MY LAI MASSACRE AT VIETNAM MARCH 16,1968 BY AMERICA

MY LAI MASSACRE AT VIETNAM 

MARCH 16,1968 BY AMERICA FACT RELEASED 

BY SEYMOUR HERSH 1969 NOVEMBER 12

The Mỹ Lai Massacre (/ˌmiːˈlaɪ/; Vietnamese: Thảm sát Mỹ Lai, [tʰâːm ʂǎːt mǐˀ lāːj] (About this sound listen)) was the Vietnam War mass killing of between 347 and 504 unarmed Vietnamese civilians in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968. It was committed by U.S. Army soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division. Victims included men, women, children, and infants. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated.[1][2] Twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader in C Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but served only three and a half years under house arrest.

The massacre, which was later called "the most shocking episode of the Vietnam War",[3] took place in two hamlets of Sơn Mỹ village in Quảng Ngãi Province.[4] These hamlets were marked on the U.S. Army topographic maps as My Lai and My Khe.[5] The U.S. Army slang name for the hamlets and sub-hamlets in that area was Pinkville,[6] and the carnage was initially referred to as the Pinkville Massacre.[7][8] Later, when the U.S. Army started its investigation, the media changed it to the Massacre at Songmy.[9] Currently, the event is referred to as the My Lai Massacre in the United States and called the Sơn Mỹ Massacre in Vietnam.

The incident prompted global outrage when it became public knowledge in November 1969. The My Lai massacre increased to some extent[10] domestic opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War when the scope of killing and cover-up attempts were exposed. Initially, three U.S. servicemen who had tried to halt the massacre and rescue the hiding civilians were shunned, and even denounced as traitors by several U.S. Congressmen, including Mendel Rivers, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Only after thirty years were they recognized and decorated, one posthumously, by the U.S. Army for shielding non-combatants from harm in a war zone.[11] Along with the No Gun Ri massacre in Korea eighteen years earlier, My Lai was one of the largest single massacres of civilians by U.S. forces in the 20th century.[12]

Incident[edit source]

Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division, arrived in South Vietnam in December 1967. Though their first three months in Vietnam passed without any direct enemy contact, by mid-March the company had suffered 28 casualties involving mines or booby-traps.[13]


Vietnamese women and children in Mỹ Lai before being killed in the massacre, March 16, 1968.[14] According to court testimony, they were killed seconds after the photo was taken.[15] The woman on the right is adjusting her blouse buttons because of a sexual assault that happened before the massacre.[16]

During the Tet Offensive of January 1968, attacks were carried out in Quảng Ngãi by the 48th Local Force Battalion of the National Liberation Front (NLF), commonly referred to by the U.S. Army as the Viet Cong. U.S. military intelligence assumed that the 48th NLF Battalion, having retreated and dispersed, was taking refuge in the village of Sơn Mỹ, in Quảng Ngãi Province. A number of specific hamlets within that village—designated My Lai (1) through My Lai (6) — were suspected of harboring the 48th.[17]

In February and March 1968, the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam was aggressively trying to regain the strategic initiative in South Vietnam after the Tet Offensive, and the search-and-destroy operation against the 48th NLF Battalion thought to be located in Sơn Mỹ became a small part of America's grand strategy. Task Force Barker (TF Barker), a battalion-sized ad hoc unit of 11th Brigade, was to be employed for the job. It was formed in January 1968, composed of three rifle companies of the 11th Brigade, including Company C from the 20th Infantry, led by Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Frank A. Barker. Sơn Mỹ village was included in the area of operations of TF Barker codenamed Muscatine AO.[18] (Muscatine County, Iowa was the home county of the 23rd Division's commander, Major General (MG) Samuel W. Koster.) In February 1968, TF Barker had already tried to secure Sơn Mỹ, with limited success.[19] After that, the village area began to be called Pinkville by TF Barker troops.[20]

The men of Charlie Company were angry, frightened and struggling for survival in March 1968. Since their arrival 3 months prior, they had suffered over 40 casualties. Just two days before the massacre the company had lost a popular sergeant to a land mine. These events would have had a large contribution to the cause of the atrocity. [21]

On March 16–18, TF Barker planned to engage and destroy the remnants of the 48th NLF Battalion, allegedly hiding in the Sơn Mỹ village area. Before engagement, Colonel (COL) Oran K. Henderson, the 11th Brigade commander, urged his officers to "go in there aggressively, close with the enemy and wipe them out for good".[22] In turn, LTC Barker reportedly ordered the 1st Battalion commanders to burn the houses, kill the livestock, destroy food supplies, and destroy the wells.[23]

On the eve of the attack, at the Charlie Company briefing, Captain (CPT) Ernest Medina told his men that nearly all the civilian residents of the hamlets in Sơn Mỹ village would have left for the market by 07:00, and that any who remained would be NLF or NLF sympathizers.[24] He was asked whether the order included the killing of women and children. Those present later gave differing accounts of Medina's response. Some, including platoon leaders, testified that the orders as they understood them were to kill all guerrilla and North Vietnamese combatants and "suspects" (including women and children, as well as all animals), to burn the village, and pollute the wells.[25] He was also quoted as saying, "They're all VC, now go and get them", and was heard to reply to the question "Who is my enemy?" by saying, "Anybody that was running from us, hiding from us, or appeared to be the enemy. If a man was running, shoot him, sometimes even if a woman with a rifle was running, shoot her."[26]:310 At Calley's trial, one defense witness testified that he remembered Medina instructing to destroy everything in the village that was "walking, crawling or growing".[27]

Charlie Company was to enter the village of Sơn Mỹ spearheaded by 1st Platoon, engage the enemy, and flush it out. The other two companies from TF Barker were ordered to secure the area and provide support if needed. The area was designated a free fire zone, where American forces were allowed to deploy artillery and air strikes in populated areas.

Killings[edit source]

Dead man and sons
On the Saturday morning of March 16 at 07:30, around 100 soldiers from Charlie Company led by CPT Ernest Medina, following a short artillery and helicopter gunship barrage, landed in helicopters at Sơn Mỹ, a patchwork of settlements, rice paddies, irrigation ditches, dikes, and dirt roads, connecting an assortment of hamlets and sub-hamlets. The largest among them were the hamlets My Lai, Co Luy, My Khe, and Tu Cung.[28]:1–2 Though the GIs were not fired upon after landing, they still suspected there were Vietcong guerrillas hiding underground or in the huts. Confirming their suspicions, the gunships engaged several armed enemy in a vicinity of My Lai; later, one weapon (a carbine) was retrieved from the site.[29]

According to the operational plan, 1st Platoon led by Second Lieutenant (2LT) William Calley and 2nd Platoon led by 2LT Stephen Brooks entered the hamlet of Tu Cung in line formation at 08:00, while the 3rd Platoon commanded by 2LT Jeffrey U. Lacross[30][31] and Captain Medina's command post remained outside. On approach, both platoons fired at people they saw in the rice fields and in the brush.[32]

The villagers, who were getting ready for a market day, at first did not panic or run away, and they were herded into the hamlet's commons. Harry Stanley, a machine gunner from Charlie Company, said during the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division's (CID) inquiry that the killings started without warning. He first observed a member of 1st Platoon strike a Vietnamese man with a bayonet. Then, the same trooper pushed another villager into a well and threw a grenade in the well. Next, he saw fifteen or twenty people, mainly women and children, kneeling around a temple with burning incense. They were praying and crying. They were all killed by shots in the head.[33]

Most of the killings occurred in the southern part of Tu Cung, a sub-hamlet of Xom Lang, which was a home to 700 residents.[34] Xom Lang was erroneously marked on the U.S. military operational maps of Quảng Ngãi Province as My Lai.

A large group of approximately 70–80 villagers was rounded up by 1st Platoon in Xom Lang, and then led to an irrigation ditch to the east of the settlement. All detainees were pushed into the ditch and then killed after repeated orders issued by Lieutenant Calley, who was also shooting. PFC Paul Meadlo testified that he expended several M16 magazines. He recollected that women were allegedly saying "No VC" and were trying to shield their children.[33] He remembered that he was shooting into women with babies in their hands since he was convinced at that time that they were all booby-trapped with grenades and were poised to attack.[35] On another occasion during the security sweep of My Lai, Meadlo again fired into civilians side-by-side with Lieutenant Calley.[36]

PFC Dennis Konti, a witness for the prosecution,[37] told about one especially gruesome episode during the shooting, "A lot of women had thrown themselves on top of the children to protect them, and the children were alive at first. Then, the children who were old enough to walk got up and Calley began to shoot the children".[38] Other 1st Platoon members testified that many of the deaths of individual Vietnamese men, women and children occurred inside My Lai during the security sweep. Livestock were shot as well.[39]

When PFC Michael Bernhardt entered the subhamlet of Xom Lang, the massacre was underway:

I walked up and saw these guys doing strange things ... Setting fire to the hootches and huts and waiting for people to come out and then shooting them ... going into the hootches and shooting them up ... gathering people in groups and shooting them ... As I walked in you could see piles of people all through the village ... all over. They were gathered up into large groups. I saw them shoot an M79 [grenade launcher] into a group of people who were still alive. But it was mostly done with a machine gun. They were shooting women and children just like anybody else. We met no resistance and I only saw three captured weapons. We had no casualties. It was just like any other Vietnamese village – old papa-sans, women and kids. As a matter of fact, I don't remember seeing one military-age male in the entire place, dead or alive.[40]

One group of 20–50 villagers was walked to the south of Xom Lang and killed on a dirt road. According to Ronald Haeberle's eyewitness account of the massacre, in one instance,

There were some South Vietnamese people, maybe fifteen of them, women and children included, walking on a dirt road maybe 100 yards [90 m] away. All of a sudden the GIs just opened up with M16s. Beside the M16 fire, they were shooting at the people with M79 grenade launchers ... I couldn't believe what I was seeing.[41]

Lieutenant Calley testified that he heard the shooting and arrived on the scene. He observed his men firing into a ditch with Vietnamese people inside and he then started shooting, with an M16, from a distance of 5 feet. Then, a helicopter landed on the other side of the ditch and a pilot asked Calley if he could provide any medical assistance to the wounded civilians in My Lai; Calley admitted replying that a hand grenade was the only available means that he had for their evacuation. After that, around 11:00, Captain Medina radioed to cease fire and the 1st Platoon took a lunch break.[42]

Members of 2nd platoon killed at least 60–70 Vietnamese, as they swept through the northern half of Mỹ Lai and through Binh Tay, a small sub-hamlet about 400 metres (1,300 ft) north of Mỹ Lai.[5] The platoon suffered one dead and seven wounded by mines and booby traps.[5] After the initial sweeps by 1st and 2nd platoons, 3rd Platoon was dispatched to deal with any "remaining resistance". 3rd platoon, which stayed in reserve, also reportedly rounded up and killed a group of seven to twelve women and children.[5]

Since Charlie Company had not met any enemy opposition at My Lai and did not request back-up, Bravo Company, 4th Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment of TF Barker was transported by air between 08:15 and 08:30 3 km (2 mi) away. It attacked the subhamlet My Hoi of the Co Luy hamlet, which was mapped by the Army as My Khe. During this operation, between 60 and 155 people, including women and children, were killed.[43]

Over the next day, both companies were involved in additional burning and destruction of dwellings, as well as mistreatment of Vietnamese detainees. While some soldiers of Charlie Company did not participate in the crimes, they neither openly protested nor complained later to their superiors.[44]

William Thomas Allison, a professor of Military History at Georgia Southern University, wrote, "By midmorning, members of Charlie Company had killed hundreds of civilians and raped or assaulted countless women and young girls. They encountered no enemy fire and found no weapons in My Lai itself".[45]

Helicopter crew intervention[edit source]

Hugh Thompson, Jr. played a major role in ending the Mỹ Lai Massacre and later testified against the war criminals responsible.
Warrant Officer (WO1) Hugh Thompson, Jr., a helicopter pilot from Company B (Aero-Scouts), 123rd Aviation Battalion, Americal Division, saw dead and wounded civilians as he was flying over the village of Sơn Mỹ providing close-air support for ground forces.[46] The crew made several attempts to radio for help for the wounded. They landed their helicopter by a ditch, which they noted was full of bodies and in which there was movement.[47] Thompson asked a sergeant he encountered there (David Mitchell of the 1st Platoon) if he could help get the people out of the ditch, and the sergeant replied that he would "help them out of their misery". Thompson, shocked and confused, then spoke with 2LT Calley, who claimed to be "just following orders". As the helicopter took off, Thompson saw Mitchell firing into the ditch.[48]

Thompson and his crew witnessed an unarmed woman being kicked and shot at point-blank range by Captain Medina, who later claimed that he thought she had a hand grenade.[49] Thompson then saw a group of civilians (again consisting of children, women, and old men) at a bunker being approached by ground personnel. Thompson landed and told his crew that if the soldiers shot at the Vietnamese while he was trying to get them out of the bunker that they were to open fire on these soldiers.[50] Thompson later testified that he spoke with a lieutenant (identified as Stephen Brooks of 2nd Platoon) and told him there were women and children in the bunker, and asked if the lieutenant would help get them out. According to Thompson, "he [the lieutenant] said the only way to get them out was with a hand grenade". Thompson testified that he then told Brooks to "just hold your men right where they are, and I'll get the kids out". He found 12–16 people in the bunker, coaxed them out and led them to the helicopter, standing with them while they were flown out in two groups.[51]

Returning to Mỹ Lai, Thompson and other air crew members noticed several large groups of bodies.[52] Spotting some survivors in the ditch, Thompson landed again. A crew member, Glenn Andreotta entered the ditch and returned with a bloodied, but apparently unharmed child who was flown to safety.[53] The child was thought to be a boy, but later turned out to be a four-year-old girl. Thompson then reported what he had seen to his company commander, Major (MAJ) Frederic W. Watke, using terms such as "murder" and "needless and unnecessary killings". Thompson's statements were confirmed by other helicopter pilots and air crew members.[54]

For the actions at My Lai, Thompson was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) and his crew members Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn were awarded Bronze Star medals. Glenn Andreotta was awarded his medal posthumously, as he was killed in Vietnam on April 8, 1968.[55][56] As the DFC citation included a fabricated account of rescuing a young girl from My Lai from "intense crossfire"[57] Thompson threw his medal away.[58][59] He later received a Purple Heart for other services in Vietnam.[60]

In March 1998, the helicopter crew's medals were replaced by the Soldier's Medal, "the highest the U.S. Army can award for bravery not involving direct conflict with the enemy". The medal citations state they were "for heroism above and beyond the call of duty while saving the lives of at least 10 Vietnamese civilians during the unlawful massacre of non-combatants by American forces at My Lai".[61] Thompson initially refused the medal when the U.S. Army wanted to award it quietly. He demanded it be done publicly and that his crew also be honored in the same way.[62][63] The veterans also made contact with the survivors of Mỹ Lai.[64]

Aftermath[edit source]

Dead bodies outside a burning dwelling
After returning to base at about 11:00, Thompson reported the massacre to his superiors.[65]:176–179 His allegations of civilian killings quickly reached LTC Barker, the operation's overall commander. Barker radioed his executive officer to find out from Captain Medina what was happening on the ground. Medina then gave the cease-fire order to Charlie Company to "cut [the killing] out - knock it off".[66]

Since Thompson made an official report of the civilian killings, he was interviewed by Colonel Oran Henderson, the commander of the 11th Infantry Brigade (the parent organization of the 20th Infantry).[67] Concerned, senior American officers canceled similar planned operations by Task Force Barker against other villages (My Lai 5, My Lai 1, etc.) in Quảng Ngãi Province.[68]

Despite Thompson's revealing information, Colonel Henderson issued a Letter of Commendation to Captain Medina on March 27, 1968. The next day, March 28, 1968, the commander of Task Force Barker submitted a combat action report for the March 16 operation in which he stated that the operation in My Lai was a success with 128 Viet Cong partisans killed. The Americal Division commander, Major General S. W. Koster, sent a congratulatory message to Company C. General William C. Westmoreland, the head of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), also congratulated Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry for "outstanding action", saying that they had "dealt [the] enemy [a] heavy blow".[69]:196 Later, he reversed himself by writing in his memoir that it was "the conscious massacre of defenseless babies, children, mothers, and old men in a kind of diabolical slow-motion nightmare that went on for the better part of a day, with a cold-blooded break for lunch".[70]

Owing to the chaotic circumstances of the war and the U.S. Army's decision not to undertake a definitive body count of noncombatants in Vietnam, the number of civilians killed at Mỹ Lai cannot be stated with certainty. Estimates vary from source to source, with 347 and 504 being the most commonly cited figures. The memorial at the site of the massacre lists 504 names, with ages ranging from one to 82. A later investigation by the U.S. Army arrived at a lower figure of 347 deaths,[71] the official U.S. estimate. The official estimate by the local government remains 504.

Reporting, cover-up and investigation[edit source]
First reports claimed that "128 Viet Cong and 22 civilians" were killed in the village during a "fierce fire fight". General Westmoreland, the MACV commander, congratulated the unit on the "outstanding job". As relayed at the time by Stars and Stripes magazine, "U.S. infantrymen had killed 128 Communists in a bloody day-long battle."[72] On March 16, 1968, in the official press briefing known as the "Five O'Clock Follies", a mimeographed release included this passage: "In an action today, Americal Division forces killed 128 enemy near Quang Ngai City. Helicopter gunships and artillery missions supported the ground elements throughout the day."[73]

Initial investigations of the Mỹ Lai operation were undertaken by the 11th Light Infantry Brigade's commanding officer, Colonel Henderson, under orders from the Americal Division's executive officer, Brigadier General George H. Young. Henderson interviewed several soldiers involved in the incident, then issued a written report in late-April claiming that some 20 civilians were inadvertently killed during the operation. The Army at this time was still describing the event as a military victory that had resulted in the deaths of 128 enemy combatants.

Six months later, Tom Glen, a 21-year-old soldier of the 11th Light Infantry Brigade, wrote a letter to General Creighton Abrams, the new MACV commander.[74] He described an ongoing and routine brutality against Vietnamese civilians on the part of American forces in Vietnam that he personally witnessed and then concluded,

It would indeed be terrible to find it necessary to believe that an American soldier that harbors such racial intolerance and disregard for justice and human feeling is a prototype of all American national character; yet the frequency of such soldiers lends credulity to such beliefs. ... What has been outlined here I have seen not only in my own unit, but also in others we have worked with, and I fear it is universal. If this is indeed the case, it is a problem which cannot be overlooked, but can through a more firm implementation of the codes of MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam) and the Geneva Conventions, perhaps be eradicated.[75]

Colin Powell, then a 31-year-old Army major serving as an assistant chief of staff of operations for the Americal Division, was charged with investigating the letter, which did not specifically refer to Mỹ Lai, as Glen had limited knowledge of the events there. In his report, Powell wrote, "In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between Americal Division soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent." Powell's handling of the assignment was later characterized by some observers as "whitewashing" the atrocities of Mỹ Lai.[75] In May 2004, Powell, then United States Secretary of State, told CNN's Larry King, "I mean, I was in a unit that was responsible for My Lai. I got there after My Lai happened. So, in war, these sorts of horrible things happen every now and again, but they are still to be deplored."[76] Indeed, in 1966, the so called Bình Hòa massacre at the hands of South Korean troops already occurred in Quảng Ngãi Province; in February 1968, in neighboring Quảng Nam province, during a similar to Muscatine counterinsurgency search-and-destroy operation, the Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất massacre and the purported Hà My massacre were committed by South Korean Marines. As for the U.S. military, seven months prior to the My Lai Massacre, on Robert McNamara's order, the Inspector General of the U.S. Defense Department investigated press coverage of alleged atrocities committed in South Vietnam. In August 1967, the 200-page report "Alleged Atrocities by U.S. Military Forces in South Vietnam" was completed.[77] It concluded that many American troops did not fully understand the Geneva Conventions. No action was taken, however.

Independently of Glen, Specialist 5 Ronald L. Ridenhour, a former door gunner from the Aviation Section, Headquarters Company, 11th Infantry Brigade, sent a letter in March 1969 to thirty members of Congress imploring them to investigate the circumstances surrounding the "Pinkville" incident.[78][79] He and his pilot, Warrant Officer Gilbert Honda, flew over My Lai several days after the operation and observed a scene of complete destruction. At one point, they hovered over a dead Vietnamese woman with a patch of the 11th Brigade on her body.[80] Ridenhour had learned about the events at Mỹ Lai secondhand from talking to members of Charlie Company over a period of months beginning in April 1968. He became convinced that something "rather dark and bloody did indeed occur" at Mỹ Lai, and was so disturbed by the tales he heard that within three months of being discharged from the Army he penned his concerns to Congress.[78] He included the name of Michael Bernhardt, an eyewitness who agreed to testify, in the letter.[81]

Most recipients of Ridenhour's letter ignored it, with the exception of Congressman Mo Udall[82] and Senators Barry Goldwater and Edward Brooke.[83] Udall urged the House Armed Services Committee to call on Pentagon officials to conduct an investigation.[79]

Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, after extensive interviews with Calley, broke the Mỹ Lai story on November 12, 1969, on the Associated Press wire service;[84] on November 20, Time, Life and Newsweek magazines all covered the story, and CBS televised an interview with Paul Meadlo, a soldier in Calley's unit during the massacre. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio) published explicit photographs of dead villagers killed at Mỹ Lai.

As members of Congress called for an inquiry and news correspondents abroad expressed their horror at the massacre, the General Counsel of the Army Robert Jordan was tasked with speaking to the press. He refused to confirm allegations against Calley. Noting the significance of the fact that the statement was given at all, Bill Downs of ABC News said it amounted to the first public expression of concern by a "high defense official" that American troops "might have committed genocide."[85]

In November 1969, Lieutenant General William R. Peers was appointed by the Secretary of the Army and the Army Chief of Staff to conduct a thorough review of the My Lai incident, March 16–19, 1968, and its investigation by the Army. Peers's final report,[5] presented to higher-ups on March 17, 1970, was highly critical of top officers at brigade and divisional levels for participating in the cover-up, and the Charlie Company officers for their actions at Mỹ Lai.[86] According to Peers' findings:

[The 1st Battalion] members had killed at least 175–200 Vietnamese men, women, and children. The evidence indicates that only 3 or 4 were confirmed as Viet Cong although there were undoubtedly several unarmed VC (men, women, and children) among them and many more active supporters and sympathizers. One man from the company was reported as wounded from the accidental discharge of his weapon. ... a tragedy of major proportions had occurred at Son My.[5]

Critics of the Peers Report pointed out that it sought to place the real blame on four officers who were already dead, foremost among them the commander of Task Force Barker, LTC Frank Barker, who was killed in a mid-air collision on June 13, 1968.[87] Also, the Peers Report avoided drawing any conclusions or recommendations regarding the further examination of the treatment of civilians in a war zone. In 1968, an American journalist, Jonathan Schell, wrote that in the Vietnamese province of Quang Ngai, where the My Lai massacre occurred, up to 70% of all villages were destroyed by the air strikes and artillery bombardments, including the use of napalm; 40% percent of the population were refugees, and the overall civilian casualties were close to 50,000 a year.[88] Regarding the massacre at My Lai, he stated, "There can be no doubt that such an atrocity was possible only because a number of other methods of killing civilians and destroying their villages had come to be the rule, and not the exception, in our conduct of the war".[89]

In May 1970, a sergeant who participated in Operation Speedy Express wrote a confidential letter to then Army Chief of Staff Westmoreland describing civilian killings he said were on the scale of the massacre occurring as "a My Lai each month for over a year" during 1968–1969. Two other letters to this effect from enlisted soldiers to military leaders in 1971, all signed "Concerned Sergeant", were uncovered within declassified National Archive documents. The letters describe common occurrences of civilian killings during population pacification operations. Army policy also stressed very high body counts and this resulted in dead civilians being marked down as combatants. Alluding to indiscriminate killings described as unavoidable, the commander of the 9th Division, then Major General Julian Ewell, in September 1969, submitted a confidential report to Westmoreland and other generals describing the countryside in some areas of Vietnam as resembling the battlefields of Verdun.[90][91]

In July 1969, the Office of Provost Marshal General of the Army began to examine the evidence collected by the General Peers inquiry regarding possible criminal charges. Eventually, Calley was charged with several counts of premeditated murder in September 1969, and 25 other officers and enlisted men were later charged with related crimes.

Courts martial[edit source]
On November 17, 1970, a court-martial in the United States charged 14 officers, including Major General Samuel Koster, the Americal Division's commanding officer, with suppressing information related to the incident. Most of the charges were later dropped. Brigade commander Colonel Henderson was the only high ranking commanding officer who stood trial on charges relating to the cover-up of the My Lai massacre; he was acquitted on December 17, 1971.[92]

During the four-month-long trial, Lieutenant Calley consistently claimed that he was following orders from his commanding officer, Captain Medina. Despite that, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison on March 29, 1971, after being found guilty of premeditated murder of not fewer than twenty people. Two days later, President Richard Nixon made the controversial decision to have Calley released from armed custody at Fort Benning, Georgia, and put under house arrest pending appeal of his sentence. Calley's conviction was upheld by the Army Court of Military Review in 1973 and by the U.S. Court of Military Appeals in 1974.[93] In August 1971, Calley's sentence was reduced by the Convening Authority from life to twenty years. Calley would eventually serve three and one-half years under house arrest at Fort Benning including three months in a disciplinary barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In September 1974, he was paroled by the Secretary of the Army Howard Callaway.[93][94]

In a separate trial, Captain Medina denied giving the orders that led to the massacre, and was acquitted of all charges, effectively negating the prosecution's theory of "command responsibility", now referred to as the "Medina standard". Several months after his acquittal, however, Medina admitted that he had suppressed evidence and had lied to Colonel Henderson about the number of civilian deaths.[95] Captain Kotouc, an intelligence officer from 11th Brigade, was also court-martialed and found not guilty. Major General Koster was demoted to brigadier general and lost his position as the Superintendent of West Point. His deputy, Brigadier General Young, received a letter of censure. Both were stripped of Distinguished Service Medals which had been awarded for service in Vietnam.[96]

Most of the enlisted men who were involved in the events at My Lai had already left military service.[citation needed] In the end, of the 26 men initially charged, Lieutenant Calley was the only one convicted.

Some have argued that the outcome of the Mỹ Lai courts-martial failed to uphold the laws of war established in the Nuremberg and Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals.[97] For example, Telford Taylor, senior American prosecutor at Nuremberg, wrote that legal principles established at the war crimes trials could have been used to prosecute senior American military commanders for failing to prevent atrocities such as the one at My Lai.[98] The Secretary of the Army Howard Callaway was quoted in The New York Times as stating that Calley's sentence was reduced because Calley honestly believed that what he did was a part of his orders—a rationale that contradicts the standards set at Nuremberg and Tokyo, where following orders was not a defense for committing war crimes[citation needed]. On the whole, other than the My Lai courts-martial, there were thirty six military trials held by the U.S. Army from January 1965 to August 1973 for crimes against civilians in Vietnam.[69]:196

Some authors have argued that the light punishments of the low-level personnel present at Mỹ Lai and unwillingness to hold higher officials responsible was part of a pattern in which the body-count strategy and the so-called "Mere Gook Rule" encouraged U.S. soldiers to err on the side of killing too many South Vietnamese civilians. This in turn, Nick Turse argues, made lesser known massacres like Mỹ Lai and a pattern of war crimes common in Vietnam.[99]

Survivors[edit source]
In early 1972, the camp at Mỹ Lai (2) where the survivors of the Mỹ Lai massacre had been relocated, was largely destroyed by Army of the Republic of Vietnam artillery and aerial bombardment, and remaining eyewitnesses were dispersed. The destruction was officially attributed to "Viet Cong terrorists". The truth was revealed by Quaker service workers in the area through testimony in May 1972 by Martin Teitel at hearings before the Congressional Subcommittee to Investigate Problems Connected with Refugees and Escapees in South Vietnam. In June 1972, Teitel's account was published in The New York Times.[100]

Many American soldiers who had been in My Lai during the massacre accepted personal responsibility for the loss of civilian lives. Some of them expressed regrets without acknowledging any personal guilt, as, for example, Ernest Medina, who said, "I have regrets for it, but I have no guilt over it because I didn't cause it. That's not what the military, particularly the United States Army, is trained for."[101]

Lawrence La Croix, a squad leader in Charlie Company in My Lai, stated in 2010: “A lot of people talk about My Lai, and they say, ‘Well, you know, yeah, but you can’t follow an illegal order.’ Trust me. There is no such thing. Not in the military. If I go into a combat situation and I tell them, ‘No, I’m not going. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to follow that order,’ well, they’d put me up against the wall and shoot me."[102]

On March 16, 1998, a gathering of local people and former American and Vietnamese soldiers stood together at the place of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam to commemorate its 30th anniversary. American veterans Hugh Thompson and Lawrence Colburn, who were shielding civilians during the massacre, addressed the crowd. Among the listeners was Phan Thi Nhanh, a 14-year-old girl at the time of the massacre. She was saved by Thompson and vividly remembered that tragic day, "We don't say we forget. We just try not to think about the past, but in our hearts we keep a place to think about that".[103] Colburn challenged Lieutenant Calley, "...to face the women we faced today who asked the questions they asked, and look at the tears in their eyes and tell them why it happened".[103] No American diplomats nor any other officials attended the meeting.

More than a thousand people turned out March 16, 2008, forty years after the massacre, to remember the victims of one of the most notorious chapters of the Vietnam War. The Son My Memorial drew survivors of the massacre, the families of the victims and returning U.S. war veterans alike. One survivor, who was an 8-year girl on March 16, 1968, said, "Everyone in my family was killed in the My Lai massacre — my mother, my father, my brother and three sisters. They threw me into a ditch full of dead bodies. I was covered with blood and brains".[104] The U.S. was unofficially represented by a volunteer group from Wisconsin called Madison Quakers, who in 10 years built three schools in My Lai and planted a peace garden.[104]

On August 19, 2009, Calley made his first public apology for the massacre in a speech to the Kiwanis club of Greater Columbus, Georgia:[105][106]

There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai", he told members of the club. "I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry....If you are asking why I did not stand up to them when I was given the orders, I will have to say that I was a 2nd lieutenant getting orders from my commander and I followed them—foolishly, I guess.[107][108]

Duc Tran Van, who was seven years old at the time of My Lai massacre and now resides in Remscheid, Germany, called the apology "terse". He wrote a public letter to Calley describing the plight of his and many other families to remind him that time did not ease the pain, and that grief and sorrow over lost lives will forever stay in My Lai.[109]

Participants[edit source]
Officers[edit source]
LTC Frank A. Barker – commander of the Task Force Barker, a battalion-sized unit, assembled to attack the 48th NLF Battalion of the Viet Cong supposedly based in and around My Lai. He allegedly ordered the destruction of the village and supervised the artillery barrage and combat assault from his helicopter. Reported the operation as a success; was killed in Vietnam on June 13, 1968, in a mid-air collision before the investigation had begun.[5][87]
CPT Kenneth W. Boatman - an artillery forward observer; was accused by the Army of failure to report possible misconduct, but the charge was dropped.[110]
MAJ Charles C. Calhoun - operations officer of Task Force Barker; charges against him of failure to report possible misconduct were dropped.[110]
2LT William Calley – platoon leader, 1st Platoon, Charlie Company, First Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Infantry Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division. Was charged in premeditating the murder of 102 civilians,[111] found guilty and sentenced to life. Was paroled in September 1974 by the Secretary of the Army Howard Callaway.
LTC William D. Guinn Jr. - Deputy Province Senior Advisor/Senior Sector Advisor for Quangngai Province. Charges against him of dereliction of duty and false swearing brought by the Army were dropped.[110]
COL Oran K. Henderson – 11th Infantry Brigade commander, who ordered the attack and flew in a helicopter over Mỹ Lai during it. After Hugh Thompson immediately reported multiple killings of civilians, Henderson started the cover-up by dismissing allegation about the massacre and reporting to the superiors that indeed 20 people from My Lai died by accident. Was accused of alleged cover-up and false swearing by the Army; charges were dropped.[5]
MG Samuel W. Koster – commander of the 23rd Infantry Division (United States) of the United States Army, known as the Americal Division, was not involved with planning the My Lai search-and-destroy mission. However, during the operation he flew over My Lai and monitored the radio communications.[112] Afterward, Koster did not follow up with the 11th Brigade commander COL Henderson on the initial investigation, and later was involved in the cover-up. Was charged by the Army with failure to obey lawful regulations, dereliction of duty, and alleged cover-up; charges dropped. Later was demoted to brigadier general and stripped of a Distinguished Service Medal.[110]
CPT Eugene M. Kotouc – military intelligence officer assigned to Task Force Barker;[113] he partially provided information, on which the Mỹ Lai combat assault was approved; together with Medina and a South Vietnamese officer, he interrogated, tortured and allegedly executed VC and NVA suspects later that day. Was charged with maiming and assault, tried by the jury and acquitted.[44]
CPT Dennis H. Johnson - 52d Military Intelligence Detachment, assigned to Task Force Barker, was accused of failure to obey lawful regulations, however charges were later dropped.[110]
2LT Jeffrey U. Lacross - platoon leader, 3rd Platoon, Charlie Company; testified that his platoon did not meet any armed resistance in My Lai, and that his men did not kill anybody, however, since, in his words, both Calley and Brooks reported a body count of 60 for their platoons, he then submitted a body count of 6.[114]
MAJ Robert W. McKnight - operations officer of the 11th Brigade; was accused of false swearing by the Army, but charges were subsequently dropped.[110]
CPT Ernest Medina – commander of Company C, First' battalion, 20th Infantry; nicknamed Mad Dog by subordinates. He planned, ordered, and supervised the execution of the operation in Sơn Mỹ village. Was accused of failure to report a felony and of murder; went to trial and was acquitted.[115]
CPT Earl Michaels - company commander during My Lai operation; he died in a helicopter crash three months later.
BG George H. Young Jr. - assistant division commander, 23rd Infantry Division; charged with alleged cover-up, failure to obey lawful regulations and dereliction of duty by the Army; charges were dismissed.[110]
MAJ Frederic W. Watke - commander of Company B, 123rd Aviation Battalion, 23rd Infantry Division, providing helicopter support on March 16, 1968. Testified that he informed COL Henderson about killings of civilians in My Lai as reported by helicopter pilots.[116] He was accused of failure to obey lawful regulations and dereliction of duty; charges were dropped.[110]
CPT Thomas K. Willingham - Company B, Fourth Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division, assigned to Task Force Barker; charged with making false official statements and failure to report a felony; charges were dropped.[110]
Altogether, 14 officers directly and indirectly involved with the operation, including two generals, were investigated in connection with the My Lai massacre, for except LTC Frank A. Barker, CPT Earl Michaels, and 2LT Stephen Brooks, who died before the beginning of the investigation.[110][117][118]

1st Platoon, Charlie Company 1st Battalion 20th Infantry[edit source]
PFC Michael Bernhardt – Rifleman; he dropped out of the University of Miami to volunteer for the Army.[119] Bernhardt refused to kill civilians in My Lai. Later, Captain Ernest Medina threatened Bernhardt, trying to deter him from exposing the massacre. As a result, Bernhardt was given more dangerous assignments such as point duty on patrol. He would later be afflicted with a form of trench foot as a direct result. Bernhardt told Ronald Ridenhour, who was not present in My Lai during the massacre, about the events, thus pushing him to continue his investigation.[120] Later he would help expose and detail the massacre in numerous interviews with the press, and he served as a prosecution witness in the trial of Medina, where he was subjected to intense cross examination by defense counsel F. Lee Bailey backed by a team of attorneys including Gary Myers. Michael Bernhardt is a recipient of the New York Society for Ethical Culture's 1970 Ethical Humanist Award.[121]
PFC Herbert L. Carter – "Tunnel Rat"; Accidentally shot himself in the foot while reloading his pistol but claimed that he shot himself in the foot in order to be MEDEVACed out of the village when the massacre started.[122]
PFC Dennis L. Conti – Grenadier/Minesweeper; testified he initially refused to shoot, but later fired some M79 grenade launcher rounds at a group of fleeing people with unknown effect.
SP4 Lawrence C. La Croix - Squad Leader; testified favourably for Captain Medina during his trial. In 1993 sent a letter to Los Angeles Times saying, "Now, 25 years later, I have only recently stopped having flashbacks of that morning. I still cannot touch a weapon without vomiting. I am unable to interact with any of the large Vietnamese population in Los Angeles for fear that they might find out who I am; and, because I cannot stand the pain of remembering or wondering if maybe they had relatives or loved ones who were victims at My Lai... some of us will walk in the jungles and hear the cries of anguish for all eternity".[123]
PFC James Joseph Dursi – Rifleman; killed a mother and child, then refused to kill anyone else even when ordered to do so by Lieutenant Calley.[124]
Ronald Grzesik – a team leader. He claimed he followed orders to round up civilians, but refused to kill them.
SP4 Robert E. Maples – Machine Gunner; stated that he refused an order to kill civilians hiding in a ditch even being threatened by his commanding officer to be shot himself.[125]
PFC Paul D. Meadlo – Rifleman; said he was afraid of being shot if he did not participate. Lost his foot to a land mine the next day; later, he publicly admitted his part in the massacre.
Staff Sergeant (SSG) David Mitchell – Squad Leader; accused by witnesses of shooting people at the ditch site; pleaded not guilty. Mitchell was acquitted.[126]
SP4 Charles Sledge – Radiotelephone Operator; later a prosecution witness.
Private (PV2) Harry Stanley – Grenadier; claimed to have refused an order from Lieutenant Calley to kill civilians that were rounded-up in a bomb-crater. Refused to testify against Calley. After he was featured in a documentary and several newspapers, the city of Berkeley, California, designated Oct. 17 as Harry Stanley Day.[127]
Esequiel Torres – previously had tortured and hanged an old man because Torres found his bandaged leg suspicious. He and Roschevitz (described below) were involved in the shooting of a group of ten women and five children in a hut. Later he was ordered by Calley to shoot a number of people with a M60 machine gun; he fired a burst before refusing to fire again, after which Calley took his weapon and opened fire himself.[citation needed] Charged with murder, however acquitted.[128]:91
SP4 Frederick J. Widmer – Assistant Radiotelephone Operator; Widmer, who has been the subject of pointed blame, is quoted as saying, "The most disturbing thing I saw was one boy—and this was something that, you know, this is what haunts me from the whole, the whole ordeal down there. And there was a boy with his arm shot off, shot up half, half hanging on and he just had this bewildered look in his face and like, 'What did I do, what's wrong?' He was just, you know, it's, it's hard to describe, couldn't comprehend. I, I shot the boy, killed him and it's—I'd like to think of it more or less as a mercy killing because somebody else would have killed him in the end, but it wasn't right."[129] Widmer died on August 11, 2016 at the age of 68.[citation needed]
Before being shipped to South Vietnam, all of Charlie Company's soldiers went through an advanced infantry training and basic unit training at Pohakuloa Training Area in Hawaii.[130][131] At Schofield Barracks they were taught how to treat POWs and how to distinguish Vietcong guerrillas from civilians by a Judge Advocate.[132]

Other soldiers[edit source]
Nicholas Capezza – Chief Medic; HHQ Company;[133] insisted he saw nothing unusual.
William Doherty and Michael Terry – 3rd Platoon soldiers who participated in the killing of the wounded in a ditch.[78]
SGT Ronald L. Haeberle – Photographer; Information Office, 11th Brigade; was attached to C Company.
Sergeant Minh, Duong – ARVN interpreter, 52nd Military intelligence Detachment, attached to Task Force Barker; confronted Captain Medina about the number of civilians that were killed. Medina reportedly replied, "Sergeant Minh, don't ask anything - those were the orders."[134]
SGT Gary D. Roschevitz – Grenadier; 2nd platoon;[135] according to the testimony of James M. McBreen, Roschevitz killed five or six people standing together with a canister shot from his grenade launcher, which had a shotgun effect after exploding;[136] also grabbed an M16 rifle from Varnado Simpson to kill five Vietnamese prisoners.[137] According to various witnesses, he later forced several women to undress with the intention of raping them. When the women refused, he reportedly shot at them.[138]:19–20
PFC Varnado Simpson – Rifleman; 2nd Platoon; admitted that he slew around 10 people in My Lai on CPT Medina's orders to kill not only people, but even cats and dogs.[139][140] He fired at a group of people where he allegedly saw a man with a weapon, but instead killed a woman with the baby.[33] He committed suicide in 1997, after repeatedly acknowledging remorse for several murders in Mỹ Lai.
SGT Kenneth Hodges, squad leader, was charged with rape and murder during the My Lai massacre. In every interview given he strictly claims that he was following orders. [141]
Rescue helicopter crew[edit source]
WO1 Hugh Thompson, Jr. – helicopter pilot who confronted the ground forces personally. Died 6 January 2006.
SP4 Glenn Andreotta – crew chief. Killed In Action: 8 April 1968.
SP4 Lawrence Colburn – door gunner. Died 13 December 2016.
Media coverage[edit source]
News press[edit source]
A photographer and a reporter from the 11th Brigade Information Office were attached to the Task Force Barker and landed with Charlie Company in Sơn Mỹ on March 16, 1968. However, the Americal News Sheet published on March 17, 1968, as well as the Trident, 11th Infantry Brigade newsletter from March 22, 1968, did not mention the death of noncombatants in great numbers in My Lai. The Stars and Stripes published a laudatory piece, "U.S. troops Surrounds Red, Kill 128" on March 18.[142] On April 12, 1968, the Trident wrote that, "The most punishing operations undertaken by the brigade in Operation Muscatine's area involved three separate raids into the village and vicinity of My Lai, which cost the VC 276 killed".[143] On April 4, 1968, the information office of the 11th Brigade issued a press-release, Recent Operations in Pinkville, without any information about mass casualties among civilians.[144] Subsequent criminal investigation uncovered that, "Both individuals failed to report what they had seen, the reporter wrote a false and misleading account of the operation, and the photographer withheld and suppressed from proper authorities the photographic evidence of atrocities he had obtained."[145]

Vietnam was an atrocity from the get-go... There were hundreds of My Lais. You got your card punched by the numbers of bodies you counted.
David H. Hackworth[146]
The first mentions of the My Lai massacre appeared in the American media after Fort Benning's vague press release concerning the charges pressed against Lieutenant Calley, which was distributed on September 5, 1969.[147] Consequently, NBC aired on September 10, 1969 a segment in the Huntley-Brinkley Report which mentioned the murder of a number of civilians in South Vietnam. Following that, emboldened Ronald Ridenhour decided to disobey the Army's order to withhold the information from the media. He approached reporter Ben Cole of the Phoenix Republic, who chose not to handle the scoop. Charles Black from the Columbus Enquirer uncovered the story on his own but also decided to put it on hold. Two major national news press outlets—The New York Times and The Washington Post, received some tips with partial information but did not act on them.[148]

External image

Front page of The Plain Dealer scoop on My Lai Massacre, November 20, 1969

A phone call on October 22, 1969, answered by freelance investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, and his subsequent independent inquiry, broke the wall of silence that was surrounding the My Lai massacre. Hersh initially tried to sell the story to Life and Look magazines; both turned it down. Hersh then went to the small Washington-based Dispatch News Service, which sent it to fifty major American newspapers; thirty of them accepted it for publication.[149] New York Times reporter Henry Kamm investigated further and found several My Lai massacre survivors in South Vietnam. He estimated the number of killed civilians as 567.[150] Next, Ben Cole published an article about Ronald Ridenhour, a helicopter gunner and an Army whistleblower, who was among the first started to uncover the truth about the My Lai massacre. Joseph Eszterhas of The Plain Dealer, who was a friend of Ronald Haeberle and knew about the photo evidence of the massacre, published the grisly images of the dead bodies of old men, women, and children on November 20, 1969.[40] Time magazine's article on November 28, 1969 and in Life magazine on December 5, 1969,[151] finally brought My Lai to the fore of the public debate about Vietnam War.[152]

Richard L. Strout, the Christian Science Monitor political commentator, emphasized that, "American press self-censorship thwarted Mr. Ridenhour's disclosures for a year." "No one wanted to go into it", his agent said of telegrams sent to Life, Look, and Newsweek magazines outlining allegations.[153]

Afterwards, interviews and stories connected to My Lai massacre started to appear regularly in the American and international press.[154][155]

On television, film and video[edit source]
The 1971 documentary Interviews with My Lai Veterans won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, Short Subjects. In it, five American soldiers discussed their participation in the massacres.[156]
In 1975, Stanley Kramer and Lee Bernhard directed a docudrama, Judgment: The Court Martial of Lieutenant William Calley, with Tony Musante as Lieutenant Calley, and Harrison Ford as Frank Crowder.[157]
On May 2, 1989, the British television station Yorkshire Television broadcast the documentary Four Hours in My Lai, directed by Kevin Sim, as part of the networked series First Tuesday. Using eyewitness statements from both Vietnamese and Americans, the programme revealed new evidence about the massacre. The program was subsequently aired by PBS in the United States on May 23 as Remember My Lai (Frontline, Season 7).[158]
In 1994, a video film My Lai Revisited was aired on 60 Minutes by CBS.[159]
On March 15, 2008, the BBC broadcast the documentary The My Lai Tapes[160] on Radio 4 and subsequently on the BBC World Service, in both English[161] and Vietnamese,[162] that used never-before-heard audio recordings of testimony taken at The Pentagon during the 1969–1970 Peers Inquiry.
On April 26, 2010, the American PBS broadcast a documentary as part of its American Experience series, entitled The American Experience: My Lai.[163]
On December 10, 2010, Italian producer Gianni Paolucci released a movie entitled My Lai Four,[164] directed by Paolo Bertola, starring American actor Beau Ballinger as Calley, and adapted from the Pulitzer Prize–winning book by Seymour Hersh.[165]
In theater[edit source]
The Lieutenant is a 1975 Broadway rock opera that concerns the My Lai Massacre and resulting court martial. It was nominated for four Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical.

Photography[edit source]
The My Lai massacre, like many other events in Vietnam, was captured on camera by U.S. Army personnel. The most published and graphic images were taken by Ronald Haeberle, a U.S. Army Public Information Detachment photographer who accompanied the men of Charlie Company that day.[166] In 2009, Haeberle admitted that he destroyed a number of photographs he took during the massacre. Unlike the photographs of the dead bodies, the destroyed photographs depicted Americans in the actual process of murdering Vietnamese civilians.[167][168]

The epithet "baby killers" was often used by anti-war activists to describe American soldiers, largely as a result of the Mỹ Lai Massacre.[169] Although American soldiers had been so taunted since at least 1966, the Mỹ Lai massacre and the Haeberle photographs both further solidified the stereotype of drug-addled soldiers who killed babies. According to M. Paul Holsinger, the And babies poster, which used a Haeberle photo, was "easily the most successful poster to vent the outrage that so many felt about the human cost of the conflict in Southeast Asia. Copies are still frequently seen in retrospectives dealing with the popular culture of the Vietnam War era or in collections of art from the period."[170]

Another soldier, John Henry Smail of the 3rd Platoon, took at least 16 color photographs depicting U.S. Army personnel, helicopters, and aerial views of Mỹ Lai.[171][172] These, along with Haeberle's photographs, were included in the "Report of the Department of the Army review of the Preliminary Investigations into the My Lai Incident".[173] Former First Lieutenant (1LT) Roger L. Alaux Jr., a forward artillery observer, who was assigned to Charlie Company during the combat assault on Ly Mai 4,[174] also took some photographs from a helicopter that day, including aerial views of Mỹ Lai, and of the C Company's landing zone.