The Thuy Bo incident was the killing of civilians by U.S. Marines from 31 January to 1 February 1967, during the Vietnam War in Thủy Bồ village (Vietnamese: [tʰwɪj˧ ɓow˦]) in Điện Bàn District, Quảng Nam Province 15 km southwest of Đà Nẵng, in an area close to the foothills of the Central Highlands and situated near the Bo Bo Hills.
US sources claim that 22 civilians were killed in two days of fighting between Marines and the Vietcong who occupied the village.
The Marines were pinned down by .50 caliber machine gun and other automatic weapons fire from the hamlet and the Company commander Captain Edwin J.
The following morning the Marines assaulted into Thuy Bo but were met by only scattered fire as the VC had withdrawn during the night.
[6] Some of the villagers were killed during the initial assault, but the next morning villagers from Thuy Bo allege that massacres had occurred in which women, children, infants and some old men were killed deliberately and at close range after the VC had left.
[5] Marines casualties were five dead and 26 wounded while VC losses were estimated at 101 killed.
[5] The loss ratio was noted by writer Nick Turse as being unusually high.
and that "For example a young woman of twenty-two or twenty-three years old that's pregnant, sits and watches your men walk down a trail and watches a booby trap go off and kill and wound several of your men, she knows that booby trap's there, she makes no move to warn the troops... who's to say whether she is any less the enemy then the twelve year old Vietnamese boy that's a VC that's in a ditch or trench.
He denied any massacre had taken place and alleged that the Viet Cong had used human shields.
"[9] Villager, Nguyen Thi Nhi states "First of all, they arrived and burned everything (referring to the search and destroy).
"[11] Hill stated "We dropped a couple of grenades in the hootches to get the people out because to get one Vietnamese out of that hole that won't come.
I mean you had, we didn't speak perfect Vietnamese so ah in order to get them out of there you either cranked off a couple of rounds or you dropped your M26 grenade down there and they get the message and they come on out of there.
[3] Villager, Le Thi Ton stated "They turned around and laughed and then lobbed a grenade into my house.
"[11] Villager Thuong Thi Mai stated that "Next door to me was a woman who had just given birth to her baby.
"[12] Villager Nguyen Ky stated that "corpses were still strewn all around, and blood was still oozing from these bodies.
In response to allegations of "women and children being pushed into a bunker and then a grenade being thrown in on top of them", Hill stated that it "Could have went on...
The memorial features a tall Gothic tower with a panorama of war-time village life, with Viet Cong and villagers participating in day-to-day activity at one end, and a scene of a massacring at the other end, with scenes including a soldier marked with "US" on its helmet holding an infant by the leg on one hand and a club in the other, an infant clinging to the breast of their dead mother, an angry and defiant young woman clenching her first towards the sky.