The My Lai Massacre
The My Lai (pronounced ‘me-lie’) Massacre took place on 16th March 1968 during the Vietnam War, which lasted almost 20 years. The war saw heavy American involvement, who saw it as a war against communism (North Vietnam was communist).
“By the end of the conflict, America had unleashed the equivalent of 640 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs on Vietnam.”
Many young American men were being drafted to fight in the war and the war was becoming increasingly unpopular in the United States as young celebrities, like Muhammad Ali, refused to serve in the Army.
The war had significant media coverage and many horrifying photos began to surface – some of which are from the My Lai Massacre.
The past few months had been terrible for the Charlie Company – they had lost 28 of their companions and were becoming increasingly traumatised and aggressive.
On March 15th, the Captain, Medina, and other commanders were briefed on Army intelligence saying that a Vietcong battalion was in a small group of villages called My Lai. Captain Medina later testified that Army intelligence had advised that the villagers would be shopping at a nearby marketplace and all those left would be the Vietcong, or those heavily sympathetic towards them.
The Army Intelligence would later prove faulty at best.
The American soldiers encountered noncombatants: women, children, and elderly men. Soldiers rounded up civilians in different parts of the villages. At first, those attempting to flee are shot. But then, the soldiers started to kill unarmed civilians without any pretext.
“One GI pushes a man down a well and throws an M26 grenade in after him. Over a dozen women and children praying by a temple are shot in the head by passing soldiers.”
“Two soldiers come across a woman carrying an infant and walking with a toddler; they fire at her. An elderly woman is spotted running down a path with an unexploded M79 grenade lodged in her stomach. One soldier forces a woman around the age of 20 to perform oral sex on him while holding a gun to a four-year-old child’s head.”
Those who had been rounded up are shot at. Some women were raped, and others, including a 15-year old girl, were sexually abused. Captain Medina spots a wounded woman lying on the ground, prods her with his foot, and shoots her in the head. Villages are set ablaze.
On the afternoon of March 18th, the operation finally ended, and Charlie Company was evacuated.
G.I. Veteran Ron Ridenhour finds out about 300-400 civilians being killed in April, and begins an informal investigation. Ridenhour presented his findings in letters to important officials in Washington D.C. in early 1969, sparking a military investigation.
An American army investigation eventually determined that 347 civilians were killed that day — shot, bayoneted or blasted with grenades, while a Vietnamese memorial put the toll at 504.
However, the mass killings were not exposed until November 1969, when the independent journalist Seymour Hersh wrote of it in a series of articles which eventually brought him a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting.
The My Lai Massacre inflamed the emotions of an already unhappy American public and once news of it broke, people began to demand that action be taken against the offending officers. 26 officers and soldiers were initially charged for their part in the Mỹ Lai massacre or the subsequent cover-up but only one, William Calley, was found guilty. He was convicted of the premeditated murder of twenty-two infants, children, women, and old men, and assault with intent to murder a child of about two years. He was sentenced to be dismissed from the Army and to be confined at hard labor for life, although this sentence would later be amended - he ended up being released from prison in 1976. He was only 24 at the time of the massacre and many believed that although guilty, he was made to be the ‘fall guy’ so that his superiors would not have to suffer the consequences of their actions.
Unfortunately, the massacre was just one of many horrific events that took place during the Vietnam war. In total, over 58,000 US soldiers and an estimated two million Vietnamese civilians were killed during the war, and by American government figures, about 11 million Vietnamese civilians became refugees in their own country.
In memoriam.
Other references:
https://armyhistory.org/my-lai/
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/my-lai-charlie-company-and-massacre/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-23427726
Photos were obtained from:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/mylai-massacre-evidence/