The First Seventy Years: 132 - My Lai
Eric Biddulph, during his cycle tour of Vietnam, visited the village which was the scene of a massacre.
Having left the quiet roads around Hoi An I rejoined the main highway. I was now beginning to realise that I needed some lighter clothing. First on the agenda; a pair of shorts; cost 12000 Dong; £2 Sterling.
During the evening I was again approached by two guys as I tucked into my meal. Both spoke English and requested to converse with me. They insisted on buying the beer which was subsequently consumed in large quantities. I only let them buy two rounds. I was enjoying the conversation as much as them. N'u, an English language student at the nearby Quang Ngai University, offered to take me to visit the infamous My Lai massacre village. The following morning he turned up at my hotel on his motorbike to take me on the 20 Km journey.
On the morning of 16 March 1968 a US Army platoon under the command of Lieutenant William Calley shot and bayoneted the residents of the village; threw hand grenades into their houses and slaughtered livestock. Between 75 and 150 villagers were rounded up and herded to the edge of a ditch where they were mowed down by machine-gun. Many other civilians fleeing towards Quang Ngai were also mowed down. The village is long gone but a museum has been built on the site and the various locations where the atrocities occurred have been identified with plaques naming the victims. Needless to say, the site has a special place in the history of modern Vietnam.
I had known about the massacre for many years but only became aware of how it became front page news around the world after visiting the museum. An American war photographer entered the village with Lieutenant Calley's platoon. Many of his photographs depict individual platoon members immediately before firing at villagers; victims collapsing after being shot; dead persons being held up by soldiers; or with a foot upon a corpse as if a trophy. All the soldiers are reported to have requested the photographer take a picture of them in the poses in which they have now appeared before the world in perpetuity. The photographer in question did not reveal these pictures to the world for several years. Eventually, he went public with this damning evidence in his possession.
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Eric’s book The First Seventy Years can be obtained for £10 by contacting http://mary@bike2.wanadoo.co.uk or telephoning 01484-658175.
All the cash raised by the book goes to a water aid project in Malawi.
