Thủy Bồ incident

Thủy Bồ incident
Thủy Bồ incident (Vietnam)
Location	Thuy Bo, Điện Bàn District, Quảng Nam Province, South Vietnam
Date	January 31 – February 1, 1967
Target	Thuy Bo Hamlet
Attack type	Massacre
Deaths	145 Killed
Perpetrators	Company H, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines

The Thuy Bo massacre was conducted by US forces on 31 January 1967, during the Vietnam War in Thuy Bo village in Điện Bàn District, Quảng Nam Province just a few kilometres southwest of Da Nang, in an area close to the foothills of the Central Highlands and situated near the Bo Bo Hills. The memorial erected to the event records 145 civilian deaths, mainly women, children and elderly men.

Description

The village was reported by both survivors as friendly to US forces before the battle. Between January 29 and 31, Company H, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, engaged in a fire-fight with NVA units moving in from the Bo Bo Hills, a hotbed of activity given its proximity to the Central Highlands. A well-hidden NVA ambush was conducted and they had ordered strafing and bombing attacks against Thuy Bo village. Heavy resistance during the two prior days had caused some casualties. During the night of the third day, most of the guerrillas in the area responsible for the ambush withdrew alongside the Marines who had withdrawn to their base. The following morning, the Marine company was ordered to conduct a search-and-destroy operation and assaulted the village were there was "sporadic gunfire during the assault. Expecting continual resistance, there was none present and no signs of Viet Cong activities or bodies. Nevertheless by their own accounts the Marines had proceeded to "fire on anything that moves". Some of the villagers were killed during the initial assault during the first two days, but the next morning villagers from Thuy Bo allege that massacres had occurred in which women, children, infants and some old men were killed deliberately and at close range after the guerrilla fighters had left. Prior estimates of civilian dead ranged from 100–400, from a handful of reports and allegations, but the village itself has recorded and memorialised 145 civilians killed, primarily women, children and old men.

A few of the survivors of the massacre brought some of the corpses, around 22 to the military post but the investigation stated that "these were a regrettable corollary to the fighting". Official KIA reports were 5 marines killed for 101 dead Viet Cong soldiers, for the two days which very likely includes dead civilians; a kill-to-death ratio that was noted as unusually high. Captain Edward J. Banks, commander of the battalion would later receive a Silver Star for activities in this period. A further discussion on this issue revolves around body count.

Interviews with survivors and perpetrators

Interviews with both the massacre survivors and alleged perpetrators were conducted by Stanley Karnow for the Vietnam: A Television History documentary series, including Captain Edward J. Banks who commanded the Marine company alleged to have conducted this massacre. Part of the interview Captain Edward J. Banks states "... you never knew who was the enemy and who was the friend. They all looked alike. They all dressed alike. They were all Vietnamese. Some of them were were Viet Cong." and that "For example a young woman of twenty-two or twenty-three years old that's pregnant, sits and watches your men walk down a trail and watches a booby trap go off and kill and wound several of your men, she knows that booby trap's there, she makes no move to warn the troops... who's to say whether she is any less the enemy then the twelve year old Vietnamese boy that's a VC that's in a ditch or trench." Note that Captain Edward Banks is not indicated to have participated, only that an order for a "search-and-destroy" was assigned.

On the day the search-and-destroy was ordered a survivor states "there were no men, only old men. There were only women and children. When they came over here, the children asked them for candies. And the women, some were eating lunch while others were pressing sugarcanes. When the Americans came they shot in short spurts. I ran outside and, about half an hour after the first gunfire, flames were shooting up. And in about an hour and a half, they all left. I then ran back to the hamlet and saw all the dead."

One of the interviewees and part of the Company, Jack Hill stated "Our emotions were—were very low. You know cause the ah the death rate was ridiculous for what we figured was a friendly village. So, the orders were search and destroy". This was the following day when NVA Fighters had left the area following an ambush they had set-up. "We were ordered to sweep, our initial orders were to sweep that village and uh, and, and, or those two villages, and we had done that. We had obviously routed the VC that were in there, and we held up right there." A woman with a visible facial gun wound, Nguyen Thi Nhi states "First of all, they arrived and burned everything (referring to the search and destroy). When I saw them, I was sitting. Then I was shot and shot, and I fell down. After that I did not know what else had happened."

One of the Marines ordered to the search and destroy stated "We dropped a couple of grenades in the hootches to get the people out because to get one Vietnamese out of that hole that won't come. I mean you had, we didn't speak perfect Vietnamese so ah in order to get them out of there you either cranked off a couple of rounds or you dropped you're M-26 grenade down there and they get the message and they come on out of there. You know, if they got wounded or if they got hit that was that was the point of war. Something you have to live with." One of the village residents interviewed, Le Thi Ton stated "They turned around and laughed and then lobbed a grenade into my house. Ten persons were blown into pieces. The only person who was wounded and who survived was me. My son and everyone else just fell dead. I was wounded and extremely frightened so I crawled quickly into a corner of the house. The grenade had already exploded then, but they trained their guns on the bodies to make sure that nobody would survive. There was a baby who was only two months old. They smashed it and then threw it into the fire and then walked out. As they walked out, they suddenly turned around and opened fire again."

Another survivor of the massacre states that "Next door to me was a woman who had just given birth to her baby. The baby was about a month old. They killed the mother and smashed the baby against the wall like this. Then they used a knife to slit the baby up and then burnt it. They rubbed powdered gasoline on the baby and just burnt it. I was extremely angry. They called everybody a VC. All the women and children were called VCs. What kind of soldiers were they who could not even identify women and children? What kind of a war was this they were fighting? We were all women and children. There was not a single able bodied man around."

One of the villagers stated that "corpses were still strewn all around, and blood was still oozing from these bodies. There were still babies who were still clinging to their mothers' dead bodies and sucking at the breasts. These children are still living here." Following this day, "we carried these bodies to the Bo Bo military post and to the Trang military post, demanding the commanders there to stop all these outrageous activities." Among some of the village survivors there was allegations that the Marine unit ordered villagers to dig up buried bodies to "look for VC" who were killed.

Commemoration

File:Dien Ban Martyr's Memorial.jpg

Dien Ban Martyr's Memorial and Cemetery, located near the site of the Thuy Bo Massacre and commemorates both.

The massacre is covered in Nick Turse's Kill Anything That Moves in which the unit alleged to have been responsible were "killing more civilians than VC" but writing off those killed as Viet Cong. The "enemy body-count" was reported as 101 enemies killed with just six Marines killed.

A memorial to the 145 victims of the Thuy Bo village massacre was erected in 1977, ten years following the occurrence of the event. The Thuy Bo war memorial features a tall Gothic tower with a panorama of war-time village life, with partisans and villagers participating in day to day activity at one end, and a scene of a massacring at the other end, with scenes including a soldier marked with "US" on its helmet holding an infant by the leg on one hand and a club in the other, an infant clinging to the breast of their dead mother, an angry and defiant young woman clenching her first towards the sky. It is located alongside a martyr's cemetery with a similar statute featuring a victory monument and a panorama of guerrilla fighters triumphant, scenes from the Ho Chi Minh trail and others inscribed with the letters "Your Ancestral Land Remembers You".