Morning Mourning

The early calm of a September morning in 1967 shatters as American helicopters descend upon the small town of My Lai. Blades whooping, their thrust separates the virgin forest and GI’s stream forth. The village is to be burned, the villagers to be eliminated. Thick smoke darkens the sky as the soldiers herd villagers into a ditch. Few, on either side, would survive intact.

This morning we visited the site of the My Lai massacre. Full of propaganda and heavily dramatized, our time spent there was still undoubtedly profound. The gilt museum features a monstrous black wall, confronting visitors with the 504 names of those who were systematically killed. The tale of horror and atrocity is told daily here. Pictures, terrible and tragic, line the walls. A woman wails on her knees, both beside herself and her executed family. A mockup of American soldiers blasting away Vietnamese civilians occupies another corner. Volumes of blank pages are turned into books by scores of visitors attempting to assuage guilt not wholly their own. A Canadian simply writes, “I am glad I am not an American.”

Outside, the heat and humidity swelters the day. We move on paths casted with concrete from re-creation to re-creation. Footprints and boot prints fill the walk, representing those who ran and those who killed. It is uncomfortable. We pass by a burnt out house, with only the foundations left to pay testimony to its existence. The ditch by the walk, filled with reeds, smells of rancid, stagnant water. The deathtrap must be a mosquito’s paradise. Inside, you can almost see the villagers huddled together forty years ago. I stay on the path, still uncomfortable. Later, in a solitary moment, I place my foot on one of the footprints. Cinderella would not have complained. Unsettled, I slowly turn to leave.