Vietnam Trip – Tuesday, June 19, 2018

After getting up early, I got ready for our last day of visiting locations that are important to Mike and I. We had the buffet breakfast and waiting for our driver to pick us up at 7:30. The last couple of mornings we moved the pickup timeout 30 minutes so we could get a little extra rest.
Ben pulled into the hotel street and open the side door for Mike and me and David climbed into the front passenger seat, navigator seat, of the van. We departed for My Lai Massacre Museum in the Quang Ngai area.

If you aren’t familiar with the My Lai Massacre - A young lieutenant, William Calley, a platoon leader in the 11th Brigade Americal Division, and his platoon killed over 500 civilians. Being a career soldier, I wore the Americal Division insignia on my right shoulder for 20 years, and it was immediately associated with the My Lai Massacre. Mike and I were with our unit one year after the massacre occurred, in March 1968 and the area we operated in was just across the river. Mike and I thought we should pay our respects to the civilians that lost their lives that day due to one criminal, a lieutenant.
I found the Museum and Memorial educational and humbling. It was slanted towards North Vietnam and their people, but it should be, it’s their story. The platoon shouldn’t have committed these murders under any circumstances.

I had a woman in her mid-twenties that was with her boyfriend and sister ask me how I felt about the massacre, as she was crying. I told her I thought it was a criminal act, and I felt sorry for villagers that were killed that day. She thanked me and left.

We departed Quang Ngai for the last time and headed north towards Chu Lai. Chu Lai was the Americal Division Headquarters and the location of the Combat Center. The Combat Center is where all division soldiers entered to get transportation to their unit. It was also the location of my rear job, after I left my infantry platoon, where I was responsible for shipping these soldiers to their unit.
After an hour drive, we reached the Combat Center. Of course, nothing was there, but it wasn’t too hard to visualize the layout of the Shipping Shed and where my hooch was. It was at my hooch that Mike came to visit after he got a rear job, and we sat out front watching the South China Sea and sipped on our Jim Beam and Coke and talked of our time together and our platoon brothers. It was the same location we hugged, for what we thought would be the last time, when I left Vietnam to go back to the states.

What a fitting ending to an exciting, unforgettable, and emotional trip back in time. A trip I could only do with Mike.
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More to come tomorrow.

Monument in the courtyard of the My Lai Massacre Museum.

A plaque listing the date and the people killed by name.

​On the trails there are bare feet footprints, boots and marks like something was dragged along the trail.

This is a replica of a home in the village. This is where I talked to the Vietnamese woman about what occurred.

A mass grave for some of the victims.

​Another plaque that's listing the names of the victims.

Inside the museum that are many artifacts, stories, and photographs of that day. The center picture bottom row is Calley.

The actual well for the village.

Mike and David walking along the path.

Mike and I at the entrance to the Combat Center location.

To the immediate right of this road would have been the shipping shed and my hooch. Center-left would have been where Wayne, my brother, and I had our hooch when we came into the country.

Mike and I are standing "about" where my hooch would have been. We drank many a Jim Beam and Coke while looking at the South China Sea.

During my time at the Combat Center, this would be a more accurate view from my hootch.

The Division Headquarters location in the distance.

​The driver gave David and Mike a beer and we talked while the drank the beer. I declined a beer but thought it funny that this was the first and last place that I drank beer in 1969.