But suddenly I wasn't so sure.

From Once a Warrior King by David Donovan.  Page 228.  Read the book for the full account but it is an interesting example of the epistemic confusion on the battlefield.  There has been an ambush on patrol.

Sure enough, there was someone still in there, and after a blunt exchange or two, a man and two women came out with their hands high above their heads. Inside the bunker there were two other men, dead, five AK-47s, two or three packets of documents, several cases of ammunition, and two crocks of rice. We were absolutely sure the prisoners were Viet Cong. They had opened fire on our boats and killed two of our men. They were captured with weapons still hot from firing, and they had Viet Cong documents practically clutched in their hands. No doubt about it, they were Charlie with a capital C.

Everybody was excited and the Nungs were angry to boot. They were hot because they had had two of their men killed and they wanted to pass the favor on to the prisoners. They were all still pumped up from the assault, still enjoying the rush of success, the arrogance of survival. When you have to deal with men like that and men who are mad as hell to boot, it is hard to calm them down. After some pushing and shoving and some heated words, the SF sergeant and I got the Cong loaded into our boats and we began the journey back to my team’s compound. 

Back at the compound, the Nungs are both ready and willing to mete out summary judgment and force Donovan to accept the action.  He has to intervene, even though he thinks the Nung position is understandable.  The three Viet Cong have just killed two of their comrades.

As I approached the fort I heard a lot of shouting and yelling going on inside. I couldn’t tell if the noise was made in anger or in jest, but I expected the worst and hurried on through the gate. The Nungs were gathered over on the other side of the fort. In their center was the SF sergeant standing beside a fifty-five-gallon oil drum with one of the captured women standing on top. The woman had her hands tied behind her and she was crying from either shame or fear or both. I was so damned pissed I could have chewed nails. Iran over to the crowd and pushed my way through to the sergeant. 

‘What the hell is going on here, Sarge?’ I shouted over the noise.

‘This little lady don’t want to talk, sir. I told her if she didn’t loosen her tongue, I would auction her off to the Nungs for a little screwing. We'll see if fucking a few Chinamen will get her talkin’.

The Nungs had quieted down immediately when | had shouted at the sergeant. Now, speaking quietly through clenched teeth, I said to him, ‘Take her down off that goddamned barrel and bring her back into the team house. Nobody is going to fuck our prisoners, talk or no talk!’

I turned immediately and walked away, paying no attention to the scowling Nungs. I stepped through the crowd without hesitating or looking back. I wanted to give no hint that I expected anything but instant obedience. I was afraid that any sign of weakness or irresolution might give the Nungs just enough fuel to  spark a mutiny. They weren’t my troops, I didn’t know them all that well, and I really didn’t know how close they were to telling me to go to hell. I did know that Nungs had mutinied before, and these guys looked hacked off enough to do it again. Officer or no officer, American or no American, if they went on a rampage there would be no way for me to control them. If the Nungs were feeling tough enough and mad enough, they could take the prisoners and do what they wanted.

Once inside the team house I turned and looked behind me. The SF sergeant was coming with the young woman slung over his shoulder. The Nungs didn’t try to interfere. They just stood there, glaring at us. The sergeant stepped through the doorway and dumped the prisoner beside her two companions, who were bound and squatting on the floor.

Having just been able to get things under control, Donovan has to figure out, what next?  He is completely convinced that the three prisoners are Viet Cong and that it is critically important to obtain information from them.  He goes through the charade of appearing to execute on of the three in the hopes of getting one of the remaining two to talk.

I stood over the young woman as she kneeled there in the gray mud. Tears ran from the large black eyes that looked directly into mine. Suddenly, another switch went off inside me. A flicker of doubt entered my mind. Maybe it was only a small doubt, but I was startled by it nevertheless. I had been totally committed to the idea that the prisoners were guilty. We had caught this woman and her friends red-handed. Guilt was written all over them - they had to be guilty! But suddenly I wasn't so sure. Looking down at her, watching the tears roll down her cheeks, I had a great fear that she was telling the truth.

The angry emotion I had been riding on suddenly collapsed. I stared vacantly at the kneeling woman, trying to find my mental footing. I was shaking as I considered what I had just been doing. ‘My God, I thought. ‘One minute I’m yelling at the sergeant about abuse of prisoners and the next I’m acting like Atilla the Hun! Am I cracking up or what?’

[snip]

The only way to rescue myself was to get rid of the problem, so I decided to just let the prisoners go. I had the man brought back from the bunker and put with the two women. Over the protests of Lieutenant Cantrell, the SF sergeant, and the Nung leader, I took all three prisoners to the gate, untied them, and told them they were free to go. Without comment or question, without any expression of relief, the three bedraggled peasants simply turned and walked away toward the village. As I watched them I was certain we had all been wrong from the beginning. They were innocent. It was all an awful mistake, and I was guilty of mistreating an in- nocent man - worse than that, guilty of mistreating an innocent woman. I couldn’t begin to cope with the question of how that could be. 

He returns to the compound to deal with the consequences with the Nung and the Special Forces who are all convinced he has released three Viet Cong.

And of course he can't know whether or not they might be right.  He deals with it.

Later.

Life isn’t simple though, and answers never come in neat little packages. Six weeks later Sergeant Abney and Sergeant Robertson were on a patrol that ran into an ambush. They ran through a successful counter-ambush drill with the loss of one man killed and two wounded. They found two dead Viet Cong at the ambush site. One of them was the fisherman’s ‘sister’. Her fingers were still entwined in the shoulder strap of an AK-47 and the rifle’s magazine was almost empty. This time there was no question: she was an enemy soldier, playing the part in full.

OK.  He had released a VC prisoner because she was a woman and because, despite compelling evidence of her guilt, there was not evidence beyond reasonable doubt.  From the perspective of the men, it could be seen as their superior officer, overcome by weakness, releasing a VC to once again endanger their lives.  And they would have been right.

He had to bear the consequences as a leader.

When Abney told me that they had found the girl again, I was embarrassed and ashamed. The sarcasm in his voice and the look in his eyes made the clear accusation that I had carelessly turned a killer loose on him because I cared more about remote regulations and pampering women prisoners than I did about the safety of my own friends and teammates. I knew that Abney and the other guys thought that I had  demonstrated an irresponsible disregard for our safety by letting those three prisoners go. In their own minds they were thinking that I should have known that sooner or later she would be shooting at us again. I’m sure that they were bitter and nourished the thought that I was just damned lucky she didn’t kill one of us.

But were his men right?  Donovan is fully attuned to the challenges of simply not knowing.

For a brief while the report that the young woman had been caught in yet another ambush attempt made me feel better about shoving my gun barrel into her stomach. Since it now appeared that she was guilty in the first place, I could rationalize that she deserved what she got. But then a thought occurred that still approaches from time to time and whispers to me from my dreams: Was she a Viet Cong before we captured her or only afterward?

Twenty-three years old and making life and death decisions with incomplete knowledge and actually knowledge could not be known.