As joss-sticks or incense-sticks stand burning in a tin can on the ground in front of the, two ...

As joss-sticks or incense-sticks stand burning in a tin can on the ground in front of the, two Vietnamese women offer prayers for relatives who were killed in a massacre by the Viet Cong during the 1968 Tet Offensive. Clothes and sandals of the victims are laid out on a square so that next-of-kin can identify their personal effects. Standing behind the women is 13370 Major Gordon Vivian Brown, a member of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV) who is serving in the Nam Hoa district near Hue. The massacre victims, most of them Roman Catholics, totalled about 428 people and comprised clergymen, senior government employees, doctors, teachers, other professionals and anyone else sympathetic to the South Vietnamese regime and its American supporters. The Viet Cong rounded them up and confined them in Hue's Phu Cam Cathedral before leading them out of the city in early February 1968 and shooting them dead along the banks of Da Mai Creek south of Hue. Following information provided by enemy defectors, the US 1st/502d Infantry Regiment, 101st Infantry Division (Airmobile), located the massacre site on 19 September 1969. The remains and personal effects of the victims were recovered and brought to Hue a few days later.