kliljedahl
03-16-2008, 12:46 PM
http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/15/vietnam.mylai.ap/art.mylai.jpg
My Lai massacre survivor Do Ba, 48, meets with his rescuer Lawrence Colburn, 58.
MY LAI, Vietnam (AP) -- Lawrence Colburn returned to My Lai and found hope at the site of one of the most notorious chapters of the Vietnam War.
art.mylai.jpg
On the 40th anniversary of the massacre of up to 500 unarmed Vietnamese villagers, the former helicopter gunner was reunited Saturday with a young man he rescued from rampaging U.S. soldiers.
On March 16, 1968, Colburn found 8-year-old Do Ba clinging to his mother's corpse in a ditch full of blood and the bodies of more than 100 people who had been mowed down. Nearly all the victims were unarmed women, children and elderly.
"Today I see Do Ba with a wife and a baby," said Colburn, a member of a three-man U.S. Army helicopter crew that landed in the midst of the massacre and intervened to stop the killing. "He's transformed himself from being a broken, lonely man. Now he's complete. He's a perfect example of the human spirit, of the will to survive."
Colburn, 58, now runs a medical supplies business north of Atlanta. He, Ba and hundreds of others are gathering this weekend to remember the My Lai massacre, a grim milestone that shocked Americans and undermined support for the war, which ended in 1975 with the fall of Saigon to communist troops.
Buddhist monks in saffron robes led the mourners in prayer Saturday outside a museum that has been erected to remember the dead. An official memorial program will be held on Sunday.
Among those coming to pray was Ha Thi Quy, 83, a My Lai survivor who suffers from anger and depression four decades after the slaughter. Soldiers from the Army's Charlie Company shot her in the leg and killed her mother, her 16-year-old daughter and her 6-year-old son.
Her husband later died of injuries from the massacre and another son had to have an arm and a leg amputated after suffering gunshot wounds that day.
Quy only survived because she was shielded beneath a pile of dead bodies.
"The American government should stop waging wars like they waged in Vietnam," Quy said. "My children were innocent, but those American soldiers killed them."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/15/vietnam.mylai.ap/index.html
My Lai massacre survivor Do Ba, 48, meets with his rescuer Lawrence Colburn, 58.
MY LAI, Vietnam (AP) -- Lawrence Colburn returned to My Lai and found hope at the site of one of the most notorious chapters of the Vietnam War.
art.mylai.jpg
On the 40th anniversary of the massacre of up to 500 unarmed Vietnamese villagers, the former helicopter gunner was reunited Saturday with a young man he rescued from rampaging U.S. soldiers.
On March 16, 1968, Colburn found 8-year-old Do Ba clinging to his mother's corpse in a ditch full of blood and the bodies of more than 100 people who had been mowed down. Nearly all the victims were unarmed women, children and elderly.
"Today I see Do Ba with a wife and a baby," said Colburn, a member of a three-man U.S. Army helicopter crew that landed in the midst of the massacre and intervened to stop the killing. "He's transformed himself from being a broken, lonely man. Now he's complete. He's a perfect example of the human spirit, of the will to survive."
Colburn, 58, now runs a medical supplies business north of Atlanta. He, Ba and hundreds of others are gathering this weekend to remember the My Lai massacre, a grim milestone that shocked Americans and undermined support for the war, which ended in 1975 with the fall of Saigon to communist troops.
Buddhist monks in saffron robes led the mourners in prayer Saturday outside a museum that has been erected to remember the dead. An official memorial program will be held on Sunday.
Among those coming to pray was Ha Thi Quy, 83, a My Lai survivor who suffers from anger and depression four decades after the slaughter. Soldiers from the Army's Charlie Company shot her in the leg and killed her mother, her 16-year-old daughter and her 6-year-old son.
Her husband later died of injuries from the massacre and another son had to have an arm and a leg amputated after suffering gunshot wounds that day.
Quy only survived because she was shielded beneath a pile of dead bodies.
"The American government should stop waging wars like they waged in Vietnam," Quy said. "My children were innocent, but those American soldiers killed them."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/15/vietnam.mylai.ap/index.html