Rạch Nhiêu Lộc

After a whistle stop tour of the Notre Dame cathedral and Old Post Office- we stepped barely 5m from the mini bus to look left at one then right at the other- our first major stop was the War Remnants Museum.

On the outside, those remnants consisted of the iconic Chinook and Huey helicopters plus a collection of tanks, jeeps and planes left by the Americans. Impressive though they were, their emotional impact was dwarfed by the pictures, accounts and facts on the war that lay within the museum.

Tango took us through the facts that led to the American invasion, following on from the departure of the French colonists from South Vietnam and threats from the North to expand their communist regime, with the support of the Soviet Union and China. This included the falsification of an attack on a US destroyer by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on August 4th 1964. President Johnson could then use this as legal justification to send troops and engage in open warfare with North Vietnam.

Some of the information felt decidedly one sided, including comparisons of financial and human costs with other wars, but there was no denying a war that lasted nearly 20 years changed the way the world viewed both countries forever.

The next room demonstrated that transformation in tragic picture after picture of dead or dying soldiers, women and children inconsolable and abandoned. There was a series of heroic photographers that lost their lives showing the world the atrocities, including several 'last roll of film' shots they took. But the pinnacle of horror was the infamous My Lai Massacre, the brutal killing of several hundred unarmed civilians, many of whom were women and children, by US soldiers.Read more