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Q. What do you mean you had to go
in the service?
SCOTT CAMILE: Well, it was just that I was
on probation, and then I got in another fight, so they were going to
pull out the rug from under me. And my lawyer told the judge that it
would be better if I went in the service and they'd fix me up. If
I went in jail, I'd be bad to society when I came out.
Q. Did you want to go into the
service?
SCOTT CAMILE: I did, but not as soon.
I wanted to go into the service because I really believed that the war
was right. And I think one of the main things was I wanted to see for
myself whether I was really a man or not. And I figured that's how
I could find out. And like people were trying to save me, and
they'd say, "You'll really find God overseas, you know. When you
really need him, you'll find him." And I wanted to see what kind
of person I really was. Was I really brave? Was I a chicken?
And I believed in the war, and I believed the best thing a person could
do was give his life for his country. So I went into the Marine
Corp and I got to ____, and they really changed my head around. If
I thought I could have escaped, I would have.
Q. You were good at it?
SCOTT CAMILE: No, they broke two of my teeth
'cause I didn't conform as quickly as I was supposed to.
Q. Can you talk about the
specific incident?
SCOTT CAMILE: Yeah. We were supposed
to run three miles before each meal, and three miles after each meal
with full packs. And I just couldn't see throwing up my meal. And
in boot camp you're not allowed to talk without permission. And for
instance, if I wanted to go to the bathroom, I'd say "Sir, Private Camile asks permission to speak, Sir!" And he'd say, "What do you
want, Turd?" And I'd say, "Sir, Private Camile requests permission
to make a head call, Sir!" And he'd say, "Is it an emergency?"
And I'd say, "Yes, Sir!" And then he had alternatives what he
could do. He could say, "Okay, go around the room three times with
your siren to prove this is an emergency." And you'd have to run
around the room going "Whirrrrr, whirrrrr," and if you didn't do it fast
enough, loud enough, then it wasn't really an emergency. Or else
he could say, "Okay, but wait one hour, and if you don't go, then you
lied to me. And then I'm going to kick your ass." So lyou had the choice of either pissing in your pants or getting your ass
kicked. Things that normally didn't happen to you. It's kind
of bad for your head. And if I could have gotten out of there, I
would have.
So the day we were running, I guess I
didn't run. I started walking. And if the man in front of
you falls down, you have to run him over. If you go around him,
you get beat up, because if he knows you're going to run him over, he
won't fall down. So I just stepped out to the side and let them
all run past me, and I started walking. And he said, "What's your
name?" And I said "Private Camile, Sir." He says, "You
better start running." I said, "I'm tired." And he says,
"Get up in the barn, you're going to be sorry." I said, "I'm already
sorry." So I went up there, and they called where we lived the
barn, and they were going to send me to motivation platoon. And that
makes boot camp seem like Sunday School. So then they said, "Okay,
we'll handle it with the closet motivation." So I went in the
closet, and two of them came in and they said, "About Face."
And I turned
around and two fists hit me. And I didn't even fight back. I
said, "Okay. I give up. I'll run." So when I got done, the
last day in boot camp, they said, "Now you've earned the name 'Marines.'
Now you're men." And I was really gung ho. And I was
ready to sign up for 50 years, you know, because I thought the worst
part was over.
And then I went to Vietnam. And
in my third week in Vietnam, I was standing guard on an artillery base,
and there were 16 of us on guard, 4 in each corner of the base.
And our grenades were taped up so that if the pins came out by accident,
the spoons wouldn't fly, and no one would get hurt. And our rifles
weren't allowed to be loaded. And the rules were we couldn't load
without permission, and we couldn't fire without permission. And
if you saw something, you'd call the Sergeant of the Guard in the Guard
Shack. Well, the Sergeant of the Guard walked around and checked
to make sure people weren't sleeping. And when he was going around, the
gooks got him. So then, when the people saw the gooks inside the
fence, they asked for permission, and there was no one there, and they
didn't fire. So they just wiped us out. And my post was the
only post they didn't take. They took the other three posts.
And as soon as I saw them, I wasn't going to ask anybody, we just
started shooting. And we stacked up 40 bodies inside the
perimeter. Inside the fence. And we had 28 men wounded, five
men killed, and 5-105 howitzers -- they are big artillery guns -- that
were destroyed by this suicide thing. And I wrote my congressman,
and asked him how come we couldn't have our weapons loaded, and how come
we needed permission to fire, and things like that. And a few people in
my outfit got relieved.
Q. Was that the first time that
you ...
SCOTT CAMILE: That was the first time that I
killed anyone. And the next morning I went and looked at my five
friends who were dead, and I pulled the sheets off of them, and I looked
at them real close. And then I said, "This is really real. Someone
wants to really kill me. And if I make one mistake I don't get
another chance, so I can't make any mistakes." And that's what I
said. And I decided at that point that I would kill anyone that I
could, knowing whether they were innocent or not, just to make sure I
wouldn't get killed. And that was my philosophy. If I went
into a village, and had to kill 100 people just to make sure there was no
one there to shoot me when I walked out, that's what I did. And
that's what I did when I was there.
Q. Do you feel that your boot
camp training sort of prepared you for that kind of attitude.
SCOTT CAMILE: In boot camp, every night we
had to say, before we went to bed, we'd have to sing the Marine Corp
hymn. And laying at attention in bed, we'd sing the Marine Corp
hymn, and then we'd say, "Another day in the Corp, Sir, for every day is
a holiday, and every meal is a feast. Pray for war.
Pray for war. God bless the Marine Corp. God bless my drill
instructors. Pray for war." And every night we had to say
that. And when we'd run, we'd sing songs. We'd sing, "kill,
kill, kill." And at our judo practice, and knife-fighting
practice, and bayonet fighting practice, that was the yell: "Kill,
kill, kill." And boy, you're going to get to go over there and
kill some gooks, you know. And it was something that we were
looking forward to, you know. Put our training to use. And
serve our nation's best interests. Well, we thought it was our
nation's best interests.
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