In the spring of 1968, a hellish tragedy took place on the soil of Vietnam. The U.S. team fought a brutal war on the battlefield in Vietnam for eight years, from 1965 to 1973. The war was a severe test for young American soldiers, who were sent to distant foreign lands to face an enemy they had never faced before.
The Vietnam War is still a controversial topic to this day. Some believe that this was the legitimate defense of South Vietnam by the United States, countering the communist aggression of North Vietnam; It was also criticized as an unjust war in the mood of the Cold War and prostitution. But it is undeniable that the war has killed millions of people, many of them innocent civilians, at the hands of the US military.
Of all the civilian deaths, the most harrowing was the My Lai Da** on March 16, 1968. On that day, 504 innocent people, including women and children, were brutally subjected.
In 1968, the Vietnam War became increasingly difficult for the United States. In January of the same year, the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive severely damaged the morale and military strength of the American army. In order to regain dominance, the U.S. team launched a series of operations, one of which was Thuan My village in Quang Nam province. This area of several small villages includes the infamous My Lai village. My Lai, a place known to the U.S. military as the "Pink Village," has been in the spotlight for its sympathy for communism. U.S. intelligence said that the Viet Cong were active in the area and considered the village a communist outpost.
In response to the situation in My Lai, the U.S. military formed the Buck Mission Force. This unit consisted of soldiers from two companies: Company C of the 1st Battalion of the 20th Infantry Regiment and Company B of the 23rd Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division of the 11th Brigade. Company C was commanded by Captain Ernest Medina, and the deputy commander was Lieutenant William Kelly.
Since December 1967, Company C has been stationed in Viet Nam. Although there was no direct fighting, as of March 1968, 28 soldiers had died in ambushes and landmines. On 15 March, Company C held a memorial service for a beloved sergeant who had died in action the previous day. Angry and disappointed soldiers are hungry for revenge, and this opportunity for revenge will soon come.
That night, the Buck mission force received an order to launch an attack on My Lai village the next morning. Company C will enter the core of the village, while Company B will be responsible for ensuring the security of another nearby village. Company A was responsible for intercepting the fleeing enemy outside the village. Captain Medina told the soldiers of Company C that they expected to face fierce communist resistance and fight at a two-to-one disadvantage. He also told his men that civilians would go to the market at 7 a.m. the next day, so everyone who remained should be considered an enemy.
Some soldiers recalled that at the briefing, they were asked what to do if they met women and children. Medina is said to have told them: "Kill all combatants it encounters or suspects of being combatants." One soldier called the enemy Medina told them to be: "Anyone who has fled, hidden, or looks like an enemy from us." If a man is running, shoot him; Sometimes, even a woman with a gun shoots her while she is running. Such callous instructions were not uncommon at the time. Many soldiers and observers have noted that the violent attitude of American soldiers towards civilians appears to be very casual. On the battlefield in Vietnam, the number of corpses became a measure of the efficiency of a combat unit, so the death of civilians was often counted in the enemy's **.
Regardless of the specifics of the instructions, the soldiers understood their tasks. Recalling that briefing years later, rifleman Bernardo Simpson vividly remembered what they had been ordered: "We were told to destroy everything; Whether they were civilians or not, we did so. ”
At 7:24 a.m. on March 16, artillery fire tore apart the calm of the Vietnamese countryside: shells hit shocked and defenseless civilians**. Between 7:30 a.m. and 7:37 a.m., Company C entered the vicinity of My Lai village in ***, where a *** crew exchanged fire with four suspected combatants outside the village. These were the only potential combatants that the U.S. military encountered that day, and the intelligence services made a clear mistake, not only did no combatants be found, but only one ** was found in the entire village.
However, the civilians did not go to the market as expected, and after being shocked by the shelling, they cautiously greeted the American GIs. The U.S. military gathered them in a public place in the village, and it appeared that the villagers of My Lai were unaware of the impending tragedy. There are different accounts of what happened next, but apparently without any warning.
At 7:34, the entire village was frantically swept by the US military, and in less than 20 minutes, a terrible ** happened: 468 unarmed villagers were brutally killed, most of them were women, children, and even the elderly. An American soldier seriously wounded a civilian with a bayonet, a move like a shark smelling blood, prompting other soldiers to follow suit. In the village, flames and screams are intertwined, and a big ** begins. American soldiers showed no mercy in the operation, they threw grenades into the bunkers, shooting anyone they met. Some were even stabbed with bayonets or burned alive in their homes, and none of them survived.
The women shouted "Not the Viet Cong!" But that doesn't change anything. One soldier recalled seeing a mother who risked her life to protect her child. However, the American GIs coldly shot the parents and executed the children. Even more outrageous is the indiscriminate use of grenade launchers to strafe civilian populations.
In another nearby village, Company B also committed a similar act. About 45 minutes after the landing of C Company, they killed between 60 and 155 people. On a dirt road, about 20 to 50 civilians were taken and executed en masse. U.S. Army photographer Sergeant Ronald Harberly witnessed the tragedy and recorded it with his personal camera. Years later, these became key pieces of evidence for the exposé.
One of the images taken by Hubley shows a group of terrified civilians in the moments before they are executed. Others** recorded the aftermath of the tragedy: the bodies of women and children lay on the ground. Hubley vividly remembers an injured boy walking in a trance, all of his limbs already shot. As he was about to take a picture, an American soldier came over and ended the boy's life with three shots.
In this big **, Lieutenant William Kelly, the deputy commander of C Company, was particularly eye-catching. Many claim that it was he who directly ordered the shooting of civilians. He gathered 70 to 80 civilians into an irrigation ditch in the east of the village and ordered his men to execute the unarmed civilians. Kelly even turned the rifle to fully automatic mode and fired wildly at every civilian.
*It is also a heinous crime in this big **. At least 20 women and girls have been affected, while the actual number is likely to be higher. In one particularly brutal** incident, a woman was ravaged after a soldier shot her child. The big bang lasted for hours, with Soldier Wenardo Simpson claiming he killed or mutilated 25 people with his own hands. The only time an American soldier shot a fellow soldier during the entire process was a soldier who deliberately shot himself in the foot as an excuse to evacuate the scene.
There were also soldiers who showed courage and humanity, and the *** crew, consisting of Ensign Hugh Thompson, Specialist Lawrence Colburn, and Specialist Glenn Andriota, was shocked by all this and tried to intervene to save civilians. They found a woman injured in the field trying to escape, and the crew called for help but received no response. They fired smoke grenades in an attempt to provide her with cover, but could only watch as Captain Medina coldly walked up to the woman and executed her at close range.
Later, Thompson spotted a group of soldiers heading towards a bunker packed with civilians, so he landed his *** to block between the bunker and the soldiers. Leading the way was Lieutenant Kelly. Thompson urges him to help civilians escape, but Kelly says it's better to kill them. Realizing the gravity of the situation, Thompson took action personally. He and his crew began to evacuate civilians. The gunman, Colburn, was given a simple order: if any Americans tried to stop the evacuation, shoot them. No one dared to do that. Together, the crew managed to rescue about a dozen civilians. Specialist Glenn Andriotta even jumped into an irrigation ditch full of corpses to rescue a four-year-old uninjured child. These precious lives were saved, but in the final accounting, this can only be regarded as an empty achievement.
In My Lai Village, a big ** caused untold suffering to innocent civilians. Vietnam** reported that 504 unarmed civilians lost their precious lives, while the United States claimed that the number of victims was 347. Many of the victims in this tragedy were defenseless women, children and the elderly, including 17 pregnant women, 56 babies and four suspected Viet Cong fighters.
When Thompson and his crew witnessed the tragedy with their own eyes, it was with a heavy heart that they reported the large-scale ** incident to their superiors. They described in detail how the victim was brutally herded into a ditch and shot. However, the truth of this bloody incident is tried to be covered up by some.
The official report of the Buck Mission claimed that they had killed 128 Viet Cong fighters, but said nothing about civilians. Command chose to believe the official narrative and ignore the voices that revealed the truth. While some have questioned the veracity of the story, a preliminary investigation by the military concluded that 20 civilians were inadvertently killed, mostly in the opening shelling.
However, the truth will always come out. Ron Lidenno, an expert with a conscience, witnessed first-hand in My Lai village that there were still civilian bodies in the ditch. He courageously stood up to expose the truth, even in the face of danger and threats, he did not flinch.
With the passage of time, the public's attention to this big ** has gradually increased. More and more people are calling for a thorough investigation. Ron Ridennor stepped forward, and he wrote to Nixon**, the Pentagon, and at least 30 members of Congress to expose the truth about this **. His courage and persistence ultimately made it impossible for the military to ignore the civilian deaths that occurred in My Lai.
In September 1969, the military charged Lieutenant Kelly with six counts. If it weren't for journalist Seymour Hirsch's revelations, the story might have been shelved. Hirsch became aware of the boiling accusations about My Lai and published a **sexual article on November 13, 1969, exposing the crimes of the big ** and the military. In the weeks that followed, Life and Time magazine also shared photographer Hubley's on-set shots at My Lai, which laid bare everything.
These revelations shocked the public and shook their confidence in the war. Nixon, led by adviser Henry Kissinger, tried but failed to control the story. By the end of the year, CBS began interviews with **soldiers, who openly admitted to being involved in the big **. However, for some, it is difficult to accept that the American team may do such a thing. A poll of Minnesota residents showed that 49 percent believed the story was fake, and that the military, concocted by anti-war advocates to demonize the military, had no choice but to conduct a proper investigation.
In March 1970, Lieutenant General William Pierce was appointed to investigate the matter, and his report concluded that at least 200 civilians had been killed, with a maximum of four Viet Cong. A major tragedy, he concluded, occurred. In the aftermath of the incident, 26 soldiers were charged, and this is only a small fraction of those involved. Four officers, including Kelly and nine soldiers, were charged for the big ** itself, while another 12 were charged for covering up the matter.
Of the 25 people accused, five went to trial. Of the five, except for four, who were acquitted, on March 29, 1971, Lieutenant William Kelly, who was sentenced to life in prison for killing at least 22 innocent civilians, was the only one charged for My Lai Da**. During the trial, Kelly showed no remorse, and according to him, he was only carrying out orders, and he remained convinced that the civilians of My Lai were his enemies. "When it turned into a problem between me and that enemy, I couldn't help but value the lives of my troops," which was his only duty.
Reactions to the verdict have varied, with some dismissing the accusations as pure nonsense and others taking everything for granted. A Gallup poll showed that 79 percent opposed Kelly's life in prison, with many arguing that he should not be charged at all. And Nixon** also quickly took action, commuting Kelly's incarceration to house arrest. In 1974, Kelly was granted a full pardon, and he served only three and a half years in prison for life.
However, during this period, the heroic actions of Thompson, Colburn and Andriotta were overlooked by the outside world. Thompson was initially awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross by the military for his feat of saving civilians from a war zone. The other two members were also awarded the Bronze Star Medal. However, Thompson expressed strong dissatisfaction with the award certificate because it was vague in its depiction of the big ** event and put it aside in a fit of anger.
Andriotta died heroically in the battle and did not seek justice for himself after the Mae Lai incident. Thirty years later, in 1998, Thompson and Colburn were awarded the Soldier's Medal, the highest honor for non-combat performance. Andriotta was posthumously awarded the award. They also returned to My Lai and met the people they had saved. However, this history left a deep scar on them, and Thompson suffered from severe PTSD as a result of the experience that day.
The My Lai incident became a turning point in the Vietnam War, revealing to the world that the atrocities committed by the U.S. ** team were exactly the same as their claimed enemies. The incident raised widespread questions about the war. Many soldiers have come forward to say that the My Lai incident is exactly what they saw and heard on the battlefield in Vietnam. Some sergeants even pointed out that for more than a year, an incident similar to My Lai occurred every month.
What we already know about My Lai is terrifying enough, but what is even more frightening is that the outside world knows nothing about these unknown events.