KIM'S GIFT OF FORGIVENESS

Part-I

Kim Phuc is shaking with nerves. She has left her family and their small apartment in Toronto's Chinatown to fly to Washington, D.C. It is Veterans Day, November 11, 1996, and she is about to speak to more than 2000 people at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

For one man in the audience, a former U.S.Army officer who served two tours in Vietnam, today is a day he has long looked forward to-as well as dreaded. he and Kim have never met, but their lives have been inextricably entwined for 24 years.

NINE-YEAR-OLD Phan Thi Kim Phuc cowered inside the temple pogoda in the South Vietnamese village of Trang Bang. She could hear the dull roar of planes approaching. "I'm scared, Mommy," she cried. Close by were her father, a rice farmer, and her six brothers and sisters. Surely soldiers would not bomb a holy place.

The Vietnam War had begun a decade earlier, and in the summer of 1972 it was raging around Trang Bang, 40 miles northwest of Saigon on Route One.

Fierce North Vietnamese troops dug into bunkers northeast of the village and were threatening South Vietnamese troops, the ARVN, to the south. Caught in the middle were the 100 or so residents remaining in Trang Bang. Many had fled the village, but on the morning of June 8.30 had sought shelter inside the temple.

Suddenly, Kim saw yellow smoke billow up outside. An ARVN soldier who had also sought shelter recognized the markers. "They're going to bomb us!" he shouted. "Everybody run!".

Kim and her brothers, sisters and cousins ran out first, follower by her parents, grandmother, aunts and uncles, slowed by the small children they were carrying.

The planes, four single-engine A-1E Skyraiders manned by South Vietnamese pilots; flew over the village at about 600 feet. As she ran, Kim looked back to see four bombs falling. Seconds later she was engulfed in a cloud of smoke, fire and horror.

The bombs, canister filled wiht napalm, had smashed into the ground behind Kim and instantly ignited. The jellified gasoline, designed to stick to and incinerate anything it touches, splashed into Kim's back. Her flowered cotton shirt and pants-even her sandals-combusted. Napalm peeled the skin fron her back and left arm.

Terrified, Kim kept running. At first she felt nothing. Then she felt as if she had been thrown onto an open fire. In horror she saw the skin drop off her arm like clothes off a doll. As she ran naked down the road that led out of the village, she began screaming.

As Kim emerged from the smoke with her arms outstretched, an Associated Press photgrapher, Nick Ut, took her picture. Horrified journalistes poured water from their canteens over Kim's raw flesh. She fainted and they rushed her to a nearby hospital.

Few who saw Kim believed she would survive.

tobe continued.........................