Rayyan Ramzan

Year: 10/A

THE NAPALM GIRL

 Content
1. Phan Thi Kim Phuc

2. Background

3. A War of Pointless Brutality

4. The Battle for Trang Bang

5. Phan Thi Kim Phuc Becomes Napalm Girl

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 Phan Thi Kim Phuc

Phan Thi Kim Phuc referred to as the Napalm, is a South

Vietnamese-born Canadian best known as the nine-year-old
child represented in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph taken
at Trang Bang during the Vietnam War on June 8, 1972. The
well-known photo, by photographer Nick Ut, shows her at nine
years of age running naked on a road after being severely burned
on her back by a South Vietnamese napalm attack.

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 Background
Kim Phuc and her family
were residents of the
village of Trang
Bang in South Vietnam.
On June 8, 1972, South
Vietnamese planes dropped
a napalm bomb on Trang
Bang, which had been
attacked and occupied
by North Vietnamese
forces. Kim Phuc joined a
group of civilians
and South Vietnamese
soldiers who were fleeing
from the Caodai Temple to
the safety of South
Vietnamese-held positions. The Vietnam Air Force pilot
mistook the group for enemy soldiers and diverted to attack. The
bombing killed two of Kim Phuc's cousins and two other
villagers. Kim Phuc received third degree burns after her
clothing was burned by the fire. Photographer Nick Ut's
photograph of Kim Phuc running naked amid other fleeing
villagers, South Vietnamese soldiers and press photographers
became one of the most haunting images of the Vietnam War.
After a few years Kim Phuc in an interview said that she was
yelling too hot too hot in the pictures. After snapping the
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photograph, Ut took Kim Phuc and the other injured children to
Barsky Hospital in Saigon, where it was determined that her
burns were so severe that she probably would not survive. After
a 14-month hospital stay and 17 surgical procedures
including skin transplantations, she was able to return home.

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A War of Pointless Brutality

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One thing the narrative got right is that America’s war in Vietnam
was coarse and brutal, even by the standards of 20th-century
warfare. By 1972, the U.S. had been meddling in Vietnam’s affairs
for decades.
On the ground, armed troops ranging from greenhorn Marines just
doing their jobs to throat-slitting commandos in the Studies and
Observations Group that killed an estimated 2 million indigenous
people.

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 The Battle for Trang Bang

On June 7, 1972, the north Vietnamese Army the NVA occupied

the South Vietnamese town of Trang Bang, where their met the
Vietnamese Air Force the VAF. During the three-day battle that
followed, NVA forces entered the town and used the civilians for
cover. This was an old tactic for the NVA, as it usually kept them
from getting blasted by airstrikes and artillery.
Kim Phuc, her brothers, her cousins, and many other civilians
took shelter in the Buddhist temple on the first day. The way the
battle unfolded, the temple developed into a kind of sanctuary,
where both ARVN and the NVA avoided fighting. By the second
day, the temple area was clearly marked so that VAF strikes
outside of town could avoid it.

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On the second day of fighting, most of the action had shifted to an
area near the temple. Despite the reports that ARVN or VAF units
were “ordered” to strike the village by an American officer, no
attempt was made to bomb the town itself, nor were there any
American officers present to give orders.

At the time of the battle, there were exactly two American

servicemen in Tay Ninh Province, one of whom was miles away
and another who arrived at Trang Bang as an observer with zero
authority over air and ground forces.

Nobody, except for the NVA, ever attacked the village and no
Americans within radio range had the power to issue such an
order. From start to finish, Trang Bang was a Vietnamese
operation.

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 Phan Thi Kim Phuc Becomes Napalm
Girl

It was on day two, as fighting got close to the temple, that some
of the adults decided to flee. Led by a monk, a small group of
townspeople, including nine-year-old Kim Phuc, ran into the
open toward ARVN forces.

Many of the people were holding bundles and other equipment

in their hands, and some were dressed in ways that could be
mistaken from the air for either NVA or Vietcong uniforms.

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As bad luck would have it, an airstrike happened to be
inbounded just as Kim’s group broke into the open. The pilot of
a strike aircraft, flying in at around 2,000 feet and 500 mph, had
seconds to identify the group and decide what to do.
He seems to have assumed that the group running toward his
side’s lines were armed NVA, and so he dropped his ordnance
on their position, dousing several ARVN soldiers with burning
napalm and killing Kim Phuc’s cousins. Kim was ahead of the
affected area, but some napalm did contact her back and left
arm. It set her clothes on fire, and she stripped them off as she
ran.
According to an account that Kim later gave in an interview,
Phan Thi Kim Phuc ran naked down the road screaming: “too
hot, too hot”, until she reached a makeshift aid station where
several photographers were stationed and helped her.
One of them, a Vietnamese national named Nick Ut, snapped the
famous Napalm Girl photo immediately before Kim reached the
station. There, aid workers poured cool water over her burns and
transported her to Barski hospital in Saigon.
Burns covered roughly 50 percent of Kim’s body, and doctors at
the hospital were grim about her odds of survival. Over the next
14 months, Kim would get 17 surgeries, but she was left with
serious restrictions in her range of movement that would last for
ten years, until she got reconstructive surgery in West Germany
in 1982.

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Now Kim Phuc many known as the napalm girl, continuous to
live happily with her husband and her children in Canada. She
also continues to give speeches almost always as the girl in the
photograph.

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