US Army planes spray the Vietnamese jungle with Agent Orange in September 1965. Photo: Cordon Press.

The morning began like any other in My Lai, in the Vietnamese province of Quang Ngai, on March 16, 1968. Everything seemed normal except for the noise of the rotors of the American helicopters that were approaching the small village where its inhabitants they were preparing to have breakfast.

The US military was convinced that the area in which the small village of My Lai was located was a stronghold of the Viet Cong, the Vietnamese guerrillas they were facing and had not yet been able to see, and that they were based there. of operations.

Suddenly, and shouting “Tudi maus”, all the inhabitants of the village were forced by the American soldiers to leave their houses while pointing their submachine guns at them.

They did not know that their lives were about to end.

An "intelligence" mistake

Quang Ngai province had not only been a regular target of US bombing, but was also subjected to continuous attacks with the deadly Agent Orange, an herbicide used by the US military as part of its chemical warfare program in the so-called Operation Ranch Hand during the Vietnam War.

During the month of March 1968, the 11th Infantry Brigade of the America Division, known as Charlie Company, was warned that guerrillas from the Viet Cong 48th Battalion had taken control of the town of Son My (of which the village of Son My was a part). My Lai).

Charlie Company quickly moved into the area on March 16 with a single mission: to seek out and destroy the enemy.

The American intelligence services suggested that the Viet Cong 48th Battalion had taken refuge in the My Lai area, but what they did not know is that this unit was actually in the highlands of the region, more than 65 kilometers from the area. helicopter landing.

The day before, the commander of Charlie Company, Captain Ernest Medina, told his men that they would finally face off with the elusive Viet Cong who had been eluding them for more than a month.

Believing that the civilians had already left the area for the city of Quang Ngai (which has the same name as the province), Medina ordered that anyone found in My Lai be treated as a Viet Cong fighter or sympathizer, for which the soldiers were free to shoot whomever they encountered.

Aside from “killing everything in sight,” they were ordered to destroy all crops, burn houses, and slaughter livestock.

terror breaks out


My Lai massacre, a crime without punishment.

Photo: Cordon Press.

The commanding officer of the operation was Lieutenant William Calley, who shortly before 7:30 a.m. ordered the bombing of the Son My area to clear the helicopter landing area and force the inhabitants of the surrounding villages to flee. leave the place.

But the effect was the opposite, and under a rain of bombs the inhabitants took refuge in their cabins.

Believing that the area was already "secured", Charlie Company prepared to advance into the Xom Lang area, marked on US military maps as My Lai.

Surprised, the soldiers found a village full of women, old people and children, and there was no sign of Vietcong guerrillas.

After searching the town and verifying that the inhabitants only had hidden a few weapons, Calley ordered his men to get everyone out of the cabins and start shooting.

There are many testimonies from those who survived that fateful day.

Many of them have been collected by Christian G. Appy in his book 

The Vietnam War: An Oral History.

One of them is that of Pham Thi Thuan, 30, who was carrying her three-year-old daughter in her arms: “...When the machine guns fell silent, some people got up.

I saw my father.

I wanted to tell him to lie down, not to move, but I was afraid and kept quiet.

I saw him go down in the second gust, and there was still a third.

I was still bent over there, squeezing my daughter, who she feared had drowned.

After a while, when nothing was heard anymore, I moved the bodies aside to get out.

Two women who also went up the ditch were seen by the remaining soldiers.

They chased and killed them.

They didn't see us."

At the end of the massacre there were only twenty survivors and at the end of the war, in 1975, some returned to rebuild their lives.

incriminating photographs

Among the witnesses to what happened at My Lai was Sergeant Ron Haeberle, a photographer who was “embedded” with Charlie Company.

Haeberle was in charge of documenting the mission and for this he used black and white reels in which he had to capture the records and the interrogations of the population, which was what the US army had commissioned him to do.

But what military commanders did not know is that Haeberle also took color photos with his personal camera, which were never released to the military and would later be published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper and

Life

magazine

.

In these images, a trail of corpses could be seen, and a group of terrified women and children moments before they were killed.

These snapshots, some of which would become iconic images of the conflict, shocked the United States and served to revive anti-Vietnam War movements in the country.

After more than an hour of indiscriminate shooting, which claimed 504 victims, Petty Officer Hugh Thompson, who was flying over the area on a reconnaissance mission, landed his helicopter between soldiers still firing and villagers trying to flee.

A horrified Thompson threatened his compatriots with opening fire if the attacks continued: “We kept flying back and forth…and it wasn't long before we started noticing the large number of bodies everywhere.

Everywhere we looked, we saw bodies.

They were babies, children of two, three, four, five years old, women, very old men;

no one of draft age,” Thompson would assert at a My Lai lecture held at Tulane University many years later, in 1994.

Thompson and his crew helicoptered the surviving villagers to medical attention, and in 1998, he and two other members of his crew were awarded the Soldier's Medal (a decoration the United States military awards for actions considered heroic, but They do not involve direct contact with the enemy).

My Lai massacre, a crime without punishment.

Photo: Cordon Press.

My Lai massacre, a crime without punishment.

Photo: Cordon Press.

(Taken from National Geographic)