Veteran Warrior Writings

Warrior writings

The Visit to My Lai (page 3)

After a long while, I left the museum and walked through the rest of the park. We were to meet with a survivor from My Lai, and I certainly didn’t want to miss that. Toward the extreme western boundary of what once had been the series of interconnected hamlets known as My Lai I came upon the infamous ditch, in to which hundreds of civilians, mostly women and children, a scattering of elderly men, Calley had ordered to be herded and mercilessly gunned down by the young troopers of Charlie Company.

There it just starkly was, covered in the shade of thick foliage from the encroaching jungle, through which dappled sunlight streamed, creating surreal contrasts of highlights. In the ditch were a couple of inches of brackish water, filled with rotting leaves and brown palm fronds. It was eerily quiet, the profound silence interrupted from time to time by the hoots of a distant jungle creature or the buzzing of a nearby insect. It was very difficult to imagine in the quiet tranquility of that mid-afternoon of March 5, 2002, just shy of the 34th anniversary of the massacre, that this serene jungle scene could have been the site of such ineffable horror. Ominously, as if to remind me of the reality of what had in truth taken place that long ago day, one platform, high-heeled shoe lay half-submerged on its side.

On a grassy knoll about 50 meters away from the ditch, I could see the rest of the group gathering around a petite, frail-looking, elderly woman, dressed in the typical peasant wear of white blouse and black pajama bottoms with a conical hat. No doubt she was the My Lai survivor Jess, the Tour Leader had informed us we would be meeting. Gathered around her with us were several Vietnamese, including some of her children and grandchildren. Earlier she had had a very moving encounter with Wally, which he describes in this passage:

The visit to the site of My Lai was the one that I dreaded most of all. I felt apprehensive when our tour bus pulled into the parking lot of what is now a memorial to that dark day in 1968. The attack on My Lai occurred when I was a soldier in country but I didn’t hear of it until several months after I returned home. The appalling events that I read about now took on a reality as I walked down the hedged pathway and onto the grassy park of the former village. As I went from one mound to the other that marked the destroyed houses, each with a brass plaque listing the names of the dead, an old Vietnamese woman came toward me. Without a word we took each other’s hands, then embraced, and wept. I didn’t know who she was, but a person I needed to share a deep sorrow with. We walked hand-in-hand along the path toward our group gathering on the lawn under the trees. Only then did I realize that this old woman was a survivor of the massacre. I sat next to her as she told her dreadful story, all the while plucking the weeds and fulfilling her duty to keep the hallowed ground clean. Her smiling grandchildren and other children stood near, an innocent counterpoint to the past horror of war.