taken from history cooperative.

Army sergeant Ron Haeberle photographed these women and children in My Lai, Vietnam, seconds before American soldiers shot and killed them. They were among more than 500 unarmed women, children, and old men massacred by American troops on March 16, 1968.

The photograph captures the climax of a narrative that began with attempted rape and ended with mass murder. Roberts and Haeberle came upon several G.I.'s attempting to rape the girl at the right. Haeberle recalled their comments as they pulled off her clothes: "Let's see what she's made out of," one said. Another called her "VC boom-boom," or a Viet Cong whore. As they assaulted the girl, the woman "tried to help her, scratching and clawing at the soldiers." When the soldiers noticed the journalists, they abandoned their sexual assault and herded the women and children together. "I yelled, 'Hold it,'" Haeberle recalled, "and shot my picture." As he did, the assaulted teenager, who had already pulled up her trousers, attempted to fasten her blouse. The denouement followed quickly. As they walked away, Roberts said later, "I heard an M-60 [machine gun] go off, and when we turned back around, all of them and the kids with them were dead."

The emotional power of the photograph derives from our knowledge that it was taken during the last seconds these people were alive, as they realize they are about to be killed. They were surrounded by bodies and burning houses, and they could not have missed the sounds of gunfire and screaming. They must have understood the G.I.'s meant to shoot them also. Few photographs show people contemplating their imminent, violent death as vividly as this one.