Free - fire zone A free - fire zone in U . S . military parlance is a fire control measure , used for coordination between adjacent combat units . The definition used in the Vietnam war by US troops may be found in field manual FM 6 - 20 : Free - fire zones in the Vietnam War . Returning veterans , affected civilians and others have said that U . S . Military Assistance Command , Vietnam MACV , based on the assumption that all friendly forces had been cleared from the area , established a policy designating " free - fire zones " as areas in which : Dellums hearings . The following quotes are from 1971 ad hoc ( i . e . not endorsed by Congress ) hearings sponsored by Congressman Ron Dellums ( California ) . The hearings were " organized by Citizens ' Commission of Inquiry on US War Crimes ( CCI ) " . GREG HAYWARD , Capt . U . S . Army West Point , Class of 1964 : I would like to tell a few personal experiences and relate them to a policy perspective and then talk a few minutes about some of the questions that have already been asked . We had an area that General Williamson considered a thorn in our side . It was called the Citadel area . It was the home of about 200 to 300 Vietnamese . We had a fire support base called Persian where your 2nd Bn , 12th Infantry , was , and General Williamson decided we were to systematically remove these people from their homes , so we could expand the free - fire zone around the FSB Persian . We did this by having ambush patrols at night in the road networks leading in and out of the village . One of our units was given the mission to remove the villagers , the civilians from this area . They went through with armored vehicles and started burning these homes and burnings the villages in the Citadel area . The CG ' s guidance was not , of course , to go through and burn . There was so much pressure on the commander of this battalion to perform and to accomplish his mission that I am sure in his mind that anything went . This was a clear violation of the rules of land warfare , forcibly moving the civilian population from their homes . Another officer , Captain Robert B . Johnson , U . S . Army , West Point , Class of 1965 , related experiences corroborating the testimony of numerous returning veterans to the effect that free - fire zones , if not official policy , were widely understood as being unofficial policy conveyed by osmosis : [ Representative ] SIEBERLING : You talked about the purpose of the free - fire zones . You have mentioned the fact that the free - fire zones and the harassment and interdiction fire at villagers were obviously designed to force the villagers to leave and go to resettlement areas . Did you ever hear anyone in a position of rank indicate expressly that was one of the purposes ? JOHNSON : No , I did not , because a few months after I left , there was a big report in Stars and Stripes , one area very close to us , having got 12 , 000 people , there was a whole operation planned where all of them at once were forcibly moved to detention camps , not by the bombings but by U . S . Marines and the ARVN troops forcibly removing them to these detention camps . That happened in June , 1968 . SEIBERLING : Did you ever hear of the expression " turkey shoot s " ? JOHNSON : I have heard the free - fire zone referred to by the pilots and other people as " Indian Country . " SEIBERLING : But you are not familiar with the expression " turkey shoots " ? JOHNSON : I am familiar with it , but where I was operating I didn ' t hear anyone personally use that term . We used the term " Indian Country . " SEIBERLING : What did " Indian Country " refer to ? JOHNSON : I guess it means different things to different people . It is like there are savages out there , there are gooks out there . In the same way we slaughtered the Indian ' s buffalo , we would slaughter the water buffalo in Vietnam . SEIBERLING : Was there any indoctrination , official or semi - officially , that incorporated the ideas that these people are gook s or that the only good gook is a dead gook or similar philosophies , or was this just something once you got there you picked it up from the other people who bad been there ? JOHNSON : I just picked it up from other people . Before I went to Vietnam , I remember one adviser who had been there before and had been through some tough straits telling me you can ' t trust any of these . That was not official policy . I don ' t think you could find it anywhere that you can ' t trust the gooks in writing . SEIBERLING : Do you have any evidence that this was so widespread that it must have been known to people at all levels of command ? JOHNSON : I don ' t have any specific evidence except my 6 months in the infantry division , an American unit , and the disdain and disgust of the Vietnamese was extremely widespread there . Wilkerson . Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson flew helicopters low and slow through Vietnam . He claims to have had vocal disagreements with some of his superiors and members of his own gunner crew over free - fire zones , including an incident in which one of his crew shot a wagon that wound up having a little girl inside of it . He describes one incident in which he prevented a war crime by purposely placing his helicopter between a position that was full of civilians , and another helicopter that wanted to launch an attack on the position . World War II , Yeager . General Chuck Yeager in his autobiography describes his ( and his associates ) disapproval of shoot - anything - that - moves low level strafing missions during World War II ( although they were not necessarily called " free - fire - zone " missions ) . He described his feeling that , had the US lost the war , it might have been considered a criminal activity . In the game Chuck Yeager ' s Air Combat the player flies one of these missions , destroying any ground target within a certain area . Soviets in Afghanistan . According to the Discovery Channel " Wings " documentary on the Mi - 24 " HiND " helicopter , " free hunting " was used by the Soviets in Afghanistan : " We were told that we had free hunting , that we should go and shoot any people not using official roads . But it wasn ' t right . What if a man in the desert is just moving to the nearest village ? When we first came , some people felt OK about us . But in a year or so , that changed " - translation of description by Col Vladimir Kotsuchenka , squadron commander Other uses of the term . There is an assertion of an anonymous U . S . government worker using the term to describe a situation where civilian Defense Department leadership " pushes the envelope " , that " It ’ s a finesse to give power to Rumsfeld — giving him the right to act swiftly , decisively , and lethally , " as quoted in a book by Seymour Hersh . " It ’ s a global free - fire zone . "