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U.S Soldiers Pay Tribute to My Lai Massacre Victims
U.S Soldiers Pay Tribute to My Lai Massacre Victims
CHEN: During the Vietnam War in March of 1968, U.S. soldiers wiped out an entire Vietnamese village. It came to be known as the My Lai Massacre. Last Sunday, hundreds of villagers, relatives, and survivors came to pay tribute to lives lost. Among the mourners, a former U.S. soldier. STORY: It was March 16th, 1968. The tiny hamlet of My Lai became the scene of a bloody massacre, that would help change the American public's attitude towards the Vietnam War. It's now been forty years since around 500 unarmed, mainly women and children, were killed by U.S. soldiers. Among those paying tribute, former American soldiers, and survivors. [Truong Thi Le, Massacre Survivor]: "I got some rice trees to lay on the dead people. There were five dead bodies laying on the ground - there was blood everywhere." Former soldier Lawrence Colburn returned to My Lai for this 40th anniversary. He and helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson rescued some of the villagers as the massacre went on around them, loading people into their chopper and flying them to safety. [Lawrence Colburn, Former U.S. Soldier]: "No one wins in war, and civilians always suffer in war, and the only way to prevent atrocities in war is to prevent war." The U.S. army had originally claimed My Lai was the scene of a battle with the Vietcong, in which just a handful of civilians were killed. But photographs smuggled out by an army photographer revealed the truth to a horrified American public.
YouTube | March 18, 2008
