KIM'S GIFT OF FORGIVENESS

KIM'S GIFT OF FORGIVENESS -Part II

THREE DAYS after the bombing raid, Captain Jhon Plummer picked up a military newspaper in the mess hall at Third Regional Assistance Command. Pulmmer, 24, a North Carolina native and a career Army officern was on his second tour in Vietnam. Beneath the nacho exterior was a sensitive, divorced father. An accomplished helicopter pilot, he was now coordinating air support for ground operations.

Plummer opened the paper and saw Ut's picture of Kim, That pour kid, he thought. When he read the caption, "Crying children run down Route One after bomb strike," his heart turned over.

He remembered that day's orders. Around 1 p.m. he got a radio call, a Tac-E (tactical emergency indicating friendly troops were in imminent danger) from a U.S. military adviser in Trang Bang. "NVA Forces have us pinned down," he told Plummer. He asked for air support and gave the coordinates of the North Vietnamese troops, Plummer plotted them and saw they were on the edge of the village,
"What about friendlies?" Plummer asked, concerned that a bombing strike would endanger civilians. The adviser replied, "They are all gone." Pulmmer called the South Vietnamese headquarters at nearby Bien Hoa airfield and ordered the air-strike.
To be sure that the villagers had left Trang Bang, he called the American adviser at Cu Chi district headquaters. The message came back, "Confirmed. It's clear".
Now Plummer stared at Kim Phuc, her agony caught for eternity. His own son Louis was about the same age. He could almost smell her burning flesh.

He showed the paper to an intelligence officer sitting across the table In shock, Plummer said, I did that."

Kim survived, After 14 months and 17 skin-graft operations in Saigon's Barsky Hospital, she was discharged to the care of her mother. Her left arm was virtually useless, her hand closed into a claw. The grafts on her shoulders were so tight she couldn't turn her head. The hotter the weather, the worse Kim's back and arm hurt. The grafted skin had no sweat glands and its blood circulation was poor. "It feels like hundreds of knives are cutting into me," Kim said.

Her mother helped her exercise every day until her hand unlocked. But Kim's back and arm were covered with rippled skin. No one will marry me because I'm so ugly, she thought.

JHON PLUMMER'S tour of duty in Vietanm ended in November 1972 and he was transferred to Fort Rucker, Alabama, where he worked as a helicopter flight instructor. He kept his role in the bombing of Trang Bang secret, locked deep within his soul. It surfaced in the form of a nightmare.

First Plummer would see Nick Ut's picture of Kim. Then the image would widen to include her brother and cousins running alongside her. Finally, he would hear their screams, louder and louder until he felt surrounded by the accusing children.

Plummer began drinking heavily. In July 1973 he married for the second time, but he still kept his secret. No one can understand, he thought.

to be continued.....................

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.........................