McCall replied that the fishermen weren't doing anything wrong, just fishing. "I was pretty peeved," he recalls.
Hoffmann ordered them to hail the boat on the bullhorn. The fishermen were too far away and paid no attention. He ordered the gunner to fire his M-16 in the water and make splashes. They still didn't respond.
"Shoot closer," Hoffmann said.
"I can't shoot any closer or we'll shoot the people," the gunner replied.
"Well, do it," Hoffmann said.
At that point, McCall recalls, he and Hoffmann got into a fight, with McCall insisting they couldn't shoot unless there was hostile intent.
"He didn't live in the water like we did," McCall explains. "He was basically asking us to kill innocent civilians. In his mind they were people who deserved it."
Then McCall remembered that, as the captain, he had authority over Hoffmann while they were sailing. Nervously, he ordered him out of the pilot house. Hoffmann went down "madder than a hornet," recalls Means. "Cussing up a storm."
As soon as they docked, Hoffmann gave McCall an administrative sanction, meaning he couldn't sail for 30 days. Means remembers the crew high-fiving because Hoffmann was off their boat. McCall remembers crying.
Hoffmann does not remember the story exactly that way. He recalls sanctioning the son of an important Oregon politician. But he says the incident involved a fishing vessel that was passing dangerously close to a cache of weapons, and he doesn't recall being on board the boat but rather witnessing it from his headquarters. "It doesn't sound like me, telling them to shoot innocent people, and I will deny it emphatically," he says.
When he hears that their version involves fishermen ignoring warning shots, though, he changes his view a bit.
"Well, now we're beginning to see something different," he says. "The junks were in an area they weren't supposed to be in and they ignored warning shots? And [his men] weren't going to do anything about it. You know what we call that? Disobedience of orders."
McCall says he's not surprised Hoffmann doesn't remember. "He did a lot of things," he says. "To me it was a searing moment in a young career. To him it was just one more moment of chewing someone's ass."
Recently Hoffmann tracked down McCall. They talked for about 20 minutes about the event and couldn't reconcile their differing recollections. McCall says Hoffmann seemed intent on explaining himself, why he was so adamant about the restricted zones, about being strict with the junks. McCall was left with the impression of "a man conscientiously trying to do a good job."
Clean Conscience
Douglas Brinkley says he soft-pedaled Hoffmann's role in the book, but that he is "the most egregious example of blatant disregard for civilian casualties and for the lives of his men in the U.S. Navy in Vietnam."
"He infected the lives of a lot of Navy guys down there, and he has a lot of answering to do," Brinkley says about Hoffmann. "He can either recognize he has blood on his hands and deal with his own ghosts or go where it's safe and reach for the flag. He can see a therapist or wage a new war, and he did the latter."
If such a thought ever crossed Hoffmann's mind, it is deeply buried.
