Son My massacre
Today we visited the village of My Lai, where the son my massacre took place of which you might already have heard (I didn't).
In the Vietnam war the U.S. Soldiers got an order to attack a local village and burn it to the ground. This village was inhabited by civilians which mostly consisted of children and women. But the person who ordered the attack accused the village of being Vietcong related. Apperently his friend had been captured by Vietcong soldiers and hanged, and as revenge he ordered the attack on the village. The visit to this remorial site made a big impression on me. I had never heard of this massacre although it has been such a massive slaughtering for no good reason. In total there were an astonishing 504 people killed in the massacre, they deliberately killed old men, women, children and babys.
(List of victims, ages 1 to 92)
It was seen as a dark, bloody and criminal act by the U.S. in the Vietnamese war. The village had been bombarded with artillery and overthrown with helicopter gunships, although they didn't recieve any resistance they later on send in three platoons to finish the job, whom shot and bayoneted fleeing villagers, burnt their houses to cover up the bodies and their crimes. Rounded up around 170 villagers in a ditch and executed them. During the attack at least 4 girls and women were raped or gang-raped by groups of soldiers.
The soldiers who participated were ordered to keep their mouths shut, but several disobeyed their oreders and went public with their horrofic story. The leader of the first platoon, lieutenant William Calley, had been found guilty of war crimes and the murder of unarmed civilians and was sentenced for life imprisonment in 1971. The museum was quite shocking, because they presented a lot of pictures which were taken on scene by photographer Ron Haeberle.
I wanted to share this with you guys because this story had a great impact on me and because I think more people should know what happened here 40 years ago, thank you for reading and please follow for more!
I visited Vietnam in march but did not visit this site. This did result in war crime convictions. The United States did the right thing. A lot of countries that commit atrocities like this never seek justice.