VietNamNet Bridge – Besides panic-stricken names like colonel Ernest Medina, lieutenant William Calley, who are seen as killers, My Lai people consider some American soldiers as heroes and their benefactors.

My Lai massacre: horrible memoirs
Fatal morning through Ron Haeberle’s memoirs

Murders

Mrs. Pham Thi Tot, from Binh Tay hamlet, Son My, a witness of the My Lai massacre, leaned her 30kg body on a walking stick to tell VietNamNet’s reporter about the massacre on March 16, 1968. During the talks, she repeated “It’s terribly painful. I can only to die to escape from this pain” many times.

Tot said that on that fatal morning, US soldiers jumped down from helicopters which landed in the village field and walked into the village.

Tot and her family were about to go to the field when US soldiers got into the village and drive villages to the ground at the village hub and shot them. Tot was wounded. She pretended to be dead. Lying in a pile of dead bodies, she saw her neighbor woman being raped by US troops. The woman was shot then but she survived. According to Tot, that woman now lives in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong.

A group of US soldiers pushed several women to a pond. They joked before killing these women.

At the same time, the massacre conducted by platoons Charlie and Bravo took place in My Lai and My Hoi hamlets.

Mr. Nguyen Le, from My Hoi hamlet, said that when the US troops landed, his family and their neighbors, totaling 15 people, were hiding in a trench. US soldiers detected the trench. They shot and then threw grenades into the trench. Le lied in the corner of the trench so he escaped from death. But he has been living alone since then. His family, including his parents, his wife and two children, were all dead.

On March 16, 1968, US troops killed 97 civilians in My Hoi hamlet.

Mr. Do Hoa, 75, from My Lai hamlet, has also been alone since the massacre. He now lives in a house near an ancient tree, where US soldiers killed 15 people, including Hoa’s 11 relatives. At that time Hoa was in a secret trench.

His family and four neighbors were grouped up under the tree and shot to dead. Hoa said that the day before, US soldiers entered the village and they were friendly to villagers. For that reason, many villagers, including Hoa’s relatives, did not hide themselves the next day.

In the massacre, most of Son My’s men were in secret trenches or far from their village. As a result, most of the victims were women and children.

Mr. Truong Muoi, former Party Secretary of Tinh Khe commune, in Son Tinh district, said hearing the massacre, he hurriedly returned home. But everything finished. He said he would never forget the scene about a woman who was both raped and killed. Her baby still sucked on her chest.

Heroes

Besides panic-stricken names like Colonel Ernest Medina, lieutenant William Calley, who are seen as killers, My Lai people consider some American soldiers as heroes and their benefactors.

While infantrymen were killing civilians on the ground, pilot Hugh Thompson of the Task Force Barker and two machine-gunners - Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn – detected the incident from the air.

That morning, Thompson conducted a patrol flight to seek Viet Cong’s fire-power. Flying over Son My, he did not see Viet Cong’s fire-power but dead bodies. Seeing American soldiers driving villagers to the field to kill, the pilot used walkie-talkie to ask infantries to stop killing people and called for assistance from other planes. He and other pilots tried to save the villagers.

Mrs. Pham Thi Nhanh, who now lives in Quang Ngai city, said that she was among some lucky people who were rescued by Thompson and his group. At that time, Nhan and nine others were hiding in a trench.

When a helicopter flew over, they saw some Vietnamese people at the trench door, not far from the canal where US soldiers were shooting on hundreds of people. The American pilot landed and waved to people on the trench. These people had doubts but then they got out of the trench, climbed up to the helicopter. They were transported to another place and escaped from the massacre.

Thompson alone tried to rescue some Vietnamese from a canal. When his helicopter took off, he saw a survival boy crawled from a pile of corpses on the canal bank, Thompson returned to took the boy to his plane and carried all of them to the Quang Ngai hospital.

That boy is now Mr. Do Ba or Do Hoa, 51. Ba’s mother and two brothers were dead in the canal. Ba currently lives in HCM City as a waste collector.

Several after the massacre, Glenn Andreotta died in Da Nang city. Thompson continued to serve the US Army. Thompson, Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn were presented the Soldier’s Medal. In 1999, Thompson and Colburn received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award.

In 1998, Thomspon and Coburn returned to My Lai. On January 6, 2006, Thompson passed away of cancer.

Colburn did not think that one day the son of the woman who he rescued on the village road would come to see him. Ron Haeberle was also astonished when a man came to see him and told him that he was the boy in his photo, which was captioned as a dead person.

Hoang Huong