Sam Ybarra

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Sam Ybarra was a private in the United States' Tiger Force commando unit, attached to the 101st Airborne Division during the Vietnam War.

He was raised in Arizona by his Apache mother from the age of five, when his Mexican American father was killed in a brawl. He later attended Globe High School, and was arrested four times for disturbing the peace and underage drinking.

He joined the army in 1966, along with his childhood friend Kenneth Green, where he became attached to the Tiger Force unit. He was initially found to have shot an unarmed boy in May 1967, and two months later he and Green bragged about raping and killing a young girl during a mission outside Tam Ky. The two both engaged in the Tiger Force practise of cutting off trophy ears from their victims.

Ybarra was noted by the Stars and Stripes magazine as having recorded the 1000th kill of Operation Wheeler.

Green was killed on September 29th, 1967, which friends claim threw Ybarra over the edge as he vowed to avenge his friend's death, and reportedly became one of the unit's worst killers - by 1968 he had been transferred out of the unit to an artillery company. The following year he faced court martial for insubordination and drug use, and a year later was dishonourably discharged in April, 1969. Ybarra would later be named in 7 of the 30 allegations that the Army would later investigate the unit for.

Once discharged, he couldn't be compelled to testify to the investigations against him, and declined three times. He died in 1982, living with his mother on the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona, reportedly contrite and depressed over his role in the war.