Lt. William Calley charged for My Lai massacre

Lt. William Calley charged for My Lai massacre


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Lt. Calley, a platoon leader in Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, 11th Infantry Brigade (Light) of the 23rd (Americal) Division had led his men in a massacre of Vietnamese civilians, including women and children, at My Lai 4, a cluster of hamlets that made up Son My village in Son Tinh District in Quang Ngai Province in the coastal lowlands of I Corps Tactical Zone on March 16, 1968. The company had been conducting a search and destroy mission as part of the yearlong Operation Wheeler/Wallowa (November 1967 through November 1968).

In search of the 48th Viet Cong (VC) Local Force Battalion, the unit entered Son My village but found only women, children, and old men. Frustrated by unanswered losses due to snipers and mines, the soldiers took out their anger on the villagers, indiscriminately shooting people as they ran from their huts and systematically rounding up the survivors, allegedly leading them to nearby ditch where they were executed.

Reportedly, the killing was only stopped when Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, an aero-scout helicopter pilot landed his helicopter between the Americans and the fleeing South Vietnamese, confronting the soldiers and blocking them from further action against the villagers. The incident was subsequently covered up, but eventually came to light a year later.

READ MORE: How the Army’s Cover-Up Made the My Lai Massacre Even Worse

An Army board of inquiry, headed by Lt. Gen. William Peers, investigated the massacre and produced a list of 30 persons who knew of the atrocity, but only 14, including Calley and his company commander, Captain Ernest Medina, were charged with crimes. All eventually had their charges dismissed or were acquitted by courts-martial except Calley, whose platoon allegedly killed 200 innocents. He was found guilty of personally murdering 22 civilians and sentenced to life imprisonment, but his sentence was reduced to 20 years by the Court of Military Appeals and further reduced later to 10 years by the Secretary of the Army. Proclaimed by much of the public as a “scapegoat,” Calley was paroled by President Richard Nixon in 1974 after having served about a third of his 10-year sentence.


Lt. William Calley charged for My Lai massacre - HISTORY

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Today in 1969, United States Army Lieutenant William Calley was charged with six counts of premeditated murder for his role in what would become known as the My Lai Massacre. Calley's actions as a platoon-level commander during the Vietnam War would help lend fuel to the anti-war fires burning in the United States and ignite the passions of many who, before that time, had not taken part in the debate over the war.

My Lai was a hamlet located in the Quang Ngai Province of South Vietnam. It was a known hotbed of Viet Cong activity, so much so that the area was frequently the target of air raids and artillery shelling. During the Tet Offensive in 1968, the Viet Cong carried out several operations in the province and then disappeared, seemingly into thin air. US Army intelligence believed that the Viet Cong forces had taken refuge in My Lai and several other nearby hamlets, and so the Army planned a March 16th offensive in the area.

Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, Americal Division was one of the units slated to participate in the offensive. One of the company's platoons was led by Lt. William Calley, who was given orders to destroy the hamlet once it was cleared of Viet Cong soldiers and sympathizers. It was believed that any innocent civilians would be out of the hamlet by 7AM.

Calley and his men found no Viet Cong in My Lai on the morning of March 16th, 1968. Frustrated at the lack of cooperation offered by the locals and by the loss of fellow platoon members to VC activity in the area, some of the soldiers began killing anyone they could find in the hamlet: men, women and children. Some were herded into nearby trenches and fired on with automatic weapons. Although the precise number of victims will never be known, sources put the number between 347 and 504.

Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson was flying above the hamlet in an Army OH-23 helicopter, where he saw the massacre occurring with his own eyes. He landed between a group of American soldiers and civilians and told the officers present that he would fire upon any American who attacked a civilian. He then reported the incident, whereupon the infantry received orders to cease fire in the area.

The massacre at My Lai would most likely have gone unreported and unpunished had it not been for a letter received by President Nixon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and members of Congress in March, 1969, a full year after the incident. The letter was written by Ron Ridenhour, who had learned about My Lai secondhand during his time in Vietnam. He talked to members of Charlie Company, some of whom readily admitted to participating in the events of that day.

And so, on September 5, 1969, Lt. Calley was charged with six counts of premeditated murder. 25 other officers and enlisted men would eventually be charged with various crimes most of the charges would be dropped. Calley was the only soldier convicted of a crime related to My Lai. He served three and a half years under house arrest in the officers' quarters at Fort Benning, Georgia and was then ordered freed by a federal judge.

Calley's defense was based upon his belief that he was following the orders of his immediate superior, Captain Ernest Medina. Medina was acquitted of any wrongdoing at his own trial, but these two court rulings gave rise to what is known today as the Medina Standard, which states that a commanding officer who does not act to stop violations of human rights or war crimes is criminally liable.

William Calley lives today in Columbus, Georgia. Hugh Thompson, the helicopter pilot who helped bring the massacre to an end, died in January of this year and was buried with full military honors. In 2004, he was interviewed for the news program "60 Minutes". When asked about his feelings towards the men who committed the massacre that day in 1968, he said:

"I wish I was a big enough man to say I forgive them, but I swear to God, I can't."


My Lai Massacre

The phrase "search and destroy" has taken on a sort of pop-culture currency in recent years, but in Vietnam circa 1968, it was anything but a glib cliche. It was an order, and lives could be resting on its successful execution.

But when the order was issued outside a small village in Southern Vietnam widely called "My Lai" (its actual name is "Son My") on March 16, 1968, the result was a lot of "destroy" and very little "search." The resulting massacres represents one of the low points in American history, right up there with George Washington giving smallpox infected blankets to the natives (except more homicidal than genocidal).

The Vietnam War had been going, well, not pleasantly, even relative to the way war generally tends to go. After a particularly heated and dangerous couple of weeks, the soldiers of Charlie Company came upon My Lai. Charlie Company had taken casualties, and the unit was known for its violent tactics.

Two platoons went into My Lai looking for Viet Cong fighters, on the orders of Lt. William Calley. According to various accounts, the soldiers were given decidedly mixed messages about what to expect. Court martial testimony from one officer indicated that the soldiers had been told all the people in the village were VC soldiers or sympathizers, and that civilians had left the town.

While the exact circumstances leading up to the attack are still argued about, what's undisputed is the outcome of the military maneuver. When they entered the village, the soldiers began shooting unarmed civilians. Orders were given to raze the huts the villagers lived in.

Even with the ultraviolent and paranoid atmosphere of combat in Vietnam, one would think that after killing a couple dozen unarmed civilians with no resistance, the company might have stopped to re-evaluate its strategy of killing everyone that moved. Didn't happen.

Men, women and children, including babies, were killed in the carnage that followed. Praying children were shot in the back of the head, elderly men were hacked to death with bayonets. People were shot on their knees, in the back, with their hands in the air.

Not everyone in the company took part in the massacre, but enough of them did, led by Calley who reportedly mowed down 60 captured civilians in a ditch by himself after his soldiers balked at the order. Although the Army's official report determined that only about 10 soldiers actually performed the massacre, that's kind of hard to believe in light of the devastation ultimately wrought.

More than 500 people were killed in just hours. Some of the corpses were mutilated. Some women who weren't killed were gang-raped. Other villagers were beaten and tortured. And evidence of the carnage was recorded on film by an Army photographer accompanying the unit named Ron Haeberle.

Toward the end of the massacre, a helicopter gunship came to the assistance of the villagers. An army pilot named Hugh Thompson landed his craft in between villagers and the rampaging soldiers, ordering his gunner, Lawrence Colburn to fire on any soldier who continued pursuing the fleeing villagers. Thompson and Colburn radioed two more helicopters to the scene and airlifted a dozen villagers to safety. They were rewarded for their bravery. thirty years later. The helicopter's crew chief Glenn Andreotta was also recognized for bravery, but posthumously. Before the war ended, he became one more casualty of Vietnam.

In the aftermath of the massacre, the soldiers on the scene made an effort to cover up the killings, minimizing the number of civilian casualties to a couple dozen, a claim which was repeated in several subsequent official reports. And that would likely have been the end of it, except for a former GI named Ron Ridenhour, who practiced the lost art of writing to his congressman, after hearing ominous tales of a terrible massacre from his fellow soldiers:

"I asked 'Butch' several times if all the people were killed. He said that he thought they were men, women and children. He recalled seeing a small boy, about three or four years old, standing by the trail with a gunshot wound in one arm. The boy was clutching his wounded arm with his other hand, while blood trickled between his fingers. He was staring around himself in shock and disbelief at what he saw. 'He just stood there with big eyes staring around like he didn't understand he didn't believe what was happening. Then the captain's RTO (radio operator) put a burst of 16 (M-16 rifle) fire into him.' It was so bad, Gruver said, that one of the men in his squad shot himself in the foot in order to be medivaced out of the area so that he would not have to participate in the slaughter. Although he had not seen it, Gruver had been told by people he considered trustworthy that one of the company's officers, 2nd Lieutenant Kally (this spelling may be incorrect) had rounded up several groups of villagers (each group consisting of a minimum of 20 persons of both sexes and all ages). According to the story, Kally then machine-gunned each group. Gruver estimated that the population of the village had been 300 to 400 people and that very few, if any, escaped. (. )

"Exactly what did, in fact, occur in the village of "Pinkville" in March, 1968 I do not know for certain, but I am convinced that it was something very black indeed. I remain irrevocably persuaded that if you and I do truly believe in the principles, of justice and the equality of every man, however humble, before the law, that form the very backbone that this country is founded on, then we must press forward a widespread and public investigation of this matter with all our combined efforts. I think that it was Winston Churchill who, once said 'A country without a conscience is a country without a soul, and a country without a soul is a country that cannot survive.' I feel that I must take some positive action on this matter. I hope that you will launch an investigation immediately and keep me informed of your progress. If you cannot, then I don't know what other course of action to take.

Toward the end of 1969, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story in the public realm. A groundswell of horror rose in the American public, which had already wearied of the war. Hundreds of witnesses were called. The charges included murder, rape, sodomy and mayhem. The original investigators recommended 30 prosecutions for the atrocities and 30 more for the cover-up.

The Army, already under intense pressure for its conduct in Vietnam, didn't care for those numbers. Barely a quarter of those would see trial. Only one man was convicted for his actions at My Lai, the unit's commander, William Calley. He was sentenced to life in prison with hard labor, but the great humanitarian, Richard M. Nixon, granted Calley a lot more mercy that the lieutenant had granted the villagers of My Lai, and commuted the sentence.

The images and the story of My Lai represented a major turning point in public attitudes toward Vietnam. In addition to their horror at the actual massacre, the handling of the prosecutions revolted Americans from nearly every part of the political spectrum.

Not only did Calley serve as the scapegoat for the actions of his unit, but his punishment didn't even remotely fit the magnitude of the crime. The Army tried to downplay the event, continuing to underestimate the casualties and the violence for years afterward. The American government refused to acknowledge the event in diplomatic exchanges.

It took 30 years for the few soldiers who defended innocent lives to get medals from Congress, and even then, infighting among the Army brass made the process of recognizing Thompson and Colburn torturous, long after the U.S. had gotten the hell out of Vietnam.

There were so many horrors concerning the events at My Lai and the actions of the military in its aftermath, it was hard for most people to figure out where to start raging.


Calley found guilty of 22 murders

Lieutenant William L. Calley was last night convicted of murdering 22 people in the South Vietnamese village of My Lai during a massacre of civilians by American soldiers.

Calley (27) had been charged with murdering 102 people. He was charged with killing or ordering to be killed 30 people in My Lai, killing or ordering to be killed 70 people in a ditch, killing an elderly monk, and killing a baby.

The jury convicted Calley of premeditated murder on the first three counts and assault with intent to kill on the fourth. It found him guilty of one of the 30 deaths in the village, and 20 of the 70 deaths in the ditch. He was convicted of murdering the monk, and of assaulting the baby with intent to kill.

The jury will decide the sentence later today. The maximum sentence on the first three charges is execution, and the minimum is life imprisonment. He could be sentenced for up to life imprisonment on the charge of assaulting the baby with intent to kill. A unanimous vote of the six army officers on the jury is needed for the death sentence.

Calley, of Miami, Florida, seemed to accept the verdict calmly. When the jury entered the small courtroom Calley stood and smartly saluted the foreman, Colonel Clifford H. Ford, who immediately read the verdict.

After the verdict, Calley saluted again and walked from the courtroom between two of his four lawyers.

The jury deliberated for 79 hours and 58 minutes, over 13 days. The trial lasted four months. Calley was relaxing in his army base apartment when he learned from his lawyer, Captain Brooks Doyle, that a verdict had been reached. Calley changed into his uniform and Captain Doyle drove him to the courtroom.

After the verdict he was taken by military police and confined in an officer's cell consisting of two small rooms. The cell is normally used by a chaplain as an office when not occupied by a prisoner. A guard will stay with Calley in one of the rooms unless he is consulting his lawyers or being visited by members of his family.

The case may still continue for years. Calley has at least three chances for appeals that could affect the verdict. His first chance for reversal or reduction in the seriousness of the conviction would come from a "leading authority" who will automatically review the case. Normally that would have been Major General Orwin Talbott, commander of Fort Benning where the trial was held, who in September 1969 formally ordered Calley's court martial. But he is disqualified because he participated in certain administrative matters during the court martial.

The army will probably ask someone in a command similar to Talbott's to make the review in about two months' time. If he approved the verdict, an automatic appeal would be made to the Court of Review in Washington.

If Calley lost there he could appeal to the Court of Military Appeals, the last resort in military cases. One of his lawyers, Mr George Latimer, is regarded as an expert in appeals. He has already said that after the military moves are exhausted he would move into Federal civilian courts on the district level in Washington, and if necessary fight all the way to the US Supreme Court.

The verdict came four hours after the Judge, Colonel Reid Kennedy, held a hearing to determine whether he should prod the jury of six army officers into speeding their deliberation because of the strain on Calley.

Calley's conviction is likely to spark public indignation almost everywhere in the US, except, surprisingly, in the army itself.

Liberals and conservatives, for different reasons, are united on the issue. Conservatives - such as the Governor of Alabama - say it is an outrage for an American soldier to risk his life in combat, and then come home to be tried. Liberals - such as former Congressman Charles Welkner of Georgia - believe it is wrong to single out one man for punishment while letting go everyone else involved in the My Lai massacre.

Mr Latimer says Calley has received thousands of letters of support and only about 10 attacking him. Local citizens are upset about the trial. "They ought to give him a medal," a waitress said: "I think they're going too far." Restaurants where Calley dines refuse to allow him to pay for his meals. If he stops for a glass of beer, a customer usually pays for him.

But army officers, particularly young ones, seem to have hoped that the jury would find against him. Two young captains stormed into the press room at the Calley trial one day to chastise a local television reporter. They said his stories were biased in favour of Calley, who had admitted killing at least some civilians in My Lai.

"You're not presenting a fair picture to the community," one said. "It's important that we know the prosecution's side of the story. If he is let go, it will give a licence to everyone who walks out of Officers' School to go to Vietnam and kill anyone they feel like."

A young captain, who - like Calley - had been a platoon leader in Vietnam, said when the trail began in November:

"If he did what they said he did, they should hang him. I crawled around on my belly for eight months over there, and I didn't rape anyone, and I didn't shoot them either, unless they shot at me."


Court-Martial of Lt. Calley: Behind-the-Scenes Legal Maneuverings

Lt. William Calley, with his civilian and military counsel, heads toward a pretrial hearing at Fort Benning, Georgia, on Jan. 20, 1970. When the trial began on Nov. 17, it was the culmination of a legal process that had started on Sept. 5, 1969.

In a sense, the court-martial of 1st Lt. William Laws Calley Jr. started in front of my desk at Infantry Hall, the headquarters and academic center of the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia. It was late Wednesday morning on Sept. 5, 1969. Col. Earl C. Acuff, deputy assistant commandant of the school and the man charged with running its day-to-day operations, was breathless after his swift descent down the stairs from the office of the school’s commandant, Maj. Gen. Orwin C. Talbott, one floor above.

It wasn’t like Acuff to be huffing and out of breath. A master parachutist, he wore the Combat Infantryman Badge with two stars, denoting service as an infantryman in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. During the Korean War, the ROTC graduate from the University of Idaho led the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment of the 7th Infantry Division at Pork Chop Hill and Old Baldy. In Vietnam he commanded the 1st Infantry Division’s 3rd Brigade. When Acuff was tasked in 1965 to evaluate the Ranger training program at Benning, he put himself through the course, becoming at age 47 the oldest soldier ever to graduate from the rigorous program and earn the Ranger tab.

I was deputy secretary of the Infantry School. Standing in front of my desk, Acuff came quickly to the point: “Who’s the best writer we have at the school?”

I was used to dealing with all sorts of information requests, but this one took me by surprise. “What kind of writer are you looking for, sir?” I asked. “What kind of project is it?”

“I don’t know all the details,” Acuff explained. “It’s apparently a war crime of some sort. It’s got interest all the way up to the White House and the Pentagon. The way I understand it, there’s a first lieutenant assigned to The School Brigade who’s due to be released from active duty tomorrow. We need to flag his records today so he can’t be discharged and I need to appoint an Article 32 investigator and have orders cut today.”

Under Article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a pretrial investigation is required before a “general court-martial,” the term for a military trial involving the most serious crimes, can be convened. An Article 32 investigation is much like a grand jury investigation in civilian life. Given the severity of the alleged charges—war crimes—and the high-level of interest in Washington, Acuff required a mature, skilled writer capable of conducting a thorough pretrial investigation and producing a clear, concise report about whether a court-martial was warranted.

I ran a mental checklist of the dozens of qualified officers then serving on the staff and faculty at the Infantry School and analyzed prospective names while Acuff waited. Suddenly I had a name to offer him.

“Dewey Cameron,” I said. Lt. Col. Duane “Dewey” Cameron, chairman of the Leadership Department, was the logical nominee. His department not only taught leadership but also supervised instructional programs in military writing. He was a highly regarded officer, a Pennsylvanian commissioned from Ohio University’s ROTC program. Cameron wrote the best prose at the school. He was a mature, unflappable, experienced officer who could cope with all the investigation’s sensitivities.

Acuff repeated the name. “Dewey Cameron. Of course, that’s it.” He smiled, knowing the right choice had been made. He repeated the name, then turned and ran back up the stairs to inform Talbott about the nominee for investigating officer.

That afternoon, Cameron was appointed to conduct an investigation under the provisions of Article 32 into circumstances involving alleged murders of noncombatants at the village of My Lai 4 in northern South Vietnam’s Quang Ngai province on March 16, 1968, by Calley, then a member of the 23rd Infantry Division (Americal).

Cameron’s Article 32 investigation, which took several months, resulted in the court-martial of Calley. The trial began Nov. 17, 1970, and ended with a conviction on March 29, 1971. The lengthy proceedings captured the public’s attention and led to widespread condemnation of the Army and its personnel, further increasing the antipathy for the war in Vietnam. Although Calley was charged personally with the murder of 22 South Vietnamese civilians, as many as 504 may have been killed by members of his platoon.

Retired four-star Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, in an opinion piece published in The New York Times on April 2, 1971, called the revelations of the My Lai court-martial “grievous blows.”

An organized cover-up had taken place within the Americal Division, presumably reaching all the way to division commander Maj. Gen. Samuel W. Koster, according to the findings of a commission headed by Lt. Gen. William R. Peers.

The cover-up began almost immediately. On the day of the massacre, March 16, 1968, reporters at the U.S. military’s daily press briefing in Saigon were told: “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.” With careers on the line for Americal leaders at division, brigade, task force and company levels, no mention was made of horrendous civilian casualties. Instead, enemy casualties were claimed.

The Peers Commission report concluded that at least 175 to 200 South Vietnamese men, women and children had been killed, including perhaps three or four confirmed Viet Cong soldiers, although “there were undoubtedly several unarmed VC (men, women and children) among them and many more active supporters and sympathizers.”

The commission investigated 14 officers directly or indirectly involved with the operation, including Koster and his assistant division commander, Brig. Gen. George H. Young Jr. The commander of the battalion-size task force that included Calley’s company, Lt. Col. Frank Barker, was killed in a helicopter crash before the investigation.

By the first week of September 1969, as Calley was preparing for discharge from active duty, it was clear to the Army that he had participated in some manner in the killings at My Lai. Accordingly, the Department of the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. William Westmoreland, previously the top commander in Vietnam, instructed Fort Benning to commence the Article 32 inquiry so that Calley could be retained on active duty if a court-martial was warranted.

With the appointment of Cameron as the Article 32 investigator on Sept. 5, 1969, Fort Benning’s public information office issued a nebulous press release about an investigation of an Army first lieutenant for his actions in Vietnam. The release was largely ignored by the news media.

When investigative reporter Seymour Hersh broke the full story of the massacre on Nov. 12, 1969, and it appeared in 30 newspapers nationwide, the American public was outraged at the atrocity. Time and Life magazines ran detailed reports with photos in late November and early December 1969. Much of the American public’s already waning support for the Vietnam War further eroded.

By then, U.S. troop strength in Vietnam, which had peaked at 543,400 in April 1969, was decreasing under President Richard Nixon’s phased withdrawal program. In 1971, the troop count in Vietnam was down to 156,800.

None of those remaining wanted to be the last casualty in an increasingly unpopular war. The Army was plagued by incidents of fragging, refusal to obey orders, drug abuse and desertions. In the continental United States, once-proud units such as the 1st Infantry Division at Fort Riley, Kansas, and the 5th Infantry Division (Mechanized) at Fort Carson, Colorado, became holding areas for short-timers back from Vietnam, with the consequent breakdown in military discipline.

It was therefore a small wonder that Ridgway could offer in The New York Times a litany of woes that revealed the sad state of the American Army in 1971, with the circumstances at My Lai “the most damaging of all.” V

Bob Orkand, a retired lieutenant colonel, served in Vietnam as executive officer and operations officer of the 1st Battalion (Airmobile), 7th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) 1967-68. He commanded a mechanized infantry battalion at Fort Benning in the 197th Infantry Brigade 1972-73, a prototype of the volunteer Army. In 1974, he was Pentagon spokesman on the volunteer Army. He co-authored a study of the M16 rifle’s shortcomings, Misfire: The Tragic Failure of the M16 in Vietnam (2019). Orkand lives in Huntsville, Texas.

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My Lai: Where Were The Leaders?

Lieutenant William Calley is flanked by an unidentified civilian assistant attorney (L) and an unidentified Army escort officer as he leaves a closed-door preliminary court martial hearing.

Had one strong leader stepped up, the atrocity that so stained America could have been averted.

It has been more than four decades since that morning in 1968, and yet Army officers, almost to a man, still ask themselves how the My Lai massacre could have taken place. What had happened to the chain of command when one of the worst stains ever to soil the uniform of the U.S. Army in its two-century history occurred? On March 16, 1968, where were the leaders?

What happened at My Lai has been more than adequately investigated by the Peers Inquiry and the trials of 2nd Lt. William Calley, Captain Ernest Medina and several other officers and enlisted men who were present during the murders on that morning. In all, 14 officers and enlisted men were charged, some as a result of the massacre and others for the ensuing coverup. The books on My Lai and the aftermath are too numerous to list, and few questions of what actually took place on the ground are left unanswered. But what remains an open question—and the nastiest scar of the Vietnam War yet to heal—is how the leadership, or lack thereof, permitted such an atrocity to happen.

The massacre’s implications went far beyond its inhumanity and horror. It fueled intense antiwar sentiment among the American public and contributed to the eroding support for victory in the minds of politicians and Pentagon officials.

DURING THE WAR, one of the great weaknesses of the chain of command—from the highest levels of the Defense Department through General William Westmoreland down to the platoon level—was the addiction to statistics as a measure of victory. The worst of these was the body count. This statistic contributed to a mindset in the average GI and his leaders that turned any dead Vietnamese into a dead Viet Cong (VC). And more dead VC found after a firefight produced a more favorable kill ratio thus, one unit had a better performance under fire than some other unit. Commanders were compared—and evaluated—for their six-month “ticket punching” command tours, and success at command nearly always guaranteed an officer that he would be promoted to the next higher level. Low body counts and unfavorable kill ratios, by contrast, tended to ensure that a commander would be passed over for his next promotion. The body count became the Vietnam War’s Holy Grail.

The rotational policy of the Army undermined command effectiveness. As someone once said, “The Americans don’t have 10 years experience in Vietnam they have one year’s experience repeated 10 times over.” Many battalion and brigade commanders were rotated into and out of command positions every six months so that everyone would have an opportunity to command. The effectiveness of the chain of command was diminished each time a new commander came in for his six-month tour.

During Tet in 1968, the U.S. military was shocked by the extent of the attacks on its bases. Normally there is a truce during the celebration of the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, but the North Vietnamese Army violated that truce with largescale assaults. The reality suddenly changed from what most Americans believed to be a winning strategy to growing doubt about the conduct of the war. Although Tet was a tactical failure militarily for the Communists, it was a dramatic success for them psychologically.

In I Corps, north of My Lai, Hue was overrun and seized by the NVA in the early days of February 1968. It took weeks of counterattacks and desperate fighting by the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) and the U.S. Marines to free the ancient city. When, on February 25, Hue was finally cleared of enemy troops, mass graves were discovered that contained thousands of Hue citizens who had been murdered by the NVA or VC. As these reports filtered down to the units in the southern portion of I Corps, the fear of the NVA and loathing for the VC grew to extremes. It was in this environment that the plan to attack and eliminate the Viet Cong’s 48th Main Force Battalion was hatched.

No written plan exists for the My Lai operation—at least, none has ever been found. Lieutenant Colonel Frank Barker, the task force commander, was well known for his disjointed briefings. Evidence from testimony at the trials leads one to believe that Barker made a plan, albeit a poor tactical plan. He was unclear on what was expected of his company commanders, and failed to explain the specific mission of each unit or how they would support each other during the combat operation. Barker never had an opportunity to shed light on the mission himself, as he was killed in a helicopter crash just weeks after My Lai.

As George Latimer, Calley’s chief defense lawyer, said: “Company C should never have been sent on this kind of mission, with a state of training woefully inadequate…. You can’t go in like a gang of isolationists, each man for himself and let the devil take care of the others. It is a hornbook principle that fear and stark terror is present in a unit on its first combat assault, and when raw troops are used disaster is the result.”

What is known is that Barker sent his weakest company against what was believed to be the enemy’s strongest point. My Lai was supposedly the headquarters of the 48th Main Force Battalion and guarded by a well-trained enemy unit of as many as 280 soldiers. Clearly this was a major tactical error. No competent commander would ever send a weak unit to attack a numerically superior, well-entrenched enemy unit—let alone an attacking unit that had little or no real combat experience. Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment (1-20th Infantry), commanded by Captain Medina, had suffered 25 percent casualties in its 90 days in country, and it had never been in a real firefight. Lieutenant Calley’s platoon alone had lost 18 soldiers—one killed and 17 wounded. Yet, at no time had the platoon actually engaged the enemy in a straight-up firefight. All Calley’s casualties had come from snipers, mines or booby traps. By March 16, this normally 45-man-strong platoon was reduced to only 27. An understrength green platoon led by an inept second lieutenant was now going to charge directly into the lion’s den, with no consideration of a flank attack or an encircling envelopment. This was to be the Charge of the Light Brigade redux, but in the rice paddies of Vietnam and with only 27 soldiers in lieu of 600.

Normally, for the attacking force to have any opportunity for success, it must have a combat advantage of at least three-to-one, especially when attacking a well-trained unit. In this instance, the formula was exactly the reverse. How could Barker have made such a decision? If he believed the intelligence, which turned out to be wrong, Barker was either one of the most incompetent comanders in Vietnam…or simply one of the stupidest.

From testimony given at the trials, it was determined that Barker had placed one of his rifle companies, A Company, 3-1st Infantry, north of the Diem Diem River, more than 1,500 meters away from My Lai and the other company, Bravo, 4-3rd Infantry, east of My Lai by approximately the same distance. Their initial mission was to block, followed by a task to sweep southward along the coast of the South China Sea. C Company, 1-20th Infantry, Captain Medina’s command, was to sweep the village of My Lai. Because of the distances and terrain involved, in these locations none of the companies could be mutually supporting. Certainly, this was a disaster in the making if Task Force Barker was to be attacking a 250-man-strong Main Force Viet Cong battalion dug in at My Lai. Fortunately for Barker’s men, it was not.

Captain Medina compounded this bad situation by sending Lieutenant Calley’s platoon into this so-called Viet Cong stronghold first. Medina had little respect for Calley and stated so on several occasions. Plus, the backbone of Calley’s platoon, Sergeant George Cox, who was well respected by the men, had been killed only two days earlier. It was a macabre scene as Cox was mortally wounded by a booby trap that went off directly between his legs, splitting his insides open. The entire platoon watched in horror as he lay dying, screaming for relief from the excruciating pain.

At the briefing the night prior to the attack on My Lai, Medina and Calley encouraged a pep-rally-like atmosphere, suggesting that they were going to get “those bastards” who killed Sergeant Cox. The air assault was scheduled for 0730. Based on what he believed to be accurate intelligence, Medina told his company that there would be few, if any, noncombatants left in My Lai by that time, as they would have departed for the market by 0700.

This was yet another intelligence error coming from the Task Force Headquarters, added to the poor preparation by the leaders of Medina’s company—who by this time had completely misunderstood the true situation in My Lai. In fact, some intelligence officers at 23rd (“Americal”) Infantry Division headquarters knew that the 48th Viet Cong Battalion was far from My Lai, but classifications on the use of radio intercepts would not allow them to divulge its location to Task Force Barker. The 48th was actually resting in the mountains west of Quang Ngai, licking its wounds from battles fought in the Tet Offensive.

The normal organization of infantry maneuver units consists of brigades commanded by colonels, battalions commanded by lieutenant colonels, companies commanded by captains and platoons led by lieutenants. In the case of the Americal Division, prior to Colonel Oran K. Henderson’s assumption of command on March 15 and for reasons that are not entirely clear, the 11th Light Infantry Brigade had formed a special unit. Its purpose was to conduct search-and-destroy missions in the area north and east of Quang Ngai city. This task force was composed of units that would normally have been assigned to different battalions and would have been accustomed to the operating procedures of those respective commanders. However, these separate units were joined under the command of Lt. Col. Barker. This ad hoc organization was born as Task Force Barker about two months prior to the massacre.

Having assumed command of the 11th Brigade the day prior to the My Lai massacre, Colonel Henderson obviously did not know the strengths or weaknesses of the leaders within his brigade. He had never met them, had never seen their performance under fire and had no knowledge about his subordinate leaders’ abilities under stress. Nevertheless, whether in command for a day or for a year, a commander is responsible for everything his unit does or fails to do.

Up until March 16, Task Force Barker had little direct contact with the enemy. It was the tactic of the 48th Battalion to avoid a firefight with American forces. The VC knew that the massive firepower of an American infantry battalion, plus its supporting artillery and helicopter gunships, could rain devastation down on them. Tet was the only time the 48th came out into open combat, and then it was severely wounded and probably would have been destroyed had its men not slipped into the outskirts of Quang Ngai city. The American forces were unable to get clearance to fire with their heavy weapons while the 48th hid in the coastal lowlands, heavily populated by rice farmers and where free-fire zones were few and far between. The 48th was then able to escape to the mountains, most likely marching down Highway 516 through the Viet Cong–friendly Nghia Hanh District.

Although Captain Medina lacked experience, he had responded well when his company was trapped in a minefield on February 25. Charlie Company suffered three killed and 12 wounded that day, but Medina was able to lead his troops out and was decorated for his actions.

Lieutenant Calley, up to this point in his life, had hardly been successful at anything. Standing only 5 feet 3 inches tall, the 24-year-old was unemployed when he entered the Army. He was selected for Officer Candidate School and graduated 127th out of 156 in his class. Calley had been in Vietnam just 90 days prior to March 16, and during that time the diminutive lieutenant had not gained the respect of his men on the contrary, they regarded him as a joke and made snide comments behind his back. The men often did not follow his instructions and sometimes directly disobeyed his orders. In spite of this, Calley saw himself as a tough, hard-core infantry leader.

This was an extremely weak chain of command.

On the morning of March 16, an understrength American infantry rifle company air assaulted into a rice paddy just west of My Lai, expecting to confront a combat-hardened enemy battalion of 250 Viet Cong. Captain Medina’s company was going to attack the dug-in enemy battalion while the two other rifle companies of Task Force Barker lay waiting in blocking positions to blast away at the fleeing Viet Cong—like quail flushed from a grain field.

Fear was uppermost in the minds of these men as the helicopter rotors slapped the air en route to My Lai and to what would be their first close combat with the enemy. Some said silent prayers. Others simply cursed and shivered.

At 0730 the helicopters of the 174th Assault Helicopter Company dropped Calley’s platoon into the wet rice paddy. As they delivered their troops, the gunships fired away with machine guns to provide them with cover. As soon as the choppers pulled up and were gone, quiet descended upon the soldiers left lurking behind rice paddy dikes.

Return fire should have been intense, but not a single enemy shot was heard. The silence—the lack of that unmistakable crack of rifle fire—was overwhelming, and unnerving. Where was the 48th Battalion? Had the Viet Cong somehow mysteriously disappeared? Were they waiting in ambush?

After a short delay, Calley ordered his men to move out toward My Lai. The fear turned into hate as the soldiers waded through the mud, closing on the first huts of the village. There the horror began.

The law of unintended consequences seems always to rear its head when given the opportunity. This was just such a case. But, when Murphy’s Law comes into play, it is the leaders who must correct the situation—the strong leaders for whom the U.S. Army is so well known. Were there none on the ground at My Lai? Or overhead?

Flying above My Lai in their command and control (C&C) helicopters were the commanders and their staffs. Crammed with radios, bristling with antennae and M-60 machine guns, the C&Cs orbited in slow counterclockwise circles. The airborne staff personnel shuffled maps covered with multicolored grease pencil marks while they listened to every transmission from the ground below. Nestled in their armor-plated seats, the commanders looked down from an altitude of 1,000 to 2,500 feet. What were they seeing?

It appears that these commanders and their flying staffs were turning a blind eye to the bloody scene below. At 0930 Colonel Henderson did report to the Americal Division commander, Maj. Gen. Samuel W. Koster, that he saw 10 or so dead. If he could see 10, how could he have failed to see the rest of the carnage exposed to aerial view in drainage ditches around the village? It was reported that more than 100 old men, women and children had been killed by their men in the vicinity of My Lai by this time. What were the commanders of these men doing while orbiting over the village?

Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, his door gunner and his crew chief from the 123rd Aviation Battalion did see the horror unfolding below. Thompson took immediate action and landed his helicopter to rescue some wounded women and children from the scene of terror. In order to accomplish this heroic mission, Thompson ordered his gunner, Laurence Colburn, and his crew chief, Glenn Andreotta, to threaten members of Calley’s platoon if they wouldn’t allow him to fly the women and children away to safety. Thompson immediately reported what he had witnessed to his chain of command: first his platoon leader, then his operations officer and finally to Major Frederic Watkes, who then alerted Lt. Col. Barker.

The commander on the ground, Captain Medina, was now far in the rear, while Calley was personally killing old men, women and children in a ditch on the east side of the village. Photos taken by Army photographer Ron Haeberle captured the stark terror in the victims’ faces moments before they were killed by Calley’s automatic rifle.

The laws of land warfare explicitly protect noncombatants. When captured, they must be treated as prisoners of war or detainees. In any case they may not be executed.

Is it believable that among all the commanders and their airborne staff members who flew above My Lai on that fateful morning, not a single one of them saw the death and destruction that was being inflicted on the villagers? From 1,000 feet it is easy to distinguish an American soldier in his green jungle fatigues from a black pajama–clad Vietnamese. One could not fail to recognize the tangled corpses, heaped on both the south and east sides of this village.

The entire chain of command failed in its duty.

My Lai was a horrific outcome of failed leadership. A leader would have taken immediate disciplinary action against any soldier or officer who violated the universal law for protection of noncombatants. Had there been a single strong leader in the chain of command from General Koster to Lieutenant Calley, the massacre might have been stopped in its initial phase, saving dozens of old men, women and children from death. Instead, today visitors can read the names of 504 civilian victims on a memorial erected at My Lai.

Precisely because no battle plan survives the first shot, it is the unequivocal responsibility of leaders to be prepared for unusual contingencies—to go to the sound of firing so as to lead their men.

At My Lai on March 16, 1968, there were no leaders.

Ben G. Crosby was operations officer for 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry in Vietnam and also served in the 82nd Airborne, 1st Cavalry, 25th Infantry and 101st Air Assault. Crosby was awarded two Silver Stars, two Legions of Merit, the Meritorious Service Medal and four Bronze Star Medals.

Originally published in the April 2009 issue of Vietnam Magazine. To subscribe, click here.


Lt. William Calley charged for My Lai massacre - HISTORY

On March 16, 1968 the angry and frustrated men of Charlie Company, 11th Brigade, Americal Division entered the Vietnamese village of My Lai. "This is what you've been waiting for -- search and destroy -- and you've got it," said their superior officers. A short time later the killing began. When news of the atrocities surfaced, it sent shockwaves through the U.S. political establishment, the military's chain of command, and an already divided American public.

Poised for Conflict
My Lai lay in the South Vietnamese district of Son My, a heavily mined area where the Vietcong were deeply entrenched. Numerous members of Charlie Company had been maimed or killed in the area during the preceding weeks. The agitated troops, under the command of Lt. William Calley, entered the village poised for engagement with their elusive enemy.

Massacre
As the "search and destroy" mission unfolded, it soon degenerated into the massacre of over 300 apparently unarmed civilians including women, children, and the elderly. Calley ordered his men to enter the village firing, though there had been no report of opposing fire. According to eyewitness reports offered after the event, several old men were bayoneted, praying women and children were shot in the back of the head, and at least one girl was raped and then killed. For his part, Calley was said to have rounded up a group of the villagers, ordered them into a ditch, and mowed them down in a fury of machine gun fire.

Call for Investigation
Word of the atrocities did not reach the American public until November 1969, when journalist Seymour Hersh published a story detailing his conversations with a Vietnam veteran, Ron Ridenhour. Ridenhour learned of the events at My Lai from members of Charlie Company who had been there. Before speaking with Hersh, he had appealed to Congress, the White House, and the Pentagon to investigate the matter. The military investigation resulted in Calley's being charged with murder in September 1969 -- a full two months before the Hersh story hit the streets.

Questions About Soldiers' Conduct
As the gruesome details of My Lai reached the American public, serious questions arose concerning the conduct of American soldiers in Vietnam. A military commission investigating the massacre found widespread failures of leadership, discipline, and morale among the Army's fighting units. As the war progressed, many "career" soldiers had either been rotated out or retired. Many more had died. In their place were scores of draftees whose fitness for leadership in the field of battle was questionable at best. Military officials blamed inequities in the draft policy for the often slim talent pool from which they were forced to choose leaders. Many maintained that if the educated middle class ("the Harvards," as they were called) had joined in the fight, a man of Lt. William Calley's emotional and intellectual stature would never have been issuing orders.

Orders from Above?
Calley, an unemployed college dropout, had managed to graduate from Officer's Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1967. At his trial, Calley testified that he was ordered by Captain Ernest Medina to kill everyone in the village of My Lai. Still, there was only enough photographic and recorded evidence to convict Calley, alone, of murder. He was sentenced to life in prison, but was released in 1974, following many appeals. After being issued a dishonorable discharge, Calley entered the insurance business.


Early life

Hugh Clowers Thompson Jr. was born on April 15, 1943, in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, to Wessie and Hugh Clowers Thompson. Hugh Clowers Thompson Sr. was an electrician and served in the United States Navy during the Second World War. Thompson’s father played the main role in his children’s education. He educated his children to act with discipline and integrity.

Hugh Thompson Jr. in South Vietnam, 1968 (Photo: U.S. Army)

Hugh Thompson Jr. graduated from Stone Mountain High School on June 5, 1961. Following graduation, he enlisted in the United States Navy and served in a naval mobile construction battalion at Naval Air Station Atlanta, Georgia, as a heavy equipment operator. In 1964, Thompson received an honorable discharge from the Navy and returned to Stone Mountain to live a quiet life and raise a family with his wife. He studied mortuary science and became a licensed funeral director.

When the Vietnam War began, Thompson felt obliged to return to military service. In 1966, Thompson enlisted in the United States Army and completed the Warrant Officer Flight Program training at Fort Wolters, Texas, and Fort Rucker, Alabama. In late-December 1967, at the age of 25, Hugh Thompson was ordered to Vietnam and assigned to Company B, 123rd Aviation Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Division.


The Shameful History of the My Lai Massacre

What was the My Lai Massacre?

The My Lai Massacre was a brutal event in the Vietnam War where 347-504 unarmed citizens (mostly women and children) in South Vietnam were savagely murdered. The My Lai Massacre was conducted by a unit of the United States Army on March 16, 1968.

A number of the victims of the My Lai massacre were beaten, raped, tortured and some of the bodies were mutilated post mortem. The My Lai Massacre occurred in the hamlets of My Lai and the My Khe village during the Vietnam War. Originally 26 soldiers of the United States armed forces unit were initially charged for these criminal offenses, only soldier William Calley was convicted. Calley, who was convicted with the killing of 22 civilians during the My Lai massacre, was originally given a life sentence however, the soldier only served three years under house arrest.’

When the My Lai Massacre tragedy went public, the news prompted widespread outrage throughout the globe. The My Lai Massacre also augmented the domestic opposition towards the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War.

On the morning of March 16, 1968 Charlie Company landed in the hamlets of My Lai where they found no enemy resistance. The troops initially figured that the opposition was hiding underground in their family’s homes a belief that prompted the American soldiers to enter homes and start shooting. Once the first civilians were killed by indiscriminate fire, the soldiers went on attack, shooting at humans and animals of the village with heavy firearms, bayonets and grenades.

Large groups of villagers were rounded up by the 1st Platoon and executed via orders given by Second Lieutenant William Calley. In addition to these egregious orders, Calley also shot two other groups of civilians with a weapon he took form a soldier who had refused to participate in further killings.

After the initial killing executed by the 1st and 2nd Platoons, a 3rd platoon entered to deal with any “remaining resistance.” Over the next two days, the battalions were involved in additional destructions as well as the mistreatment of prisoners of war. While the majority of soldiers had not participated in these crimes, they neither protested nor complained to their superiors to halt the brutal killings.

The total body count of the May Lai massacre was never made tangible the memorial at the site lists 504 names, but the United States’ investigation revealed 347 deaths. The first reports of the May Lai massacre, in an effort to cover-up the savage slayings, claimed that “128 Viet Cong and 22 Civilians” were killed in the village during a fire fight.

On November 17, 1970 the United States Army charged 14 officers involved in the May Lai massacre with suppressing information related to the incident. The majority of these were later dropped only a Bridge commander stood trial relating to the cover-up.

Captain Medina William Calley was convicted for his chief role in the May Lai Massacre on March 29, 1971. Calley was charged with premeditated murder for ordering his troops to execute the civilians. Although calley was initially sentenced to life in prison, President Richard Nixon released him from prison, pending an appeal of his sentence.


He was America’s most notorious war criminal, but Nixon helped him anyway

On the morning of March 16, 1968, William L. Calley Jr., a 24-year-old Army lieutenant, woke up in Vietnam and prepared for an attack that would end in a slaughter.

The former insurance investigator was about to become the most notorious war criminal in U.S. history. He shaved. He combed his hair. He ate scrambled eggs and a creamed hamburger, downed some coffee and poured himself six canteens of water, according to his memoir.

He gathered his ammunition, his rifle and a cartridge belt. Then he and his fellow platoon members headed in helicopters for the hamlets of My Lai in the eastern part of South Vietnam. As his chopper hovered five feet above the ground, Calley jumped out and laid down fire before entering the village. There, he and other soldiers began massacring unarmed civilians.

“The fear: nearly everyone had it. And everyone had to destroy it: My Lai, the source of it,” Calley said of that moment in his 1971 memoir, “Lieutenant Calley: His Own Story.” “And everyone moved into My Lai firing automatic. And went rapidly, and the GIs shot people rapidly. Or grenaded them. Or just bayoneted them: to stab, to throw someone aside, to go on.”

Despite a lengthy coverup, Calley was eventually charged, court-martialed at Fort Benning, Ga., convicted of murdering at least 22 people and sentenced in 1971 to life in prison. But President Richard Nixon intervened on his behalf, sparing him from severe penalty. Nixon refused to allow Calley’s transfer to the prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., then sprung him from Fort Benning’s stockade and ordered him placed under house arrest at his apartment on base. The president also announced he would personally review Calley’s case before any sentence took effect.

Prosecutor Aubrey M. Daniel was so livid that he wrote a letter to Nixon blasting his decision.

“Sir: It is very difficult for me to know where to begin this letter as I am not accustomed to writing letters of protest,” he said in his statement. “I have been particularly shocked and dismayed at your decision to intervene in these proceedings in the midst of public clamor. . . . Your intervention has, in my opinion, damaged the military judicial system and lessened any respect it may have gained as a result of the proceedings. . . . I would expect the President of the United States . . . would stand fully behind the law of this land on a moral issue which is so clear and about which there can be no compromise.”

As Calley appealed, the military justice system reduced his sentence to 20 years, then 10. By late 1974, he was free on bail. Two years later, he was paroled. In all, he spent just a few months behind bars at Fort Leavenworth.

Now, President Trump is considering granting pardons to servicemen accused of war crimes in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The New York Times reported on May 18 that the president planned to issue them over Memorial Day weekend. But Trump backed away from the plan Friday, acknowledging that pardoning men accused or convicted of war crimes is “a little bit controversial” and needed more consideration.

Military veterans and some Republicans have condemned Trump’s interest in pardoning Special Warfare Operator Chief Edward Gallagher, who is charged with shooting unarmed civilians and killing a teenage Islamic State detainee in Iraq, then holding his reenlistment ceremony with the corpse Nicholas A. Slatten, a former Blackwater security contractor convicted of first-degree murder for his role in killing an unarmed civilian in Iraq in 2007 a group of Marine Corps snipers charged with urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters and Army Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, who faces a murder charge in the death of a suspected Taliban bomb maker.

Trump already has pardoned Michael Behenna, an Army Ranger who served five years after he stripped an al-Qaeda detainee naked, interrogated him, then shot him to death in the middle of the Iraqi desert in 2008.

On Twitter, the president also called Golsteyn a “military hero” and ordered Gallagher to “less restrictive confinement” in “honor of his past service to our Country” as he awaits trial.

However, in 1971, when Nixon intervened in Calley’s case, the commander in chief’s actions appeared to contradict his earlier leanings.

In 1969, shortly after Calley was charged, Nixon released a statement calling the My Lai Massacre “a direct violation” of U.S. military policy, “abhorrent to the conscience of all the American people.” The perpetrators, he said, would be “dealt with in accordance with the strict rules of military justice.”

Later that year, he doubled down, saying “under no circumstances” was the atrocity justified.

But by the time of Calley’s conviction, public sentiment had tilted so much in his favor that Nixon had to make a huge pivot he could not afford to risk alienating himself from Calley, whose cause was uniting the left and the right.

Veterans and supporters of the Vietnam War believed Calley was simply carrying out orders and doing all he could to protect himself and the country. American Legion posts, Veterans of Foreign Wars and other groups organized rallies demanding presidential clemency.

In Oklahoma, a 20-car rush-hour parade carried signs that read, “Free Calley!”

“Calley’s name became a rallying cry for some hawkish soldiers, and one artillery battalion painted across one of its big guns the legend, ‘Calley’s Avenger,’” wrote New York Times journalist Richard Hammer in his 1971 book, “The Court-Martial of Lt. Calley.”

The left had his back, too, including the pediatrician Benjamin Spock, who himself beat back criminal charges that he conspired with others to persuade men to violate their draft orders. After Nixon ordered Calley released from the stockade at Fort Benning, Spock denounced his conviction: “[I]t’s too bad that one man is being made to pay for the brutality of the whole war.”

A song, “Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley,” sold 200,000 copies. One passage goes like this: “My name is William Calley, I’m a soldier of this land/ I’ve tried to do my duty and to gain the upper hand/ But they’ve made me out a villain, they have stamped me with a brand/ As we go marching on/ I’m just another soldier from the shores of U.S.A./ Forgotten on the battlefield 10,000 miles away.”

Perhaps more than anything, people felt sorry for Calley. How was it that so many Vietnamese civilians could be slaughtered — at least 504 were killed — but only one person convicted of playing a direct role in the killings?

Eleven other men were charged with murder, maiming or assault with the intent to commit murder, but their cases were abandoned before trial or they were acquitted. To many, Calley was no villain. In fact, according to polls at the time of his conviction, a majority of Americans regarded him as a scapegoat.

“We as a nation cannot wipe away this blemish from the national conscience by finding one man guilty,” Sen. Frank Moss (D-Utah) and Rep. Richard Fulton (D-Tenn.) said at the time, according to Hammer’s book. “We all share the guilt.”

So who was this man who would go down as one of America’s worst war criminals?

Calley was born in June 1943, the second oldest of four children and the only boy. He grew up in a middle-class household in Miami, where his father, a World War II Navy veteran, ran a company that sold heavy construction equipment.

In school, he performed poorly and was caught cheating in seventh grade. He dropped out of his high school, joined the Florida Military Academy in Fort Lauderdale, but quit before transferring to another military academy in Georgia. He quit that academy, too, before finally settling on Miami Edison Senior High School. He graduated in 1962, ranking 666th out of 731 students.

That fall, he enrolled at Palm Beach Junior College and worked side gigs as a busboy, dishwasher, bellman, short-order cook and carwash attendant, according to Hammer’s book. At school, he flunked most of his courses. He tried to enlist in the Army in 1964, but was rejected.

He worked as a railway switchman and then as an insurance investigator. He was in San Francisco when he received word that his draft board in Miami was looking for him. He enlisted instead.

His Army superiors, apparently impressed with his military school experience, believed he should attend Officer Candidate School (OCS). In March 1967, he was sent to Fort Benning, where — again — he graduated near the bottom of his class. Calley deployed to Vietnam as a member of the 11th Light Infantry Brigade and a platoon leader in Charlie Company.

“One thing at OCS was nobody said, ‘Now, there will be innocent civilians there,’” Calley wrote in his memoir. “It was drummed into us, ‘Be sharp! On guard! As soon as you think these people won’t kill you, ZAP! In combat, you haven’t friends! You have enemies!’ Over and over at OCS we heard this and I told myself, I’ll act as if I’m never secure. As if everyone in Vietnam would do me in. As if everyone’s bad.”

After additional training in Hawaii, Calley and his fellow soldiers took a Pan Am flight to Vietnam, landing on Dec. 1, 1967. Three and a half months later, Calley and his comrades would open fire on My Lai.


Quotations: My Lai massacre

A selection of Vietnam War quotations pertaining to the My Lai massacre of March 1968. These quotations have been researched, selected and compiled by Alpha History authors. If you would like to suggest a quotation for this collection, please contact us.

“I’m going to go over and get them out of the bunker myself. If the squad opens up on them, shoot ’em.”
Hugh Thompson, Jr., US pilot, to his crew at My Lai, March 1968

“[Hugh] Thompson landed again… walked over to this lieutenant, and I could tell they were in a shouting match. I thought they were going to get in a fistfight. He told me later what they said. Thompson: ‘Let’s get these people out of this bunker and get ’em out of here.’ Brooks: ‘We’ll get ’em out with hand grenades.’ Thompson: ‘I can do better than that. Keep your people in place. My guns are on you.’ Hugh was outranked, so this was not good to do, but that’s how committed he was to stopping it.”
Lawrence Colburn, a member of Thompson’s helicopter crew

“The most disturbing thing I saw [at My Lai] was one boy – and this is what haunts me – a boy with his arms shot off, shot up and hanging on, and he just had this bewildered look on his face, like ‘What did I do?’… He couldn’t comprehend.”
Fred Wilmer, ‘C’ Company

“He just stood there with big eyes staring around like he didn’t understand. He didn’t believe what was happening. Then the captain’s RTO (radio operator) put a burst of M-16 fire into him.”
‘Butch’ Gruver, ‘C’ Company

“It was terrible. They were slaughtering villagers like so many sheep.”
Sergeant Larry La Croix, June 1968

“I feel that they were able to carry out the assigned task, the orders that meant killing small kids, killing women, because they were trained that way. They were trained that when you get into combat, it’s either you or the enemy.”
Kenneth Hodges, ‘C’ company sergeant

“A sweep operation was conducted recently… Crazy American enemy used light machine guns and all kinds of weapons to kill our innocent civilian people in [My Lai]. Most of them were women, kids, just born babies and pregnant women. They shot everything they saw. They killed all domestic animals. They burned all people’s houses. There were 26 families killed completely – no survivors… The American wolf forgot its good sheep’s appearance. They opened mouth to eat, to drink our people blood with all their animal barbarity. Our people have only one way: it is to kill them so they can not bite anymore.”
Viet Cong radio broadcast on My Lai, 1968

“There may be isolated cases of mistreatment of civilians and POWs [by US military personnel] but this by no means reflects the general attitude throughout the division… In direct refutation of this [Tom Glen’s] portrayal is the fact that relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent.”
Colin Powell, US Army major, 1968

“Exactly what did occur in the village of Pinkville in March 1968 I do not know for certain, but I am convinced that it was something very black indeed… I feel that I must take some positive action on this matter. I hope that you will launch an investigation immediately and keep me informed of your progress. If you cannot, then I don’t know what other course of action to take.”
Ron Ridenhour, March 1969

“I have considered sending this to newspapers, magazines and broadcasting companies, but I somehow feel that investigation and action by the Congress of the United States is the appropriate procedure… As a conscientious citizen, I have no desire to further besmirch the image of the American serviceman in the eyes of the world.”
Ron Ridenhour, March 1969

“It is concluded that during the period March 16th-19th 1968, troops of Task Force Barker massacred a large number of Vietnamese nationals in the village of Son My. Knowledge as to the extent of the incident existed at company level… Efforts at division command level to conceal information concerning what was probably believed to be the killing of 20-28 civilians actually resulted in the suppression of a war crime of far greater magnitude. The commander of the 11th Brigade, upon learning that a war crime had probably been committed, deliberately set out to conceal the fact from proper authority and to deceive his commander concerning the matter.”
Summary of findings of the Peers Commission, 1970

“The only crime I have committed is in judgement of my values. Apparently, I valued my troops’ lives more than I did the lives of the enemy.”
William Calley, ‘C’ Company lieutenant

“It’s why I’m old before my time. I remember it all the time. I’m all alone and life is hard. Thinking about it has made me old… I won’t forgive as long as I live. Think of the babies being killed, then ask me why I hate them.”
A Vietnamese survivor of the My Lai massacre


Watch the video: The My Lai Massacre: History, Lessons, and Legacy