We would tell the kids to eat the food and bring the cans back and dump them in a large pile. There was a saying that every time we ran into a booby trap, it turned out to be made of a can that we had given to the kids.''

"Just outside the village," says Reporter Jay Roberts, "there was this big pile of bodies. This really tiny little kid--he only had a shirt on, nothing else--he came over to the pile and held the hand of one of the dead. One of the GIs behind me dropped into a kneeling position, 30 meters from this kid, and killed him with a single shot."

"I saw three heaps of bodies about the same size," says Sgt. Bernhardt, "all with about 20 people. Thieu says the people were killed by artillery, which is ridiculous. The shell would have to land dead zero to kill this many people in one spot, and it would have blasted them into the paddies."

Haeberle and Roberts watched while troops accosted a group of women, including a teen-age girl. The girl was about 13 and wearing black pajamas. A GI grabbed the girl and with the help of others started stripping her.

"Let's see what she's made out of," a soldier said.

"VC boom-boom," another said, telling the 13-year-old girl that she was a whore for the Vietcong.

"I'm horny," said a third.

As they were stripping the girl, with bodies and burning huts all around them, the girl's mother tried to help her, scratching and clawing at the soldiers. Another Vietnamese woman, afraid for her own safety, tried to stop the woman from objecting. One soldier kicked the mother in the rear and another slapped her up a bit.

Haeberle jumped in to take a picture of the group of women. The picture(page 37) shows the 13-year-old girl, hiding behind her mother, trying to button the top of her pajamas.

"When they noticed Ron," says Roberts, "they left off and turned away as if everything was normal."

"Then a soldier asked, "Well, what'll we do with 'em?"

"Kill 'em," another answered."

''I heard an M60 go off," says Roberts, "a light machine gun, and when we turned back around, all of them and the kids with them were dead."

"The yanigans were doing most of the shooting," says Charles West. "I call them yanigans because they were running around doing unnecessary shooting. In a lot of cases they weren't even shooting at anything. Some were shooting at the hootches that were already burning, even though there couldn't possibly be anything alive in there.

"The guys were hollering about 'slants.' It wasn't just the young guys, older guys were shooting too. They might have been wild for a while, but I don't think they went crazy. If an individual goes crazy, you can't reason with him. Once everything was secured, everything did cease. If these men had been crazy, they would have gone on killing people.

"Most of the men in our squad were not reacting in a violent way. We were with the command element and Captain Medina was with us. He never would have stood to see us run around like rookies. He would have probably ordered a court-martial right on the spot."

A black GI told Haeberle he couldn't stomach it, he had to get out of there. Later Haeberle and Roberts were sitting near a ditch, a clump of bodies off to the left, when they heard a shot. They hit the ground, thinking it was a sniper. The soldier who had wanted to get out of there had shot himself in the foot with a .45. Accidentally, he said. Captain Medina was calling in a "dust-off," a helicopter, to take him out. "He shot himself purposely to get out of there," says Roberts. "He looked happy even though he'd shot up his own foot."

SP5 John Kinch, who is still on active duty in Vietnam, was the point man for the heavy weapons squad. "We moved into Pinkville and found another stack of bodies in a ditch. It must have been six or seven feet deep and they were level with the top of it. One body, an old man, had a 'C' carved on his chest.

"Captain Medina was right in front of us. Colonel Barker, the task force commander, was overhead in his helicopter. He came through over the radio saying he had got word from the medevac chopper there were bodies lying everywhere and what was going on. I heard Captain Medina tell him, 'I don't know what they are doing. The first platoon's in the lead. I am trying to stop it.'

"Just after that he called the first platoon and said, 'That's enough shooting for today.'

"Colonel Barker called down for a body count and Medina got back on the horn and said, 'I have a body count of 310.'

At 9 a.m. Haeberle and Roberts got into the village itself. On the outskirts they met Captain Medina. Roberts said Medina told him there had been 85 killed in action so far. He also said Company C had taken 20 suspects. One of them, an old man, said many Vietcong had been in the village the night before but had left at dawn.

Huts were being torched with cigarette lighters. One soldier with a 90-pound pack was cutting down cornstalks one by one. Some GIs were going through the civilians' belongings, looking for weapons. One soldier was keeping the civilians' piasters. There were two dead water buffalo and two calves on the ground.

"I know that you've got to destroy the enemy's resources," says Roberts. "It's an old tactic and a good one. Sherman's march to the sea. You've just got to. We saw soldiers drag a body from a hut and throw it in a well to destroy the water supply. They shot and stabbed all the animals, which were, in effect, VC support units."