The day I visit him is the 47th anniversary of his mother's death. And inside the shelter, I saw my sister-in-law, with her baby still in her arms. When I lifted up the blanket that was covering her, I saw she'd been shot in the head. "When I returned, after the Americans left, I counted 97 dead in all - including my mother. They didn't ask the people to come out - and anybody who came up, they shot. "The villagers were hiding in a few shelters, and the Americans just started throwing grenades inside. "There were only women and children left when the Americans landed - all the men had run away," Vo says. He ran to the jungle, where he watched the helicopters land in his village - and a short time later heard the sound of grenades. His mother stuffed a small bag in his hand - some clothes and a little rice, enough to last a day or so - and told him not to come back until the Americans left. "So she said to me, 'Run, you can't stay with me - you're already 16, and if they catch you they'll take you away.' " "There was a lot of shelling, and my mom thought there was going to be a big deployment," Vo says. He was in the hamlet next door to My Lai that day. He wasn't on the beach the day the Americans arrived, but he remembers another day in March, three years later: the day of the My Lai massacre. Vo Cao Loi is another former Viet Cong soldier. Danang, where the combat troops first landed, saw more than its fair share of death. More than 57,000 Americans died fighting that war Vietnamese losses on both sides were far greater - by some estimates, as many as 2 million.
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