The Photographer and the Photographed
Precursor to the Mỹ Lai Massacre: 1968 Phong Nhị, Phong Nhất_17: The Photographer and the Photographed
US Corporal Vaughn and Trần Thị Được
The last photographs taken by the US Corporal Vaughn in Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất in the afternoon of February 12, 1968. US soldiers treating a wounded arm of the 16 year-old Trần Thị Được. This was attached to the report of the US Army, which contains the truth of the incident, with photographs O and P.
I took the photographs. I am not a photographer. I’m just a soldier. I came to Vietnam according to the decree of the government of the United States of America. I am a marine belonging to the 3rd Army Corps. I first came to Da Nang, the second city of South Vietnam, and was thereafter stationed 25 kilometers south at the Joint Operations Squadron at the number one national highway in Quang Nam, Dien Banh Province. We were called the ‘Cap Platoon.’ Our main duties consisted of intelligence gathering and observation. We were smaller than the typical platoon, so we were also referred to as the ‘minus platoon.’ There were five US soldiers, including myself. We were assisted by 26 South Vietnamese militiamen.
The photographs were taken coincidentally that day. Around 1:30 pm, gunshots resounded from the west, where Phong Nhị was situated. It must have been the squadron of ROK troops that my superior, Lieutenant Sylvia, saw marching toward the village at around 10:30 am. They said they were executing an operation in the village. I could see the resident homes burning from afar. Crimson flames rose into the air. They must have been assaulted. The sound of gunshots continued on. They seemed to be using both automatic rifles and submachine guns. A South Vietnamese militiaman brought a few injured boys and one woman from the village to the base. It seemed to be a grave situation. There were likely more people who were injured in the village. They needed urgent relief work. But Lieutenant Sylvia commanded them to wait a while longer. After several rounds of radio communication, he announced that the ROK troops were not allowing for US and South Vietnamese troops to enter the villages. We waited until the sound of gunshots subsided. At around 3:00 pm, after about an hour and 30 minutes had gone by, they finally received order from the superior unit to enter the village. I made sure I took my camera. I’d been meaning to keep record of the Vietnam War through photographs.
We took a wide road there. To our right, the enemy could be waiting in ambush. Lieutenant Sylvia warned us saying that two weeks ago, a US soldier was wounded by a sniper in this village. We therefore took the left entrance. We could see the entirety of the village from our vantage point. It was gruesome sight. I peered through the viewfinder of my camera with my right eye. A South Vietnamese militiaman put out the fire from the first house we arrived at, and another one searched the area around the house, holding an M16 in his right hand. I took a snapshot of that moment. We could see a house that had burned down entirely. The only remaining trace of the house were two ceramic pots. My fingers started to shake as I continued taking the photographs--as if they knew that we would soon encounter an extraordinary sight.
And the premonition was correct. We came upon a corpse lying in a house that had been reduced to a heap of ashes. More than half of the body had burned in the flames. The only part of the corpse that was intact was below the knees. I could see the entire skeletal frame of the upper body, but I couldn’t see the head, as it was charred and covered in ashes. Pieces of wood lined the side of the corpse. In what seemed to be almost a reflex, my index finger continued pressing the shutter of my camera. The smell of the burning bodies was nauseating.
I went further into the village. There were fields all around. A young woman was lying in the rice field. There was a white hat under her right arm. I stepped into the swampy field in my combat boots. I took a few snapshots of her from her right and then took a full-frontal. She was still breathing, but something was off. I could see that her breasts had been severed. Her right arm appeared to have been cut off too. I yelled and signaled towards the South Vietnamese militia, “There’s a person here. She’s alive. We need to get her to the hospital now!”
Things only got worse from there. We found another 10 bodies of women and young children in a vacant lot. They were all thrown into one place. Most were dead, but two of them still had pulses. I took photographs of fellow US troops rounding up the corpses. South Vietnamese militiamen began transporting the few that were still alive. One young girl lay dead with her pants taken off. There was also a pregnant woman who had been shot in the face. It was apparent that it was a short-distance shooting. Some corpses had no scars. There was no end to the corpses, however. They were everywhere—in the bank around the rice fields, near the ponds. By that point, my eyes had grown immune to the sight of dead bodies through my viewfinder. I felt numb.
But as I was walking around the village, I found something peculiar. There was no indication of bombardment near the corpses. Just an hour ago, we had deduced that the ROK troops had attacked the village with mortars and then fired blindly. We had been mistaken. We had assumed that they fired mortars based on the smoke rising from the village. In fact, we even heard Lieutenant Sylvia speak into his walkie talkie, asking the ROK troops to stop firing their 81mm mortars. But there was no such trace. Instead, most of the villagers were either slashed or shot from a short distance. There were no young males among the corpses. They consisted of only the elderly, women and children.
I didn’t only take photographs of the corpses. I was glad to be able to take photographs of a girl who, in spite of the scars on her hands and arms, was still alive. The bleeding was severe on both arms and fingers, so the U.S. marines, after quick stopgap measures, sent her to a hospital.
They are photograph O and photograph P. I took an overhead shot of the scene where they were bandaging up her right hand. You can’t see the young girl’s face clearly. She is wearing a white top and has three dainty bracelets on her left wrist. She must have liked to accessorize. I still wonder whether the scars on her arms and hands healed or whether her arms and hands became disabled.
Five days after the incident on February 17th, I was called to Da Nang to testify to the superior unit. Investigator and lieutenant commander J.M. Major Campanelli ordered that I give a very detailed report of what I saw and experienced that day. He wrote a statement based on what I told him, adding the photographs that I took to the statement. There were a total of 20 photographs along with descriptions.
Corporal Vaughn described this photograph as, “The first house I encountered. ”The South Vietnamese militia attempting to do relief work on the burning house.
I had photographs taken of me.
I am the girl in both photographs O and P. I was soon admitted to the Da Nang Hospital. A tall U.S. officer came to the hospital with a Vietnamese interpreter and asked me questions such as how badly I was hurt or how I ended up like this. He wrote down everything that I said. I had gunshots on both arms and hands and only had two fingers left, but to me, it wasn’t a big deal. When I thought of my dead family members, I couldn’t even go to sleep.
That day ROK troops barged into my village of Phong Nhất. They forced all the villagers out of their homes. They somehow managed to find even the people who were hiding in bomb shelters and made us move to another location. There were no interpreters, so we had no idea what they were saying. We could only take orders based on their hand signals. They raised their guns as they spoke. It seemed like they would shoot us if we didn’t listen to what they said. When we reached a certain area, they entered the homes and started shooting their guns at the civilians. We were all standing outside, scared to death.
The ROK troops also pointed their guns toward us. The women and children near me screeched as they fell to the floor. I also fell with them, but luckily, I was only pretending to be dead. One soldier caught onto the fact that I was still alive and came toward me. I begged him to spare my life, but he heartlessly pulled his trigger. I lost consciousness. When I opened my eyes, a U.S. soldier was wrapping my arms with bandages. Another U.S. soldier was taking pictures of me from my right. They were terrifying just the same.
Trần Thị Được’s father, Trần Văn Cự(lying upright in the center), on February 12. The villagers I met in April of 2001 verified that he is the father of Trần Thị Được (right).
I go by the name J. Vaughn. I took the photographs. At the time of the incident, I was just a corporal. Twenty years old. It was all a blur how I grabbed my camera and headed to the site, and I certainly had no idea that my photographs would be used as significant material down the road. They were added to the statement submitted to the superior unit and even made it to the US Military Command and Embassy in Vietnam, as well as the US Department of State and the Ministry of National Defense. They were passed along the Korea Army Headquarters in Vietnam and the Korean military authorities, and were even used as data by the Marine Corps of the Second Brigade and the Central Intelligence Agency in investigating the officers and sergeants who executed operations in Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất. I also know very well that they were used by the US to pressure the Korean govern ahead of the Simington Congressional hearing in February 1970.
I returned the United States not long after the incident. I won’t speak on what I did thereafter, how the experience of taking those gruesome photographs in Vietnam affected my values and disposition. I also know that a Korean journalist visited Washington in November of 2000, looking for me. He managed to get hold of the photographs, thirty years after the incident took place, when they were finally declassified after being kept in the U.S. National Archives, and wanted to hear about the day’s incident and stories related to the photographs. He called the Vietnam Veterans’ Group and asked for my contact information, but couldn’t get a hold of it. I was already dead by then. In 1994, at the age of 46.
My name is Trần Thị Được. I was the one in the photographs take by Corporal Vaugh. I was 16 years old at the time. Ever since I was 11 years old, I worked as a maidservant of an affluent family. The incident took place only a couple of months after I had come back to my hometown for the first time in 5 years. The ROK troops killed my father, Trần Văn Cự (44), not to mention my mother and two younger brothers. My three-month-old younger sister who was heavily injured died soon after. I was left alone. But I couldn’t afford to be weak. In the dark of the night, I would light a candle and think about my mother and father, crying bitterly. I would also think about how I would survive going forward, which made me alert. Four years passed. I was 20 years old when I decided to join the underground group of the liberation army of the Communist party. The enemy referred to those like me as the Viet Cong. I decided to dedicate my life to the liberation and reunification of my home country. It was to honor the death of my parents. My duty was stealthily setting up booby traps where the enemy was based or passed by often.
Amidst the corpses, Trần Văn Cự (center far left) and Trần Thị Được (right of Trần Văn Cự). Trần Thị Được appears to have lost consciousness after being shot in the fingers.
One day, I was arrested as I was setting up a booby trap near a South Vietnamese military base, a bit displaced from Phong Nhất. It was misplaced and therefore exploded prematurely. Perhaps because nobody from the South Vietnamese army died from the detonation, I was spared my life and was taken to prison until I was released after liberation in April of 1975.
Since then, I have been running a variety store in Da Nang. I got married and had two daughters, and that is as much detail as I am willing to disclose. I know that in April of 2001, a Korean journalist visited Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất with my photographs. The photograph taken by Corporal Vaughn, of my arms wrapped in bandages. The journalist asked the villagers for my telephone number. He was probably curious about my life after the incident-- the loneliness I withstood, my battle stories as a Viet Cong, my life after being released in 1975. The villagers shook their heads. I had already lost my life to breast cancer by then. I died in August of 1999, at the age of 47.
**** based on the classified statement on the Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất Massacre of February 12, 1968 and the testimony of Nguyễn Thị Sáu(1945~ ), a villager who was a friend of Trần Thị Được.
- Written by humank (Journalist; Seoul, Korea)
- Translated and revised as necessary by April Kim (Tokyo, Japan)
The numbers in parentheses indicate the respective ages of the people at the time in 1968.
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