Exactly 50 years ago, the Vietnamese village of Songmi was at the forefront of the confrontation between the two world ideologies. What happened in it is still terrifying: the American army perpetrated such a brutal massacre of civilians that it pales even in the face of individual Nazi crimes. And the fact that no one was punished for this outrageous crime should not be surprising.
In Songmi, US Army soldiers killed more than 500 civilians, including 173 children, 182 women, 60 elderly and 89 men under the age of 60. The latter, at least theoretically, could be mistaken for combatants in the heat of battle, if then, on March 16, 1968, there had been a battle, and not a punitive action against the unarmed peasants of South Vietnam. Those very peasants whom the United States verbally “saved from communist expansion”.
Fatal intelligence error
The American command believed that the headquarters of one of the units of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Viet Cong) could be located in the rural community of Songmi. At least this was the information that was brought to the briefing by the soldiers of C Company (Charlie), a unit of the 11th Infantry Brigade of the Amerikal Division.
Songmi was in the so-called "free fire zone". In a guerrilla war, the Americans designated the territories that should be considered occupied by the enemy. In these "zones" the use of all types of weapons was allowed without additional orders, and any suspicious subject could be considered an enemy military.
At the same time, the soldiers were additionally instructed that there would be no civilians in the village. The commander of the "C" company, Captain Ernest Medina, even ordered the burning of buildings and crops, as well as killing all the livestock to prevent the enemy from using these resources.
No intelligence checks were carried out, and the attack on Songmi began the morning after the briefing with an artillery barrage. After that, the troops went on the offensive.
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Not a single shot was fired in the direction of the American soldiers - there were no Viet Cong units in Songmi, the intelligence made a fatal mistake. However, the attack was not stopped and escalated into a monstrous massacre.
Atrocities similar to those of the Nazis
The peasants hiding in the huts were shot from submachine guns and machine guns. Those who had taken refuge in the ditches from artillery fire were pelted with grenades. Merciless fire was fired at those who jumped out of the flaming buildings with their hands up. At the same time, women were gang raped before their death.
The first platoon "captured" 60 civilians from the rural community. The platoon leader Lieutenant William Kelly ordered them to be shot immediately. And when his soldiers refused to obey the order, he drew his pistol and himself acted as an executioner, setting an example for the others.
Elsewhere, terrified Vietnamese bowed to greet the Americans. They were beaten with rifle butts and stabbed with bayonets. On the bodies of the victims, the punishers carved the inscription "Company" Si ".
During the entire time of the massacre, only one American soldier was injured. According to a beautiful legend, he shot himself in the leg, not wanting to participate in the murders of civilians. However, English-speaking sources claim that he was injured as a result of careless handling of weapons.
The fact that it was the merciless massacre of the civilian population, and not the battle with the Viet Cong, was taking place in Songmi, was obvious to observers.
The pilot of the reconnaissance helicopter Hugh Thompson, circling over the village, said that he did not realize what was happening until he saw a captain of the American army pushing a wounded Vietnamese girl to the ground with his boot and shooting her. Thompson tried to stop the massacre and even landed his helicopter between American soldiers and fleeing peasants, ordering the gunner to open fire on the infantry if they continued to chase. He demanded from Lieutenant Kelly to stop firing, however, to no avail.
Later, taking off, Thompson noticed some movement in the ditch. The crew took out from under a pile of bloody bodies of a seriously wounded child and took him to the hospital.
What happened was an atrocity similar to the Nazi crimes of World War II. This was how the Western press characterized the Songmi massacre.
Crime without punishment
The Songmi massacre was no secret to the American command. However, it made great efforts to hide all information about what happened. The commander of the C company, Captain Ernest Medina, reported that during the battle 20-28 civilians died as a result of artillery and machine-gun fire. A month later, the commander of the 11th Infantry Brigade reported similar information "upstairs". According to him, 20 civilians became unintentional victims of the military operation against parts of the Viet Cong.
However, the truth was leaked to the media. Not least because the soldiers of Xi Company were not shy about bragging about their adventures in Songmi for beer. These stories were collected and published in the USA by the soldier of the 11th brigade Ronald Ridenhor. The photographs of another eyewitness of those events, the war photographer Ronald Haberly, also became famous.
An investigation began, as a result of which dozens of servicemen came under suspicion of committing murder, torture, rape, and a number of officers in a conspiracy to conceal the truth. However, charges were brought against only 26 participants in the massacre, and the cases of six of them reached the military tribunal. As a result, the only convict was the commander of the 1st platoon, Lieutenant William Kelly. Public opinion was ambiguous about this fact, voices sounded that Kelly was appointed the scapegoat.
Be that as it may, Kelly's life sentence was commuted to house arrest just three days after it entered into force, and in 1974 he was pardoned.
But pilot Hugh Thompson was persecuted. At a meeting of the House of Representatives of Congress, he was fiercely criticized for the threat of using weapons against US military personnel. There were calls to bring him to justice. Thompson received many threats, for example, mutilated animals were thrown at the door of his house.
Only 30 years after these events, Thompson and his crew were awarded the US Army Soldier's Medal. In handing the medals, Major General Michael Ackerman called the Songmi massacre "one of the most embarrassing chapters in the history of the army."
How the American army lost its human form
Direct US military intervention in the Vietnamese civil war began in the late 1950s. This was preceded by an eight-year armed conflict on the territory of Vietnam, during which France tried to preserve its colonial rule, which was lost as a result of the Second World War.
Back in 1945, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the creation of an independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam. As a result, by 1954 the country was divided into two parts: North Vietnam under the leadership of the Viet Minh, the League for the Independence of Vietnam, and South Vietnam, in which France established a monarchical regime led by Emperor Bao Dai.
The American administration viewed the situation in Vietnam in the context of the expansion of Soviet ideology in the Asian region. After the establishment of the communist regime in China and North Korea, Washington was determined to prevent similar developments in Southeast Asia. Seeing no prospects for further waging the war, the French left Vietnam, and the Americans came to replace them. First - at the level of political and military advisers, financial assistance to the South Vietnamese administration, later - "crowded and armed".
American methods of bringing freedom and democracy to local realities were not original: the Prime Minister of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, relying on the support of the United States, removed the emperor from power, proclaimed himself president and imposed a regime of personal dictatorship. By 1963, Diem also ceased to suit the Americans: a number of South Vietnamese generals, in agreement with US representatives, carried out a military coup, the president and his relatives were killed. However, the military junta that came to power turned out to be unstable, and for quite a long time the power in South Vietnam was changed by force every few months.
Against this background, in 1960, all groups opposing the colonial authorities united into the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Viet Cong), which, receiving support from the northern part of the country, began a guerrilla war against the interventionists and their henchmen.
By 1964, the time of the official military intervention, more than 20,000 American troops were already stationed in South Vietnam. The US military found itself in a very unpleasant situation: they were forced to defend the extremely unstable and unpopular South Vietnamese government against the backdrop of widespread resistance to it. And despite the fact that at the height of the conflict, the American contingent reached half a million people, the US troops did not manage to establish full control over any significant territory - the guerrilla war was going on everywhere.
The inconsistency of the slogans about protecting freedom and democracy with the real political content of the pro-American authorities in South Vietnam had an extremely negative impact on the moral character of the American army. Here is just a small snapshot of this problem - from the book of Lieutenant General of the US Army Philip B. Davidson, who served in Vietnam as chief of the intelligence department of the US command headquarters:
“Cases of desertion and going AWOL have become more frequent. The number of military personnel who used drugs grew steadily. In 1970, there were 65,000 of them in Vietnam (out of the 300,000-strong group by 1970 - LOOK) … Attacks on commanders began to occur in 1970 three times more often than in 1969 … All the statistics available to the military leadership, plus to her, the appearance of bearded and dirty soldiers, performing their duties as if from under a stick, convinced the higher and senior officers in 1970 that things were going to the loss of discipline by the military and the collapse of the military contingent."
Democracy War of Destruction
However, it is hardly possible to write off the atrocities of the American army as a loss of discipline due to the difficult political situation. Wishing to prevent communist expansion, the political leadership of the United States and the command of the group of forces did not stop at the most draconian methods.
The territories of North and South Vietnam were subjected to carpet bombing. In total, the Americans dropped 6,727,084 tons of bombs - during the entire Second World War they dropped three times less on Germany.
At the same time, both aviation and ground forces massively used napalm, and to destroy the jungle in the theater of operations - the herbicide and defoliant Agent Orange. It is worth dwelling on the latter in more detail: “Orange” sprayed 10% of the territory of South Vietnam (77 million liters). As a result, more than 3 million Vietnamese became victims of diseases, including hereditary ones, manifested in future generations.
In 2005 and 2008, the victims tried to obtain compensation from the United States through the American court, but the claim was denied with the wording “there is insufficient evidence that it was the substance sprayed by the American troops during the Vietnam War that caused the harm.” At the same time, it was emphasized that the defoliant "was used to protect American troops, and not as a weapon against civilians."
Breaking up river dams to drain the rice paddies was also standard US tactics. Rice was the staple food of the civilian population, that is, the Americans provoked hunger in the territories under their control.
The United States fought a war of annihilation in Vietnam. The Songmi Massacre was just one episode of it. Dozens of other cases have been documented that have not received such a serious response. For example, in the 101st Airborne Division, servicemen loved to “decorate” themselves with the scalps of killed Vietnamese.
For the horrors of that war, no one was punished, did not apologize or pay compensation. Still.
Dmitry Lyskov