “wonderful time of great food and fellowship” in a brief respite from the war. Thomas Dellwo was killed by a fellow soldier the day before he was slated to leave Vietnam. Targets were sometimes even given a warning in the form of a grenade with their names painted on it, planted in their sleeping quarters with the safety pin still in. Individual grenades were also not given unique serial numbers, so any effort to trace the murder weapon back to the murderer was unlikely.įragging attacks were usually retaliation for some disciplinary action, although they were also sometimes a convenient means for worried troops to get rid of an officer they thought was incompetent.
Because the shell of the grenade was destroyed, any fingerprints were destroyed with it. What Was Fragging?Īs the Vietnam War dragged on, soldiers began to see the war as unjust and unwinnable, leading to openly mutinous behavior.īy way of a “fragmentation grenade,” from which the term “fragging” was derived, a soldier could effectively do away with an officer without leaving any evidence. NATIONAL ARCHIVES/AFP/Getty Images More incidents of fragging occured in the Vietnam War than in either World War.
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