Despite Matthew’s efforts to make our blog more cheerful, I’m afraid I’m still deep in the war zone, having just read in the Times that it’s 40 years today since Ron Haeberle’s  photos of the massacre at My Lai were first published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Published the best part of 2 years after the event, they recorded the horrific slaughter of March 16th, 1968 when 347 or 504 (depending on who you believe) Vietnamese civilians died at the hands of a U.S. infantry brigade. Today the Plain Dealer has published a rare interview with the photographer, which is well worth reading.

There’s a huge amount of information on My Lai on the web, but I would pick out Seymour Hershe's original reports for the St Louis Post-Dispatch, which first exposed the massacre (and which won him a Pulitzer). And the Library of Congress has digitised the Peers Inquiry.

Also, you will find James Stuart Olson and Randy Robert’s My Lai: a brief history with documents (Boston, Mass: Bedford Books, c.1998) in the BL.

[C.H.]