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Remembering My Lai | Unlikely Friendships |
Officer of the Year
Remembering My Lai
A Vietnam veteran visits Chartiers Valley to recount one of the darkest chapters in U.S. military history
By Christopher Geer
Fred Widmer will never forget the events of
March, 16, 1968. As a U.S. Army radio
operator not long out of high school,Widmer
and the other members of his company
entered the Vietnamese village of My Lai on
that day with orders to destroy the Viet Cong
guerilla fighters said to be taking refuge there.
The soldiers found almost no enemy
fighters, but, by the time they left four hours
later, they had killed hundreds of civilians in
what would become one of the most
notorious events in American military history.
Photo: Vietnam vet Fred Widmer shares his account of the My Lai Massacre
In the years since,Widmer has admitted
to taking part in the attack that day. “You are
trained to follow orders, and to
kill,” he says. “That is your
mission.That is what we did.
As an infantry soldier, you are
stripped of your values and your
individualism. You come to the
realization that this sort of thing
will happen in war. But in the
end, you never get used to it.”
Widmer visited Chartiers
Valley High School last month
to talk to the students in Bob
Rodrigues’ social studies class.
The Vietnam vet discussed his
war experience and how he has
since coped with the events of
that day. It’s the eighth time
Widmer has visited the school.
“Fred’s story is so powerful,
we have to get it out there,”
Rodrigues says. “And the
questions the kids ask are deep.
They know this is a powerful
story of human experience.”
This year marks the 40th
anniversary of the My Lai
Massacre, sparking renewed
interest in the event.This year’s
talk at CV included the
attendance of a French film crew
who taped the discussion for
inclusion in a documentary. “The
French government really believes
strongly that children in France
should know what happened in
Vietnam and be educated more on
world events like My Lai, the
Holocaust; events that are
sometimes difficult to talk about,”
Rodrigues says.
The documentary, scheduled
to be released at the end of the
year, will feature the segments of
the talk by Widmer at Chartiers Valley
High School, and will deal generally
with how Americans handle sensitive
subjects when it comes to the education
of children. “They heard about what we
do here and wanted to see how
American schools take something like
this and turn it into something positive,”
says Rodrigues.
Filmmakers Jean Crepu, Peter
Bolton, and Thomas Bronnec, working
for the television station France 5,
descended upon Chartiers Valley High
School for their filming as part of their
interest to “interview people who
witnessed the massacre and record their
impressions and recollections of it,” says
Bolton.They’ll travel across the country
interviewing other veterans, then head
to Vietnam to talk to survivors of that
day.
Photo: Students from Bob Rodrigues’ social studies class get a first-hand account of the events surrounding My Lai.
Widmer spoke about his time as an
infantry soldier in Charlie Company,
20th Infantry Regiment, 23rd Infantry
Division, the U.S. Army unit primarily held
responsible for My Lai. According to the PBS
series Frontline, the men in Charlie Company
had no combat experience when they were
deployed to Vietnam in December 1967, but
excelled in training and were considered a top
company. In its first few months, Charlie
Company began losing members to snipers
and land mines. By mid-March, the company
of 130 had suffered 28 casualties, including
five dead. But the men were frustrated that
they never had a chance to actually engage
the guerilla fighters who were silently picking
them off. Particularly vexing was that, unlike
the uniformed soldiers of the North
Vietnamese Army, the Viet Cong were
virtually indistinguishable from innocent
civilians.Men, women, and children, thought
to be friendly at one moment, could (and did)
lob hand grenades at soldiers the next.
On March 16, 1968, Charlie Company was
sent on a mission to kill what they were told
were Viet Cong fighters camped in the tiny
hamlet of My Lai.The company’s men saw
this as a chance to finally take on the enemy.
“We were told that the civilians would be
gone to market, that anyone left in the village
of My Lai were to be considered Viet Cong
or Viet Cong sympathizers,”Widmer says.
“We were on a search and destroy mission, we
were to burn buildings, destroy crops, and kill
or destroy
everything that
might aid the
enemy.We were
following orders.”
Since returning
to civilian life,
Widmer has had to
cope with
experiences and
memories he would
like to put behind
him. “With
something like this,
people want to
forget about it, to
sweep it under the rug,” he told students. “I’ve
had to deal with many issues in my life – drug
addictions and alcoholism.”
Asked by one student what would have
been different that day if he could go back,
Widmer simply says he hopes that, if it were
possible to go back, the killings would never
have happened.
Another CV student asked whether he
would ever return to Vietnam.Widmer said
no: “I have no desire to go back. It was a
beautiful country with beautiful things - my
life was changed by what I saw and what I
did there - but I will never go back there.”
Queried by another student about how
his feelings concerning the Vietnam War had
been altered by his experience,Widmer says,
“Before I went over, I wanted to serve my
country and prevent the spread of
communism. But after my first tour, my
opinion of what we were fighting for and why
we were there changed. Looking back,
hindsight is 20/20, but conflicts like these are
not simple problems, there isn't an easy blackand-
white answer.”
The filmmakers believe that allowing others
to hear new perspectives on the killings that
day will help to bring about greater
understanding of the event in its overall
historical context.
“For us in France, the Vietnam War is
quite a familiar, but vague event,” says Crépu.
“It was very iconic, triggering street protests,
among other things, during that period at the
end of the 1960s.War is important in the
change of cultures, and what we are most
interested to see is the cultural impact of
these events, rather than the military one,”
says Crépu.
Photo: French filmmakers document Widmer’s visit to CV.
Additionally, the team hoped to record
the memory of My Lai both in the United
States and in Vietnam. “What we are most
interested in hearing is the reaction of the
younger generation to this event,” says
Bronnec.
Widmer, breaking down at one point
during his talk, told students that My Lai will
forever haunt him. “This is something I'll
have to live with until they put me in the
ground,” he said. “You never get used to
seeing death or injury; it stays with you. It
affects you.”
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