1968 My Lai massacre commemorated

UNARMED VIETNAMESE WERE KILLED BY U.S. SOLDIERS

Talk of peace dominated the 50th anniversary commemoration of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, but among the hundreds in the audience were survivors and a former U.S. Army photographer whose gruesome images galvanized anti-war opinion.

Their disturbing tales were a sharp rejoinder to the ceremony’s peaceful sentiments.

Friday’s memorial events were held at the site of the 1968 massacre by American troops of 504 unarmed Vietnamese villagers, mostly women, children and elderly men.

A provincial official addressing the crowd mentioned the killings but scrupulously avoided naming the United States as the two nations steadily improve their relations.

The audience included Sgt. Ron Haeberle, who photographed the aftermath in My Lai, and survivor Tran Van Duc, who was 6 at the time and whose slain mother was photographed by Haeberle.

The two men bonded after they met in 2011. Duc lives in Remscheid, Germany, and a German cinematographer, curious about the connection, put him in touch by a message on Facebook to Haeberle in Ohio.

Duc recalled some U.S. soldiers appearing at his family’s house soon after landing by helicopter, who then herded him, his four siblings, and their mother out onto a trail, where American troops began shooting at them.

“The American soldiers set up machine-guns at the bridge, then started to fire at us,” Duc told The Associated Press.

“At that point I had to witness the most painful moment in my life — the cries, the screams of terror. My mother pushed me into the rice field, so I survived.”

Duc’s mother, wounded in the stomach and thigh, tried to cover him and his 14-month-old sister. After the shooting, the soldiers moved along to the village. Duc’s sister began to cry, and their mother, fearful she would draw the soldiers to return, told him to take her to his grandmother’s house, seven kilometres (four miles) away.

“Take Ha to grandma, if you stay here, U.S. soldiers will kill you when they come back,” were the last words Duc heard from her.

Clutching his sister, Duc looked back to see his mother try to grab a bag to get something to staunch her bleeding, but he knew she was in desperate condition.

By the time his grandmother and other villagers returned to recover the remains of their loved ones, they had already been buried.

Baby Ha and another sister survived, but two of Duc’s other sisters were killed.

Haeberle’s shocking photos were published first in November 1969 in The Plain Dealer, the biggest newspaper in his home state of Ohio, and then in Life magazine and all around the world.