Vietnam war

50 years ago, the My Lai massacre shamed the US military

The shudder of artillery fire woke the boy at 5:30 a.m. Three American soldiers appeared at his family's home a couple of hours later and forced the mother and five children into their bomb shelter, a structure most every Vietnamese home had during the war, to keep them safe.

One soldier set fire to the family's thatched house while the others tossed grenades into the shelter. Protected under the torn bodies of his mother and his four siblings, 10-year-old Pham Thanh Cong was the only survivor.

It was March 16, 1968. The American soldiers of Charlie Company, sent on what they were told was a mission to confront a crack outfit of their Vietcong enemies, met no resistance, but over three to four hours killed 504 unarmed civilians, mostly women, children and elderly men, in My Lai and a neighboring community. Vietnamese refer to the greater village where the killings occurred as Son My.

"We started hearing the screaming and moaning from our neighbors, which were followed by gunfire and grenade explosions, then the screaming and moaning stopped, and my mother knew that the American soldiers had killed people," Cong recalled this week. "I was covered with the flesh and hair of my mother and sisters and brother."