THE PLAIN DEALER, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 2, 1985 SECTION My Lai massacre 16 years later Life goes on in rebuilt hamlet, but memory of death won't fade 1, MY LAI, Vietnam (AP) The rice and vegetables grow in the lush green fields, the flowers are in bloom and the trees are tall. A new generation of children walks laughing through the hamlet of My Lai. Cows graze, dogs bark, chickens cackle. "Just as the rice harvest comes up every spring, life goes on in the hamlet in central Vietnam 16 years after a previous generation of children and their parents were killed by American troops in what the world called the My Lai massacre. The bodies of the victims lie in the cemeteries and fields in and around My Lai.
Although atrocities occurred on both sides during the war, My Lai stunned America, a nation that took pride in abiding by the rules of war. Visiting My Lai today, in a trip arranged at his request by officials of Vietnam's Communist government, an Associated Press reporter finds a hamlet rebuilt since 1975, when the Communists took over all Vietnam with the fall of the Saigon government. An agricultural cooperative, formed by recent settlers, is the heart of the new My Lai. A plaque is inscribed with the names of 504 men, women and children Vietnamese officials say were killed on March 16, 1968. A marker designates each spot where groups of Vietnamese were killed, including 97 people the government says were slain in a neighboring hamlet.
Doan Muong Nay 16-3-1968 Da Tan Sat 170 Nguoi," reads one marker "On This Water Canal on March 16, 1968, American Imperialists Massacred 170 People." The canal was a dry ditch then. It was built in 1978 and irrigates the rice paddies nearby. knolls surrounding the canal were once the foundations of homes burned down by the Americans, says Pham Thi Trinh, 26, a. massacre survivor who now lives and works in the little museum in My Lai, which during the war years was among hundreds of South Vietnamese hamlets regarded as pro-Viet Cong by U.S. forces.
The museum exhibition includes photographs of massacred women and made by a U.S. Army combat- photographer and photos of American soldiers. from U.S. publications. These include William L.
Calley, the lieutenant who. commanded Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, Americal Division the company involved in the massacre. In the center of the hamlet, a large statue memorializes the victims. A woman stands with right hand raised, fist clenched. She holds a child in her left arm.
At her feet are other massacre victims, comforting each other. 64 A second marker lies near an old French guardhouse, possibly the spot where an American soldier testified he helped round up about 35 or 40 Vietnamese men, women and children who were then herded at rifle point into a clearing. The soldier, rifleman Paul Meadlo; testified at Calley's court martial that the lieutenant said, "You know what to do with them, Meadlo." "I assumed he meant guard them, and said, Meadlo testified. He said Calley then returned and "How come they're not dead?" "I said I didn't know we were supposed to kill them," Meadlo testified. He said Calley replied, "I want them dead." "He told me to help shoot them," Meadlo testified.
He said he and Calley stood side by side and fired into the victims with M-16 automatic rifles from a distance of about 20 feet. Still another marker lies in a spot covered by heavy brush where survivor Pham Thi. Trinh says the houses in her family compound once stood. "My parents, six brothers and grandmother and aunt and uncle were killed," she says through a Vietnamese guide and interpreter, a Foreign Ministry, official accompanying the reporter. "I remember that morning well," she says." "I was 10 years We were preparing breakfast just before going into the fields.
"Suddenly the shelling came. We took cover in a shelter in front of our home. After the shelling we heard the sound of American soldiers. People hiding in the shelter got out as they usually did when Americans entered the village." Pham Thi Trinh, weeping throughout the two-hour interview, says the U.S. troops ordered her family and four neighbors to the front of the house.
"They shot to death three cows first, then they knelt and shot my family. People tried to run away." WANTED 1 1 JAKE" 'The Clipper" JOHNSON (alias "The Classified For clipping 1,640,298 classified ads from The Plain Dealer last year. That's right. The Plain Dealer ran a phenomenal total of 1.640.298 classified ads last year. Seems like just about everyone ran a classified ad.
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Call 344-5555 AP Lt. William Calley She says she escaped by hiding in a bedroom. American troops shot her mother and then placed straw on her and lighted it, she says. Her 14-year-old sister ran from the burning kitchen of their home, but the laughing soldiers forced her back into the fire, she says. As her mother was dying of her wounds, she damned the Americans, Pham Thi Trinh says.
"I heard her say, 'You are criminals! You killed all of my Then she cried out, 'I will die! Anybody, any children of mine, if you're still alive, try to Pham Thi Trinh says she ran to her 76-yearold grandmother's house and found her body partly inside a dresser where she had tried to hide." "Her hand was still clutching the door she was trying to close. My heart hurt very much and I embraced her and cried." Pham Thi Trinh was the only survivor in her family, she says. Twenty-seven-year-old Vo Thi Lien and grandfather were among survivors in the neighboring hamlet of My Lai 2, where the Vietnamese say 97 people were killed. Her parents were away from the hamlet at the time, Vo Thi Lien had left the 11-year-old girl in her grandparents' care. "My grandfather and grandmother and myself were in a shelter," she says.
"I saw three American soldiers point guns and shoot into the shelter and then throw grenades into it and hit my grandmother. "My grandfather and I were numb. We could not find a way out because the shelter was destroyed. We were rescued by some young men." The massacre at My Lai is well documented through the testimony of 91 witnesses and hundreds of depositions, documents, maps and photographs placed in evidence during Calley's court-martial in November 1969. But the exact number of Vietnamese who died is not.
Official U.S. Army sources initially estimated Pham. Thi Trinh, a' survivor of the 1968 My Lal massacre, stands next to a marker commemorating the event. She said 11 members of her family were killed near where the marker stands. the number at 200, and Calley was charged with the murder of 102 Vietnamese civilians.
For a year after it happened, the story of My Lai remained untoid, until Vietnam veteran Ron Ridenhour learned of it from several men in Charlie Company. He mailed letters to 30 military and congressional leaders documenting. his charges that "something rather dark and bloody did occur sometime in March 1968" in a village the Americans code-named "Pinkville." In his defense, Calley testified: "When my troops were getting massacred and mauled by an enemy I couldn't see, I couldn't feel and I couldn't touch, that which nobody in the military ever described as anything other than communism. "They didn't give it a race, they didn't give it a sex, they didn't give it an age. They never let me believe it was just a philosophy in a man's mind.
"That was my enemy out there and when i it came between me and that enemy, I had to value the lives of my troops, and I feel that is the only crime I have committed." A jury of six senior officers convicted Calley. in 1971 of first murder of at least 22 villagers. He was sentenced to life imprisonment but President Richard M. Nixon reduced that to 20 years. Calley served three years under house arrest at Fort Benning, Ga 2 Firm Figure.
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