Two tragedies took place in 1968 in Viet Nam. One was the massacre by United States soldiers of as many as 500 unarmed civilians-- old men, women, children-- in My Lai on the morning of March 16. The other was the cover-up of that massacre.
U. S. military officials suspected Quang Ngai Province as being an enemy stronghold. The U. S. targeted the province for the first major U.S. combat operation of the war. Military officials declared the province a "free-fire zone" and subjected it to frequent bombing missions and artillery attacks. By the end of 1967, many dwellings in the province had been destroyed and nearly 140,000 civilians left homeless. Not surprisingly, the U. S. operations led some within the native population of Quang Ngai Province to distrust Americans. In some villages, children hissed at soldiers and adults kept quiet. But the situation was complicated. Other natives detested North Vietnamese Army regulars, and in some native villages, children would gather around American jeeps and try to sell Cokes or offer to polish boots. Soldiers entering a village didn't know quite what to expect.
Two hours of instruction on the rights of prisoners and a wallet-sized card "The Enemy is in Your Hands" seemed to have little impact on American soldiers fighting in Quang Ngai. Military leaders encouraged and rewarded kills in an effort to produce impressive body counts that could be reported to Saigon as an indication of progress. GIs joked that "anything that's dead and isn't white is a VC" for body count purposes. Angered by a local population that said nothing about the VC's whereabouts, soldiers took to calling natives "gooks."
