Aljazeera english we set out to make the kind of documentaries other channels just wouldnt do and here on rewind were revisiting some of the best of them to find out how they came about and the story behind the story today were rewinding to 2008 and a disturbing film about one of the most shocking atrocities of the vietnam war the massacre it was a major war crime and once it came to light the story sparked International Outrage adding to the growing pressure in america and around the world to bring an end to the war in vietnam in march 1968 Charlie Company a platoon of american infantry landed by helicopter on the edge of the village of me lie near the northern coast of South Vietnam the platoon believed the viet cong forces were in the area but they faced no resistance yet 504. 00 innocents women children and old men were brutally dragged into ditches and machine guns in the special film reporter josh rushing a veteran of the marine corps himself took a former member of Charlie Company back to me life for the 1st time to meet survivors of that horrific atrocity and now 50 years on from the massacre itself todays rewind is a moving and emotional return to the scene of one of the most shocking events of the vietnam war. From 2008 here is heart of darkness. Killed all of. The banks. They ordered all the families to sit or stand in the dish and then they shot after 5 minutes they shot the 2nd time they heard weeping they shot a 3rd time. But the 4th and my 6 year old son and i we lie down to cover then 3 or 4 bodies fell on the. Backs of that day march 16th 1068 the are not in dispute an Army Photographer captured moments of a bloody assault. When the story of what happened leaked out more than a year later there was an investigation 25. 00 members of Charlie Company and their officers were charged. With murder there were few trials only one person. Was found guilty he was never punished. Charges against most of the soldiers were dismissed. The what is know is the war that remains an open question. Some of the mill who slaughtered unarmed villagers from a haunted by their memories. But for those who crawled out of that rush of blood and bone the horror is still fresh and that it. Was the only one left. I was 11 years old. Is reminded of the dead every day its his job not only does he bear a deep furrows from a bullet that narrowly missed killing him. Hes the director of the Museum Dedicated to the victims of the massacre and the caretaker of what is left where they live. Kong takes us to the place where he lived with his family in an underground shelter a place where they all lay dying how long did you stay down in the shelter. From 8 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon surrounded by his memories congress spent years wishing for a way to understand why the soldiers committed the crime that is devastated as life. What would it be like for you to meet a soldier who actually participated in the killing to come back and it meant that here. I would ask him a question. Why would he kill ordinary people women and children and women with babies in their bellies we condos it know it now but he will soon get the opportunity to ask that question kinchela still cherishes the biggest nap shots of the day he left home to join the army it was all he ever wanted to do he was a skinny very young looking 19 year old that was october 1 19666 months later he was in hawaii eagerly learning how to be a soldier and 6 months after that he was in vietnam. Part of Charlie Company 1st battalion 20 of the fintry Charlie Company was assigned the Task Force Barker a special unit created to search out destroyed because operating around the central coast. It had been a dispiriting couple of months for the u. S. Military the tet offensive the sea took a song surprised the power that thought it was going to. Charlie company the losses have been personal booby traps a mind to take in a 3rd of the comrades one of them the day before so in the morning a mark 60 helicopter machine guns lay down suppressing fire in 3 people 2 with orders to kill everything that moved fanned out across the rice paddies and into the hammocks that collectively made up the law. They encountered no resistance whatsoever but perhaps a desire for revenge filled their hearts and clouded their consciences perhaps as a military command that measured victory by body count. Perhaps it was a mentality that regarded every vietnamese as less than a person really an enemy an embodiment of communist. Theyve created sidewalks here where you can get a sense of what was going on that morning you see bicycle tracks. And bare feet fling away and then that is a distinct print of an american combat. One of the men who wore those boots is about to set foot here again. Im josh rushing. Kinchela is returning to me live. Never before has a soldier who participated in the massacre come back. Almost 40 years after he was charged with murdering 9 be timmys villagers here he will face is past we landed on the west side but when we pushed into the village we took the the east side where how far off would we all have left. We didnt land too far away i was on a 1st left dan and. We secured. Probably the northern part of the predator so you would come right along there to has trouble recognizing the village today even locating the rice paddy where a chopper landed in a little bit further to the south this day stuck with you. The incident has 40 years ago when you were on the helicopter what were your orders. Hours before we came in was to kill everything in a village and so as you approach the village what did you find and find you know it was quiet. I saw a lot of people running off to the north. And i really didnt understand that he has forgotten or blocked a lot of the details. Remember the the ditches the canals you know i never saw a canal. I never saw this that i never saw it in the village really you know so like a lot of the stuff i was describing never saw no not at all i never even dreamt about. Dickinsons he would like to go inside the museum were photographs of me life the time might bring it all back to no or not of us. Are still talking hodges theres a corridor. With her and shes ok we have a kids name. I noticed stuff all faster when you went past this one its not hard for you to say no really what really bothers me is this one. Not so much of this shooting but this one point out there for a woman but i want to because. I saw some things that i really like and. To me look for a word. Dehumanize. And. I just dont like that. Right ken i dont get it. But you dont get between killing. And being human i think so yeah its just like. Theres acceptable ways to kill people and theres ways that are. Can claim to use mystified by the granite wall of the dead i never saw that many people in that village and that number in the middle there and you just listed on the wall the entire doki family parents and 4 children you dont hear. Till this moment no one knew that one child your old dodi and 2 yet had escaped horribly wounded she ran away and has never returned till now. Ironically the only structure in the village has been rebuilt as an example of what was destroyed is the one that will long tell your family. How caring she will cope with having inflicted that kind of pain. He has to defenses the 1st is dark its the moment its the opportunity its the knowing that. Probably nothings going to happen to me the 2nd is familiar i was a soldier following orders. And i believe thats how i dealt with that. Everyone you can find was unarmed. That are thats true but you have any hesitation about killing unarmed. I people i definitely have hesitation about killing one of the. That i should. Say that i shot. Until i realized what was wrong and when you say you shot you mean you shot villagers im not going to say whether i sat villages or are in a small Statement Given during the investigation of the massacre another soldier recall seeing ken firing at villagers while saying i dont want to shoot them i dont want to shoot them but i have to because were ordered to bring cannon kong together kinda face called sorrow kong to ask the questions that have tormented him all his life on march 16th 1968 at 6 am u. S. Helicopters landed on the rice fields of our beautiful village mr i was here that day back in 1968 when the helicopters landed. And when the soldiers came they started killing everyone was to kong i was part of the americans that landed here in the helicopters and i want to apologize to the people of me i im sorry that it happened. I ask myself all the time why did this happen i dont know. An angry feeling are rising up in my heart. The u. S. Soldiers killed my mother my older sister and my younger brother. How did you feel when you shot into civilians and killed was it hard for you like you say the only thing i can do now is just apologize for it. How many people did you kill that morning i dont know. I dont know i dont know. I dont i dont even know if i killed anyone. You dont thats not a reasonable answer your soldiers put all our people together in one place and shot directly at them you said you dont know whether youve killed anyone i cannot accept it i wasnt what that group i was an outside a village. You stayed back at the edge of our village but my house my family was located at the edge of the village so maybe you came to my house and killed my relatives. In vietnam we had the tradition that we let bygones be bygones but in our hearts we cannot forget if i didnt care i would have come back and i know words dont heal your heart but. Thats thats all i can do now each man is deeply shaken. You should educate your younger generations your children not to do it again and not to make war anywhere in the world. Well those are fine words. I wouldnt want war i would stop war today if it was possible. Now that im older i can see this but when i came to vietnam i was very young i have never acknowledged to any great extent that i was it me why but im here today to tell you what was done here was wrong i cant fix your heart. I cant bring your people back to life. Im sorry. He says he knows one reason Charlie Company groups of unarmed villagers the training they got before we came to be almost didnt think of c. B. S. News as people. Think its a few photos of the party they held when the murder charges were dropped but they had little to celebrate in the years that followed many of his fellow soldiers members of his company have not survived selfexamination. And afraid to get out to the right turning out of the back turned to me and my meter and alternative route so make sure you are not there now when youre sure i want to. Thank you for landing in the record industry and if you know im sure. The russian people know front and i know i shouted about it and i went to answer no when i was a baby and i. Got her. First response were children between 20 and 24 who want to find the person. To coordinate throats to scalp and to move to hear this. Idea that. Some like for Nardo Simpson could not live with those memories even medications could not hold them back im certain songs are you know. I cant promise that when you come again ill be. Because before you care my get out of this rufus for shards of the sun for 2 thirds of. Fernando simpson committed suicide in 1907. Is or a sense of relief that you finally got to confront someone. So long ago. He tells us hes been a terrible night he. He wept he was angry he was filled with sorrow he visited the graves of his family and confessed his conflicting feelings standing there murmuring to my father my mother and my brothers and sisters i said that yesterday i met one of our former enemies who killed you but i could not do anything i could not beat him or strike him or kill him because that is against the laws of vietnam. Qin shi all knows he is not giving kong the answer he needed the why some of his questions the way he wanted to answer because there is always a one. Way to answer and i was we were following orders just call it your job make it right. No it doesnt make it right in your mind are you a murderer you know. In your heart. Told us he was eager to return to me lied to set the record straight about his unit me a lie was an isolated incident for our company. We didnt do that with every village we went through he specially wants his grandchildren to understand that they were not evil that bad things happen in war and throughout our days there was defense of. You having to break down and cry. But at the last moment. This is our crew was boarding a plane to a different destination kid who had to remain in the airport for a later flight did break down and cry and our vietnamese translator who lost a brother in the war went back and talked. There is a cycle in war. Aging soldiers expressed sorrow regret they apologized to their victims they say never again they say let us raise our children. To love peace not war. But their sons and daughters are already engaged in the next the next killing. Their talk anger hate fear they are taught to kill. And they betray their own goodness and they too will pay. And they will say how could we have done this this. Should never have happened. And never. Is a cycle of war broken. Heart of darkness from 2008 a moving and very personal fellow well were joined now from washington by josh rushing himself a 15 year veteran of the u. S. Marine corps josh thanks for speaking to us on a rewind can you take us back to the moments in the film when you brought together ken shell along with one of his victims what was that moment like when ken came he came a belief i remember was like straight from the airport thats my 1st time to meet him you see it on camera me shaking as as he gets out of the van. We had just planned kind of lets just walk around a bit see what you remember kind of put you back in the place and while doing that kong saw us and came over and started to inquire about you know who killed was and where he was there in vietnam and it all started to unfold before our eyes and this really emotional moment that i would not have set up in such a way. Because of the motions were so high but we couldnt quite stop it he really seemed to struggle though when you were questioning him he struggled answering your questions what do you think was going on through his head at the time i 100 percent believe that in order for ken to continue to live his life that he had made a very intentional choice to silo what had happened in vietnam he had the memories but there was no way that he was going to engage with the morality of it i just had the sense that he feels like if he started to even a bit he might not be able to control the flood of emotions and guilt and Everything Else that would come with it and at the time he was only 19 years old and he was clearly believing that he was just doing this he was following orders so josh let me ask you this as a former soldier yourself how difficult is it when youre actually in the field in your order to do something that you morally disagree with i think. Its easy to sit back and and judge that situation and think that you would act differently but the reality of it is when you go through boot camp they they really break down who you are and they build you back up into this other thing for me it was this u. S. Marine that was my identity and so you had this kind of ultimate trust in your leadership that youre not going to be given orders that are illegal and so of course you follow them then you take that person and put it in a place like vietnam where everything you ever learned about a moral compass seems to be thrown out of the window there and so you dont you lose a sense of whats right and whats wrong in that that kind of environment and yeah you end up following orders but i still think theres that bit of humanity in you that says that this is it right in the Court Documents we kynge someone testify that they saw him firing into a crowd of civilians while saying i dont want to do this i dont want to do this so clearly he was struggling with it but the thing about war as we sing young people to fight these wars who dont have the wisdom that we gain as as as older people you know theres a reason theres not a bunch of 40 and 50 year olds fighting wars the entire marine corps 172000 people if you take the average age including all the 4 star generals in the marine corps the average age is still just over 20 years old thats how many young people at the bottom of that pyramid and now it at my age 45 looking back at a 19 year old kid that is a child and yet we give them weapons and put them in the most complex situations you can imagine and have a make life and death decisions and i make a side note here that actually no are no survivors the village of me i wasnt even a meal i was name Something Else that was the meal i was a misnomer on an american map so that original village named in survive no one really survived to the village that day congos a completely different human. That he was before that happened in that shape who we end up becoming the soldiers that we tried to get to go none of them really survived either the ones who didnt kill themselves there werent really complete pictures of human beings that they would have wanted to be but those who do survive war and get old enough to realize its atrocities and how wrong it is its already too late because the next generation the next generation young kids will the theyre already there fighting the next one well what ive done to me a lie i like to think ive done the right thing but. I dont know i will say they were heroes to come out of the lies well i mean i was stopped by an american officer or an officer you thompson who literally lowered his helicopter in between americans who were far machine guns into the crowd of civilians vietnamese and he told his door gunner on that helicopter that if they didnt stop fire the americans to open fire on them and that wouldve been the only case ive ever known of u. S. Troops intentionally firing on each other but thats the level it was was that to to stop what he witnessed that day thompson was and his crew that i mean they were heroes to come out of that josh rushing thanks for speaking to us rewind and thats it for this week if you want to see a longer version of that interview you can check out the rewind page at al jazeera dot com but for now until next time by. Rewind return this can bring your people back to life im sorry and brian you updates on the best of aljazeera documentaries in libya i was the floods and the like and the other. Rewind continues with children of conflict wed love so peace in the school or especially. Children. Right here rewind on aljazeera. Throughout history humankind has come together in our darkest moments this is a moment for pretty much the opposite to where retreat from the world could actually save every generation has its moment this one is ours. 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