My Lai Massacre

Mỹ Lai Massacre
Thảm sát Mỹ Lai


Photo taken by US Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberle on 16 March 1968, in the aftermath of the Mỹ Lai Massacre showing mostly women and children dead on a road

Location Sơn Mỹ (village), Sơn Tịnh District, South Vietnam
Coordinates: 15°10'42"N 108°52'10"E
Date: 16 March 1968
Target: y Lai 4 and My Khe 4 hamlets
Deaths: 347 according to the United States Army (not including My Khe killings), others estimate more than 400 killed and injuries are unknown; the Vietnamese government lists 504 killed in total from both My Lai and My Khe

The Mỹ Lai massacre (/ˌmiːˈlaɪ/; Vietnamese: Thảm sát Mỹ Lai [tʰâːm ʂǎːt mǐˀ lāːj] (listen)) was the mass murder of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by United States troops in Sơn Tịnh District, South Vietnam, on 16 March 1968 during the Vietnam War. Between 347 and 504 unarmed people were killed by U.S. Army soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment and Company B, 4th Battalion, 3rd 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, and some mutilated and raped children who were as young as 12. 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 murdering 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but served three-and-a-half years under house arrest after President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence.

This war crime, which was later called "the most shocking episode of the Vietnam War", took place in two hamlets of Sơn Mỹ village in Quảng Ngãi Province. These hamlets were marked on the U.S. Army topographic maps as Mỹ Lai and Mỹ Khê.

The U.S. Army slang name for the hamlets and sub-hamlets in that area was Pinkville, and the carnage was initially referred to as the Pinkville Massacre. Later, when the U.S. Army started its investigation, the media changed it to the Massacre at Songmy. Currently, the event is referred to as the Mỹ 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 incident contributed to domestic opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, both because of the scope of killing and cover-up attempts.

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 (D–SC), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Thirty years later, these servicemen were recognized and decorated, one posthumously, by the U.S. Army for shielding non-combatants from harm in a war zone.

Mỹ Lai is the largest publicized massacre of civilians by U.S. forces in the 20th century.

{snip}

Operation

{snip}

Helicopter crew intervention


Thompson in 1966

Warrant officer Hugh Thompson Jr. played a major role in ending the Mỹ Lai Massacre and later testified in the military prosecution against the war criminals responsible.

Warrant Officer 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. 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 they could discern movement by survivors. Thompson asked a sergeant he encountered there (David Mitchell of 1st Platoon) if he could help get the people out of the ditch; 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.

{snip}

Aftermath

{snip}

Reporting, cover-up and investigation

{snip}

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. 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.

{snip}

Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, after extensive interviews with Calley, broke the Mỹ Lai story on 12 November 1969, on the Associated Press wire service; on 20 November, Time, Life and Newsweek 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.

{snip}

Letters to the Editor

By Letters to the Editor
August 6, 2024 at 4:27 p.m. EDT

Opinion | William Calley is dead. The horror of My Lai will always be with us.

Regarding The Post’s July 30 front-page obituary “Army officer became face of My Lai Massacre”:

I was drafted into the U.S. Army in July 1969, after the completion of my graduate school studies, and became a social work/psychology specialist assigned to the Mental Hygiene Consultation Service at the Martin Army Community Hospital in Fort Benning, now known as Fort Moore, Ga.

{snip}

Stephen Leeds, Alexandria

William Calley, Army officer and face of My Lai Massacre, is dead at 80

He was the only person convicted in connection with the atrocity, in which American troops killed hundreds of unarmed South Vietnamese men, women and children.

{snip picture, in unusual format}

Lt. William L. Calley Jr., flanked by two military policemen, leaves court at Fort Benning, Ga., after being sentenced to life imprisonment in 1971. (AP)

By Harrison Smith, Emily Langer, Brian Murphy and Adam Bernstein
July 29, 2024 at 7:38 p.m. EDT

{snip}