<span style=”color: #000000; font-family: ‘Times New Roman’, serif; word-spacing: 1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;”>During a patrol in the beginning of chapter 14, LT McDonough and his men grab a family that is reasonably suspected to be supporters of the Viet Cong to be questioned, the most damning of their suspicions coming from the high quantity of rice reserved that are likely supplied to the Viet Cong. The usual procedure with civilian interrogation is to exfil the personnel to American authorities via helicopter, however the continuous weather conditions have prevented this course of action. In this situation, LT McDonough turns in the suspected family into the local Vietnamese police. McDonough is placed in an uncomfortable situation when he witnesses the brutal methods of the local police to gather information from the suspected family. The dilemma of his situation is that be protocol he is not to interfere with local police affairs, and since he has just handed over the family it has become a police affair. As well as breaking protocol, McDonough hesitates to intervene because of the distinct possibly that this family is Viet Cong and that they may have even taken actions against the village and his platoon. After hesitating to intervene while gathering his thoughts, the family is so blatantly brutalized that he feels compelled to stop this horrific interrogation to take place. While his actions broke the rules on dealing with local law enforcement and potentially assisted Viet Cong, he understood that what he was witnessing was wrong and it was wrong for him to allow the situation to unfold for as long as it did. Aside from basic humanity, he saw that there was nothing that was to be gained from this violent beating, even if they were Viet Cong they would say nothing to the police. The risk of this situation was unnecessarily staining the government and American reputation even more than it was. If these people were innocent, beating them would create more distrust between the US and the people of Truong Lam. If they were Viet Cong, senseless beatings would only fuel the fires of their malcontent.</span>