...a few months back, just watched it (apols if already posted) - very moving, not least for the humanity of ordinary Vietnamese people in their ability to forgive Americans and even feel compassion for their killers and their families back in the US. Photos of dead bodies including children shown, fyi:





Previous vid from a different site:





I was reminded of a quote from Howard Zinn that indicated My Lai wasn't a unique massacre, but the fact that there were photographs and testimony from soldiers made it difficult to downplay or deny:

'Several of the officers in the My Lai massacre were put on trial, but only Lieutenant William Calley was found guilty.[...] Thousands of Americans came to his defense. Part of it was in patriotic justification of his action as necessary against the "Communists." Part of it seems to have been a feeling that he was unjustly singled out in a war with many similar atrocities. Colonel Oran Henderson, who had been charged with covering up the My Lai killings, told reporters in early 1971: "Every unit of brigade size has its My Lai hidden someplace."

Indeed, My Lai was unique only in its details. Hersh reported a letter sent by a GI to his family, and published in a local newspaper:

Dear Mom and Dad:

Today we went on a mission and I am not very proud of myself, my friends, or my country. We burned every hut in sight!

It was a small rural network of villages and the people were incredibly poor. My unit burned and plundered their meager possessions. Let me try to explain the situation to you.

The huts here are thatched palm leaves. Each one has a dried mud bunker inside. These bunkers are to protect the families. Kind of like air raid shelters.

My unit commanders, however, chose to think that these bunkers are offensive. So every hut we find that has a bunker we are ordered to burn to the ground.

When the ten helicopters landed this morning, in the midst of these huts, and six men jumped out of each "chopper", we were firing the moment we hit the ground. We fired into all the huts we could...

It is then that we burned these huts. . . . Everyone is crying, begging and praying that we don't separate them and take their husbands and fathers, sons and grandfathers. The women wail and moan.

Then they watch in terror as we burn their homes, personal possessions and food. Yes, we burn all rice and shoot all livestock.' - https://historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnimvivi18.html

Russ is correct to refer to the US soldiers as n@zis and point out that this is entirely in keeping with the behaviour of the US military up to the present day, as seen in Iran and (at one remove) in Gaza. Good man for going. Sounds like not many Americans do any more.

cheers,
I