Six weeks ago, a courageous hometown paper in rustbelt Ohio -- the Toledo Blade - tore the wraps off an officially suppressed story of Vietnam-era exterminism that recapitulates Blood Meridian in the most ghastly and unbearable detail. The reincarnation of Glanton's scalping party was an elite 45-man unit of the 101 Airborne Division known as "Tiger Force." The Blade's intricate reconstruction of its murderous march through the Central Highlands of Vietnam in summer and fall 1967 needs to be read in full, horrifying detail. Blade reporters interviewed more than 100 American veterans and Vietnamese survivors.
Tiger Force atrocities began with the torture and execution of prisoners in the field, then escalated to the routine slaughter of unarmed farmers, elderly people, even small children. As one former sergeant told the Blade, "It didn't matter if they were civilians. If they weren't supposed to be in an area, we shot them. If they didn't understand fear, I taught it to them."
Early on, Tiger Force began scalping its victims (the scalps were dangled from the ends of M-16s) and cutting off their ears as souvenirs. One member -- who would later behead an infant -- wore the ears as a ghoulish necklace (just like the character Toadvine in Blood Meridian, while another mailed them home to his wife. Others kicked out the teeth of dead villagers for their gold fillings.
A former Tiger Force sergeant told reporters that "he killed so many civilians he lost count." The Blade estimates that innocent casualties were in "the hundreds." Another veteran, a medic with the unit, recalled 150 unarmed civilians murdered in a single month.