Lasting Pain, Minimal Punishment

Bumgarner detained the three Vietnamese and marched them to a secluded spot, where he and one of his men opened fire. Then they searched the bodies, removing identification papers, a watch and a wedding ring.

Next, Bumgarner dragged the bodies close together and told the other soldier to detonate a grenade near the heads.

Afterward, Bumgarner reported that three enemy fighters had been killed in action and led his team back to their base.

The incident, and others detailed in declassified Army records, show how a violent minority within the 173rd Airborne Brigade abused Vietnamese citizens with little or no fear of punishment.

A military court convicted Bumgarner of manslaughter, reduced his rank and cut his pay. But he served no prison time for the killings. He remained in Vietnam and, approximately six months later, reenlisted for another tour.

Troubled Past

Bumgarner, who remained in the Army until 1981 and died last year, was a bigger-than-life figure at the 173rd Airborne base near the South China Sea.

He had spent 10 troubled years in the Marines before joining the Army. Marine records show that he had been busted down in rank, court-martialed and served brief periods of confinement at California's Camp Pendleton, in the Philippines and in Japan.

Records indicate that in the Army, he pleaded guilty to assault and disorderly conduct in 1961 and was sentenced to three months' confinement. Four years later, he went to Vietnam. There, he earned a reputation as a talented and prolific killer with a competitive zeal for boosting his personal body count.

Anguish and Fury

The news reached Huynh Thi Nay as she walked home from market that morning. A neighbor told her to hurry — that U.S. soldiers had detained two duck-herders and an irrigation worker outside the hamlet.

"I dropped my carrying basket," Huynh said in a recent interview in Giao Hoi 2 Hamlet. Speaking through an interpreter, she said she raced down a footpath through the paddies to where she knew her 17-year-old son, Pham Tho, would be.

"When I reached there, I found a pair of bamboo cages … with a flock of young ducks on one side," she said. "I called out 'Tho, Tho,' about three times, but no one replied."

She ran on until she reached a jackfruit tree, where she spotted the teenager's conical hat perched in a branch. His stick and a hoe lay nearby.

The bodies of her son and his two companions were laid out like spokes of a wheel with the feet pointed outward, the bodies riddled with bullets and the heads blown off, according to Army records.

"It became as dark as night. My tears overflowed in both eyes," said Huynh, now 77. "I rushed back and informed the community here. I was running back, crying all the way. My eyes were full of tears, so I could not see my way."

Phan Thi Dan, widow of the irrigation worker, said she handed him her wedding ring for safekeeping when he left for the rice fields that morning. The couple had sold a pig to pay for the ring, and she didn't want to lose it in the pond where she fished for shrimp for their ducks.

An hour or two later, she heard "the rattling sounds of bullets, then one big explosion sound — boom," she said through an interpreter. Not long after, a friend ran to her, shouting that the Americans had shot her husband, Nguyen Dinh, 41.