It’s been over 40 years since American choppers lifted off above the U.S. embassy in Saigon, bodies desperately holding onto every available surface, signifying the end of the Vietnam War. The war was a strange and horrible one, perhaps the strangest and most horrible war in America’s long history of violence. To begin with, it remains to this day the only war that the U.S.A. has ever fought and lost. Now, it’s not like the U.S. saw its forces outgunned and destroyed in detail on the battlefields of the war- not very often, anyway. Rather, a seriously flawed foreign policy (anyone remember the “Domino Theory” of Communism?
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How’d that work out?), an erratic commitment to how to wage the war in the field by both Presidents and generals, and a homefront full of protest (this is the war that gave rise to the social radicalism of the 60s, after all), all contributed to a less than stellar American outcome.
For a long time, the Vietnam War was treated as America’s national shame. Returning soldiers were spit upon and vilified by American civilians, sometimes with reason but often for no good reason other than people disagreed with the war itself. As the war clearly inched toward a disastrous ending, the U.S. military found itself the whipping boy of the country, a position it was decidedly not familiar with. And veterans of the war itself often found themselves suffering from a host of physical and emotional trauma; the war “in the trenches” was a very different war than those of the past and PTSD ran rampant among veterans.
It’s no wonder then, that the images to come out of the war are mighty in their ability to elicit horror. There are whole hosts of awful photos that show the tremendously terrible price participants in the war, on all sides (and there were many sides) paid. Here are 13 that will haunt you forever.
13. My Lai Massacre
via The Victims of the Vietnam War
In 1968, U.S. soldiers were unfortunately involved in one of the worst massacres of the war and the most infamous one in U.S. military history. The notorious incident took place on March 15 of that year and helped to polarize anti-war sentiment at home. It also resulted in the revelations that the military had tried to cover up the whole incident.
A company of U.S. army soldiers, led by Lieutenant William Calley, searched the village of My Lai for suspected Viet Cong guerilla soldiers and sympathizers. My Lai was supposedly a stronghold for the Viet Cong, who were the “guerrilla” arm of the communists fighting the South Vietnamese government and its U.S. allies. They were spread across the entire population.
Although they didn’t find any armed men or “spies,” Calley’s men killed all of the elderly, women and children they could find. The death toll was nearly 500 souls. Calley was ultimately convicted of murder but was later acquitted when the extent of the cover up by army brass was revealed. No other soldier was convicted of any wrongdoing by the U.S. army or any American court.
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