Back to work & programme on My Lai

So back to work today with a new strategy to try and get me started again. I have a couple of small article / chapters to read and take notes on. I have some planned music for the day. So hopefully I will manage a decent amount - or at least enough to get me thinking that I have started again. It is over two weeks since I did a full day's work.

A decade or so ago (perhaps?) I read Seymour Hersh's book on the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam. Last night I stayed up and watched a 90 minute show on the History channel about this - Four Hours at My Lai - a repeat of a UK TV prog from some years ago. This was very dramatic stuff containing long interviews with several of the main participants. I would have liked to have seen more about the long process by which the truth eventually came out, as this is a great story in its own right. The scenes with the Vietnamese survivors were especially poignant I thought. I was also struck by the bravery of the helicopter commander who threatened to open fire on the US soldiers if they approached a further 12 women and children in a bunker, and that of the soldiers who refused to kill the civilians.

One of the photos taken by the "official" US photographer, but with his own camera so they weren't censored. Amazing stuff - no wonder the US military is so keen to keep control of warzone reporting these days.