Word: phong
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...experience of Vietnam is shaped by what we let ourselves say. Memory plays tricks?and to ward off horror, we make our memories play tricks. Except for long ago, when he told his mother, his first wife and a minister, Kerrey never brought up the botched mission at Thanh Phong. And then, on April 18 of this year, at a small speech to officer-training candidates at Virginia Military Institute, toward the end of his discourse about moral justifications of war, Kerrey spoke about the night in 1969 when he led six Navy SEALs on an operation to take...
...charge of a squad of Elite Navy SEALs (short for Sea, Air and Land unit) trained to emerge from the dark, kidnap or kill local Viet Cong leaders, then melt back into the jungle. This night their target was a village secretary reportedly holding a party meeting in Thanh Phong. The straggle of hooches lay deep in the Mekong Delta "free-fire zone," where innocent civilians had?officially, at least?been cleared out, and everyone left was deemed an enemy...
...Kerrey's Raiders, as the squad called itself, had little experience but lots of enthusiasm. Despite warnings of "considerable danger," toward 12 midnight on a moonless night, the men piled into a swift boat and headed for Thanh Phong. Darkness gave cover but heightened the confusion. As the men crept toward the village, they bumped into an outlying hooch they thought was a warning outpost. Kerrey says his men, wielding knives, told him they would "take care" of the people inside to prevent them from alerting the village. But Kerrey says he did not join in the killings or examine...
...Klann said he heard no incoming fire as the squad entered Thanh Phong. He said that when they failed to find the Viet Cong official, Kerrey ordered the SEALs to round up the unarmed women and children in the hooches. Then, Klann said, "an order was given" to shoot them. "We lined up, and we opened fire." A baby was the last one alive, Klann told the Times Magazine. "There were blood and guts splattering everywhere." 60 Minutes II backs up Klann's version with the words of Pham Thi Lanh, identified as the wife of a Viet Cong fighter...
...heroism. Everywhere he went, people thanked him for it. But always, there was an awkwardness in the way he addressed it. In the end, under pressure from his consultants, he mentioned it plenty, but he always seemed to talk around it. Kerrey never mentioned his Bronze Star for Thanh Phong, but he could not escape the glory of his other decoration. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military prize, for his actions in another raid less than a month after Thanh Phong...