Saturday, March 14, 1998
Three decades ago Americans had never heard of
Story and illustration
My Lai, a tiny hamlet in Vietnam. Today, the name
resonates in our collective memory as the moment
when America lost the war for hearts and minds ...
By David Swann
Star-BulletinThis Monday take a few moments as you sip your coffee to contemplate the events that took place 30 years ago on a hot, humid morning in a place called My Lai.
The world has changed many times over since that dark day in Vietnam. But here we are, three decades later, still trying to forget one of America's worst wartime atrocities.
Perhaps that's another crime -- the attempt to forget.
My Lai was a small hamlet, one of several that made up the village of Son My. Son My was located just a few miles from the South China Sea, seven miles northeast of Quang Ngai town.
The area was a very dangerous place to be if you were an American soldier, as it was commonly referred to as "Indian country" by the average grunt.
This rural region of central Vietnam had been a difficult place to pacify historically, from the Chinese hundreds of years ago to the French and American in the '50s and '60s.
The 11th Infantry Brigade, part of the 23rd Infantry Division, had been in the area for several months. After taking casualties from snipers, mine fields and booby traps throughout the post -Tet offensive period of January and February 1968, the troops of the 11th were told that they would finally get what they wanted: an attack on the 48th Division of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA).
The young soldiers, with an average age of 22, would be brought in by helicopter to Son My, where the NVA was thought to be based.
The night before the assault, the 15th of March, the soldiers were told that anyone in the village would be considered the enemy. They were told to leave nothing alive.
The Americans didn't find the 48th NVA at My Lai that morning, and never did. But they did find old men, women, children and infants (50 of the victims were under the age of 6 months old).
To this day, no one has ever really provided an explanation for why the troops fired their weapons. Not one single shot was fired at the Americans. Not a single weapon was found at My Lai.
Three hundred and forty-seven people died at My Lai that morning. The American soldiers gang-raped, sodomized, tortured, mutilated and murdered practically everyone in their path.
All the village animals were killed. Soldiers laughed as they shot children and infants at close range.
The slaughter went on for four hours, and it was all captured on film by an Army reporter. The images were eventually printed in newspapers across the country and, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, can now be viewed on the Internet.
There were a few survivors. One woman, Ha Thi Quy, stated that "the Americans forced us into a ditch. I saw two soldiers with red faces, sunburned, and they pushed a lot of people into the ditch. I fell down and many people fell on top of me. Soldiers were shooting.
"I was shot in the hip. The firing went on and on. It would stop and then start again and then stop. I lay under the dead in the ditch and saw many more. Brains. Pieces of body. My house was burned. I went back to the ditch. Three of my four children were killed."
Around My Lai, soldiers killed several hundred more inhabitants of the surrounding hamlets that made up Son My. The monument erected where Son My existed lists the names of 504 people. It is now a tourist attraction, listed in most of the guide books on Vietnam.
The only person to be convicted for the atrocity was a short, balding man named William Calley. A lieutenant leading a platoon into My Lai, he was named as the man most responsible for ordering his troops to fire into the ditches full of people.
He received a life sentence, but he was freed in 1974. He now runs a jewelry shop in Columbus, Ga. There have been reports during the last 10 years that Calley has told friends he has trouble sleeping at night.
Not all the soldiers participated in the massacre; a few refused to fire their weapons. The true hero that day was a helicopter pilot named Hugh Thompson. After he watched the killing from 200 feet above the hamlet, he landed his aircraft in an attempt to rescue some of the villagers. As he got out of the helicopter, he ordered his gunners to shoot any soldiers if they tried to stop him. He led more than a dozen women and children to safety.
Last week his actions were finally recognized when Thompson, his door gunner, Lawrence Colburn, and his crew chief, the late Glenn Andreotta, received the Soldier's Medal from the U.S. Army in a ceremony at the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington, D.C.
My Lai should not detract from the sacrifice and heroism of thousands of Americans during the war. Most American servicemen and women served honorably and returned to their country to try to carry on with their lives. It is a shame that many of them were blamed for the loss of the war and the horrors that occurred during its duration.
But a much larger shame is the effort we Americans have put forth to erase the memory of the dark and savage acts of unbelievable brutality that we did commit.
Of course, those memories can't really be erased at all, as the evidence of so many ruined lives shows us. Drugs, alcohol, depression and suicide have been a curse on many Vietnam veterans, and their numbers within the homeless population have been high.
Varnado Simpson stays at home most of the time, locked inside his house in Jackson, Miss. He was there, at My Lai. He estimates that he killed about 25 people, maybe more.
Living on full disability, Simpson has been diagnosed as a "hopeless case" by his doctors and is taking dozens of forms of medication. He fears that he is going to hell when he dies, but seems resigned to his fate.
"After I killed (a) child," Simpson says, "my mind just went. Yes, I am ashamed. I'm sorry. I'm guilty. But I did it, you know. What else can I tell you? It happened."
He has tried to forget about My Lai, but cannot.
God help us if we ever do.
David Swann, a Star-Bulletin graphic artist,
was a history major in college and has had a longtime interest
in the My Lai massacre.
