On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the My Lai massacre, survivors spoke to the German news agency dpa about this horrific crime committed by American soldiers during the Vietnam War, killing 504 people.
Pham Thi Thuan had just woken up and was cooking potatoes when the Americans landed nearby and began killing her neighbors.
“First they killed people in the rice fields, and then the livestock,” said Thuan, an 80-year-old rice farmer from the village of Son My in the central Vietnamese province of Quang Ngai.
The world will remember this massacre as one of the most notorious moments in American military history.
It was March 16, 1968, the peak of the Vietnam War, and American soldiers from Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division were tasked with rooting out Viet Cong insurgents in Quang Ngai.
That day they were supposed to enter Son My, which included the hamlet of My Lai after which the massacre would later be named, to eliminate local guerrillas. Military intelligence claimed that the villagers were protecting the Viet Cong, but Thuan denies this.
“We were just working for ourselves,” she said. Only a small amount of weapons were confiscated, and the only American casualty that day was a soldier who accidentally shot himself in the foot.
But not only did the Americans not think so, they treated all the villagers, including women and children, as enemies.
One of the killers, soldier Paul Meadlo, recounted what he did that day in an interview with CBS News in 1969.
“You just shoot at them blindly and quickly, and you can’t know how many you’ve killed because they fall quickly. I could have killed ten or fifteen,” he told Mike Wallace.
“Men, women, and children?” Wallace asked him.
“Men, women, and children,” he replied.
“And infants?”
“And infants.”
The Vietnamese government claims that 504 civilians were killed. Many women were raped, and crops and houses were burned.
Killing and Laughing
Pham Thanh Cong, a 61-year-old retired director of the memorial museum in Son My, lost his mother, three sisters, and a brother that day. Soldiers killed them in a shelter and threw a grenade at them. Cong survived because he was shielded by the bodies of dead family members.
“When soldiers received such orders, why did they carry them out?” he wondered during a recent visit to the massacre site.
Thuan had a bit more luck. They escorted her to a nearby canal with her two children and, according to Vietnamese estimates, another 170 people. The soldiers opened fire, and she fell into the canal, but the bullets missed her as well as her two small children who hid under her. They were also protected by dead bodies. According to the memorial museum, they are among only six people who survived.
Thuan waited for hours for the Americans to leave, she said. “They relaxed at the edge of the canal and waited, and we fled after they left.”
The massacre ended when American warrant officer Hugh Thompson saw what American soldiers were doing from his helicopter.
He ordered his helicopter gunner Lawrence Colburn to aim his weapon at the soldiers and open fire if they attempted to attack anyone. The soldiers retreated, and Thompson called helicopters to evacuate civilians.
“It seems to me that there is a lot of unnecessary killing going on down there,” he said over the radio at the time. “Something is wrong.”
Seeing that soldiers were chasing a group of 11 survivors, he landed his helicopter between the two groups.
Of the 26 soldiers charged with war crimes, only the platoon leader, Lieutenant William Calley, was convicted of murder. But he served only three and a half years in house arrest.
They Do Not Hold Grudges Against the American People
Despite what happened that day 50 years ago, Cong and Thuan say they hold no grudges against the American people.
“We love them. Thanks to them, we have freedom today because they protested against the war,” Cong said. “I cannot forget that they killed people here, but we are trying to forgive them and look to the future,” he added.
Thuan praised the strengthening of relations between the U.S. and Vietnam. Relations have significantly improved since the restoration of diplomatic relations in 1995.
“Today, Vietnamese and Americans cooperate in building friendship,” she said. “And in doing so, we ensure that there will be no more killing.”
