W O REPORT FROM THE UNDERGROUND:
RLD
Che’s Name O U r LO O K _Resounds in Bolivia
a lab or press service Vol.5, No.41 December 15, 1967
The Massacre
at Dai-Lai
Testimony at the Hearings
on U.S. War Crimes
THE EVIDENCE
50¢
THE EVIDENCE
THE EVIDENCE
THE DAI-LAI MASSACRE
Testimony at the Hearings on U.S. War Crimes
(The International War Crimes Tribunal, which met at Roskilde, near Copenhagen, from November 20 to December 1, found the U.S. government guilty of conmitting a series of war crimes, including genocide. The evidence on which the verdict was based was voluminous, the result of the work of a number of teams headed by competent investigators which visited the areas under American attack.
{A sample of the reports presented to the tribunal is provided by the following testimony offered by Gérard Chaliand, a well-known French intellectual. ]
* * *
I arrived in the province of Thai- Binh on the third of November 1967 in connection with an enquiry which I carried out on the peasantry of the Tonkinian Delta. The bombing of Dai-Lai had taken place on the day before, and at my request the local authorities conducted me to the locality, forty hours after the bombing, on the dawn of the fourth of November.
It must be pointed out that the province of Thai-Binh, in relation to the country as a whole, is a zone comparatively seldom bombed -- to the extent that the objectives which could be classified as strategic are extremely few. In fact the province is exclusively agricultural, and its geography, uniformly flat and fairly sparsely wooded, could not favour dispersion.
Nevertheless, the American air forces have attacked the province 230 times from 1965 to the end of 1966, and, again according to the local authorities, 491 times in 1967, up to the end of the month of October. Its capital, which was bombed in 1966, is almost totally destroyed, as I was able to confirm. The dikes, which are of vital importance in the Delta, to the extent that they are a protection against flooding and a safeguard against drought, have been attacked forty times, while one-third of all the bombing has, to a greater or lesser extent, affected the civilian population.
I was not given the figure for the total number of victims, this being classified under military secrets, but they quoted, among other things, the bombing of the hamlet Phong-Man in May 1966, which resulted in fifty deaths, and that of the secondary school of the village of Thuy-Dan in October 1966 which caused thirty deaths.
For my part, I will add that during the five weeks which I spent in North Vietnam, from the sixth of October to the tenth of November, and not to speak of the bombings over Hanoi, Dai-Lai is the third village bombing that I have been able personally to confirm. The first was at the village of Tuy-Hoy, Gia-Vien district, bombed on the eighth of October. I went there on the ninth of October, together with the French journalist Olivier Todd. The bombing, effected at night, at 0.30 hours, produced seven deaths and eight wounded. There was nothing in the vicinity of the village, not for several kilometers around, that could be taken for a strategic objective, not even an Anti-Aircraft Defence. The second was at the village of Kim-Dai, Thanh-Bai district, situated on route No. 22, where on the twenty-sixth of October, there came several waves of aircraft which destroyed about twenty concrete buildings including a pharmacy and a nursery. I arrived in the village on the twentyninth of October. The bombing had caused seventeen deaths and twenty-two injured.
I should like to point out that I have only traveled north of the twentieth parallel, mainly in the Red River Delta, which is by no means the most frequently bombed district.
Thus the case of Dai-Lai is not an isolated incident. There is no strategic objective of any kind near the village of Dai-Lai. It is situated between two arms of water, at about one kilometer from the provincial road, five kilometers from the nearest bridge, in a flat countryside of canals, rice fields and ponds. I did not see a single Anti-Aircraft Defence Unit in the area.
There were two American airplanes. It was very light. It could not be argued that there had been a technical fault, that the bombs had been dumped in order to lighten a damaged plane which was trying to avoid coming down in Vietnamese territory. We visited the village in the early hours of the morning. In some places the ashes were still hot. Men and women were busy clearing away the debris. The planes had released chains of incendiary and explosive bombs. The witnesses agreed that they had heard about fifteen explosions. That was at 13 hours on the second of November. There were fifty-one deaths and thirty-nine wounded. There were 255 inhabitants in the village of Dai-Lai. Out of a total of forty-one homes, thirtyfour families had their houses razed to the ground or destroyed. We could count on one hand the number of houses left standing.
Men were weeping quietly. A young woman squatted, supported by two elderly women, and wailed loudly. Another woman was weeping as she swept debris from the floor of a house which was no longer there. She burst into sobs as we went past, saying: "He couldn't escape because of the heat, and I could see his arms reach out of the flames!"
Most of the peasants of the cooperative were already in the fields at 13 hours [1 p.m.] that day for the harvest of the tenth month. In the village some peasants were shelling the paddy on the threshing floor. When the planes were heard, everyone went down into the trenches or into individual hotes. From the first explosion the children went into the holes dug inside the buildings. Some buildings exploded under the bombs. Fire enveloped the thatched roofs of others. Fire spread throughout the village, making rescue difficult. However the militia was able to save some people. In the holes were found charred bodies, burst open by the heat. Some mangled bodies were beyond identification. Out of a total of fifty-one victims, thirty-nine were under the age of fifteen.
Bui Thi Tinh, 22 years, the vicepresident of the Administrative Committee of the Commune, who conducted the work of identification and placing the bodies in coffins, related to me:
"I was one kilometer away from the village. From the single hole I occupied, I saw two planes, one flying lower than the other. The one flying low dropped its bombs first. It was after the meal, there were already workers in the fields; others were preparing to leave. The old people and children were taking their siesta. I could count sixteen bombs exploding in a chain..Huge flames shot up to the tree tops. They dropped the bombs and left. It all happened very quickly. Then the militia rushed forward and the people came with buckets, ropes and shovels. They tried to put the fire out -- they fetched water from the pools and formed a chain. They made a passage right through the fire to get to the trenches. Some of them used shovels to dig people out of cavedin trenches. A blast of wind stirred up the flames. Some rescuers were burnt to death. A co-worker from a neighbouring village, called Them, came to the rescue and was able, by himself, to save seven injured victims: he ran to and fro carry~ ing them on his back. The family of a coworker called Roan had four children down in the trench of their house. Halfway there Roan was torn into four pieces by bomb explosions, as he ran to save his children.
"I ran forward with two other girls. I had some gauze bandages in my bag and some cotton wool which I passed out to friends, and on the way we saw a body buried under a pile of straw. We hastened to drag it out and then we realized that all there was of it was the two legs. The upper part of the body had been scattered about elsewhere. There was a lot of flame and very thick smoke. You could not see five yards in front of you. It was very hot. There were a great many of us, and we were falling over each other in the attempt to rescue people. There was blood and corpses on the threshing floor. Meanwhile they carried bodies on stretchers. I had lost my sandals and my feet were burning, so hot was the earth near the fire. As soon as the bombing was over, the families ran in from the fields; some of them were shouting and weeping as the flames rose high into the air, and they were there trying to put the fire out. Roan's wife tried to jump into the flames to save her children. She had just seen her husband blown to bits before her very eyes. When we tried to restrain her she tore her clothes like a madwoman; she fell upon me and cried, 'Take me into the fire.' I said to her: ‘If you love me then you must come with me.' Then she said: 'Why do you want me to come, and whom will I live with, they are all dead.' And she repeated: 'Who, who am I going to live with?' And she tried to jump into the fire again, and I said: 'You are going to live with us,' and they led her away.
"I saw the five children of the Ru family, all killed in the same trench along with their mother; they were among the first to be pulled out. The Nguu family: the husband and wife were in the field; they have one child left who was not in the village, the other four are dead: three in the trench and the eldest -- they only found his trunk and his left leg. Just beside there was a family of four -- the husband and wife were out in the field, the two children are dead. The entire family of the co-worker Khoi was killed -- he was out in the field alone; his two children, his wife who was eight months pregnant; his mother's corpse was flung up into the branches of a jacquier tree and the blood trickled down the trunk to the roots of the tree.
"When we got the fire out, I stayed to direct the work of putting the bodies in coffins. The state gave four metres of cloth per coffin. It was 2:30 when we began to collect the bodies. I saw sights which turned my stomach: there were burnt bodies which were nothing but skin stretched over bones and entrails running out of burst bellies. They no longer had a human shape. We collected parts of bodies, arms, legs; sometimes we could make out that it was a woman because there were tufts of hair. While I registered the names of the dead, others wrote their names or presumed age in chalk on little placards to be placed on the graves. There were bodies which could not be iden-
tified, but they estimated the age by the size of the foot, and wrote ‘Child, five or ten years old, no name' on the coffin.
"I saw, among these shreds, a heap of flesh which they reckoned to be a 15year-old girl, because of the cluster of hair and her neck. It was horrible to see, in the midst of this mass of flesh, a thigh still plump and brown. There were bodies of children that looked like stunted dogs."
Here are some extracts:
Tran Thi Sai, peasant woman, 238 years old, relates:
"At that moment I was on my way to the field for the harvest. I was with some friends. When I heard the planes, I went down into a single hole to shelter, and right after the bombing ran towards my house to see what had happened. As I approached the village, I could see that the whole village was in flames. Then I threw off my bucket yoke to get there more quickly. My second child, a boy, was able to escape out of the fire. His little brother of five followed him but he could not run fast enough and was burnt in the yard. And my mother fled carrying my youngest child, twelve months, but they were burnt alive at the door. My 10-year-old daughter was out watching the cooperative's buffalo, and she I still have now. My husband was the head of a group of workers -- he was in the village at the threshing floor of the cooperative. He was pulling the stone roller to husk the rice. At the time of the bombing he stayed outside the shelter till the last minute, to get the others back in, and he was killed. The bomb explosions opened his head.
"I began to scream and cry, while other members of the cooperative jumped into the fire to save their relatives. Then I wanted to jump into the fire too and save my mother and my children, but I was held back.
"They led me away to where I could not look on, and then they carried away the bodies of my relatives.
"I have lost my mother along with the baby she was carrying in her arms, my 5-year-old child and my husband. Now there are only three of us left, my two children and myself."
Bui Van Nguu, peasant, 46 years old, relates:
"At that moment I was at home making brooms for the cooperative. Over in my kitchen there was a grinding mortar. There my two daughters were pounding meal and their two little brothers were with them, having fun. My wife had left ny little girl of eighteen months asleep in the hammock at home and had gone to the pound to wash clothes.
"When my wife saw the planes coming she ran towards the house, but on the way there she was knocked down by the blast of a bomb. Meanwhile a bomb exploded in the kitchen, burying our three children. The house also collapsed and caught fire. The roof fell on me, and the baby in the hammock began to cry. I got up and went and took her. Then I came through the fire with my daughter. In the yard I saw my wife stretched out on the ground, halfburied by the ruins of the wall. She called out to me. I placed the baby in the hole to go and help her. When I came towards her, she tried to get up. Her clothes were all torn and her face was bleeding. I handed the baby to her for her to carry it away, and I ran to try and pull my children out.
"I rummaged in the debris looking for my children. I found mangled limbs, shreds of flesh; I only found three bodies by collecting fragments and a leg. I couldn't find the body of my big girl. It was only yesterday that I found her body -- it had been thrown into a garden seven yards away. Her body was buried under a pile of ashes, and it is thanks to the people who came to clear the debris that I found her. At first I thought it was someone else, but I looked and realised that it was really her ear -- she was thirteen years old."
Hoang Ban, peasant, 44 years old, relates:
"I was on the way to the harvest along with some other workers. I heard planes and I looked but did not see anything. And suddenly I heard explosions and saw our village in flames. We were one kilometer away from the village. We ran and when we arrived the fire had spread all around the village.
"I saw my sister-in-law also coming from the fields carrying in her arms her two-year-old child, its head burst open. She called to me to come and help her children. My house is 300 yards from my brother's. I had not yet reached my own home and I hastened to my brother's house. The house had not been burnt, it had exploded, and both the roof and the walls had gone. I ran to the house's trench, under the bed; and over the hole was a cover. At the edge of the hole there lay half of the body of a little girl of two, my niece. I took the half of the body and placed it out in the yard and came back to search in the hole. I pulled out one of my nieces, 10 years old, with her head burst open by the fragments of the cover. One of her arms was broken and her whole body was blackened. And again I carried the body out into the yard, and
then I called for help. Then the militia and other people came and they brought out another little girl of eight, also with her head burst open because of the cover. This one had a broken leg. Afterwards, they dug out of this hole two more little girls both five years old, my nieces from next door who had come to play.
"They were not injured but suffocated. Six children are dead. As for my brother, only remains of him were found. In the kitchen they found his two arms; his two legs were caught on the bamboo wall; they also found his ribs, but not his head.
"Only his wife is left; it is as though she were insane. She is at my home at present. She screams and cries and no one can speak to her."
I would like to add that I was able to visit the five seriously wounded victims in the province hospital. The others received attention at the district or commune level. The Dai-Lai massacre -for how else can one describe this bombing -- was also recorded, on the fifth of November 1967, by Sven Oste, a Swedish journalist from Dagens Nyheter, a liberal daily newspaper of Stockholm, and by Antonello Trombadori, an Italian journalist, special representative of Unita.
I thank you for your attention.