– Mrs. Truong My Hoa
Combatants are not the main participants in modern war. Modern war affects civilians far more and far longer than combatants. Most American soldiers and Marines spent 12 or 13 months, respectively, serving in Vietnam.
Vietnamese from what was once South Vietnam, in provinces like Quang Nam, Quang Ngai, Binh Dinh, as well as those of the Mekong Delta – rural population centers that were also hotbeds of the revolution — lived the war week after week, month after month, year after year, from one decade into the next.
– Nick Turse
-Neil Sheehan, Journalist in Vietnam speaking in the Ken Burns The Vietnam War series.
“What makes the memory of this war so worthy of repression is that its defining feature was mass atrocities against civilians. Rape; the massacres of women, children, and the elderly; military vehicles running over civilians for sport; ‘Zippo raids’ that burned down villages; indiscriminate shelling and aerial bombardment; despoliation of crops and drinking water; routinized torture—this was the unredeemable essence of our Vietnam War, not American teenagers coming of age and bonding against a bamboo backdrop, not ‘good intentions’ in Washington leading us into a ‘quagmire.’”
-Nick Turse
Sources:
– Nick Turse, Ken Burns Documentary Glosses Over Devastating Civilian Toll, theintercept.com
– Chase Madar, Vietnam: A War on Civilians, theamericanconservative.com
– Martha Hess, And Then the Americans Came: Voices from Vietnam
– Heonik Kwon, After the Massacre; Commemoration and Consolation in Ha My and My Lai
– Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam