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Sometimes there are such situations when you've stepped over the line. Such as the horrendous act that took place on March 16, 1968 in the village of Son My. The Quang Ngai Province, more than any other province in South Viet Nam, was suspected by the United States military officials as being a Viet Cong stronghold. Army intelligence reported that the Viet Cong were living with local villagers to conceal their identities. They were farmers during the daytime and guerrilla soldiers at night. The Quang Ngai Province was the target of the first major United States combat operation of the war. The province was subject to frequent bombing missions and artillery attacks. By the end of 1967, most of the dwellings in the province had been destroyed and nearly 140,000 civilians were left homeless. Charlie Company came to Viet Nam in December, 1967. It was relocated to Quang Ngai Province in January, 1968, as one of the three companies in Task Force Barker. Its mission was to put pressure upon the Viet Cong in an area of the province known as Pinkville (the province was often colored in pink on military maps). Charlie Company's commanding officer was Ernest Mendina. One of his platoon leaders was twenty-four year old William Calley, who would later be found guilty of premeditated murder. Because of the Viet Cong's ability to blend in with the common villagers, American soldiers often could not see their enemy and were vulnerable to ambushes and booby traps. On February 25, 1968 Charlie Company walked into a mine field. Three men died, and twelve were wounded. A few weeks later on March fourteenth, a small squad from Charlie Company ran into another booby trap, this time killing a popular sergeant, blinding on GI, and wounding many others. The soldiers of Charlie Company became demoralized as they lost nearly one-third of their troop in two months. Many in the company had given in to an easy pattern of violence. Prisoners were systematically beaten, unarmed civilians sometimes murdered, whole villages burned, and wells poisoned. Rapes were not uncommon. Many military leaders encouraged and rewarded kills in an effort to produce impressive body counts that could be reported to Saigon as an indication of progress. On March 16, 1968. Charlie Company was ordered to enter the Hamlet of My Lai to clear out the Viet Cong's forty-eighth battalion that was believed to be in the vicinity. The soldier's mission would be to engage the forty-eighth battalion and destroy the village of My Lai. The attack was to begin at seven-thirty in the morning. Military leaders believed the women and children would be out of the village heading for the local market by this time, leaving only the Viet Cong. The soldiers were ordered to explode brick homes, set fires to thatch homes, shoot livestock, poison wells, and destroy the enemy. That plan was that Lieutenant Calley would come down from the North, pushing the enemy East. The second platoon, led by lieutenant Brooks, would clear out the northern area. Lieutenant La Crosse's Third Platoon would stay at communications and later come in to help "clean up". By the time the helicopters carrying members of Charlie Company landed in a rice patty about one-hundred and forty yards south of My Lai, the area had already been peppered with small fires from assault helicopters. Whatever Viet Cong might have been in the vicinity of My Lai had most likely left by the time the first soldiers climbed out of the helicopters. About 20 minutes later, Calley's platoon had crossed the plaza on the town's southern edge and entered the village. They encountered families cooking rice in front of their homes. The men began their usual search-and-destroy task of pulling people from homes, interrogating them, and searching for Viet Cong. Soon the killing began. The first victim was a man stabbed in the back with a bayonet. Then a middle-aged man was picked up, thrown down a well, and a grenade lobbed in after him. A group of fifteen to twenty mostly older women were gathered around a temple, kneeling and praying. They were all executed with shots to the back of their heads. Eighty or so villagers were taken from their homes and herded to the plaza area. Meadlo and Calley began firing into the group from a distance of ten to fifteen feet. Those who were rounded up were taken primarily to two spots; one group of twenty to fifty were taken to a clearing; a second group of nearly eighty were taken to a drainage ditch. Just after eight in the morning, Lieutenant Calley told the men guarding the first group, "You know what I want you to do with them." The men watched over the group until ten minutes later when Calley returned and said, "Haven't you got rid of them yet? I want them dead. Waste them." From about ten to fifteen feet away, Calley began shooting, and ordered the men to do the same. About forty-five minutes later Calley came to the ditch where anywhere from eighty to one-hundred and fifty villagers were waiting. When some tried to crawl out of the ditch, once again Calley started shooting, and commanded his troops to do the same. A two year old avoided the bullets, crawled out of the ditch, and began to run to what used to be his home. Calley grabbed him, threw him back into the ditch, and shot him. An army helicopter piloted by Chief Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson arrived in the My Lai vicinity about nine in the morning. Thompson noticed dead and dying civilians all over the village. Thompson repeatedly saw young boys and girls being shot at point-blank range. He marked the location of the wounded and contacted another chopper to request aid for those wounded. At the same time, his crew chief , Glenn Andreotta (killed three weeks later), spotted the ditch where so many had been killed. Noting that some were still alive, Thompson landed between the ditch and Calley's defensive perimeter at nine-fifteen to nine-thirty. The response to Thompson's request for aid to the wounded was that the "only way to help them is to kill them." Thompson thought the respondent was joking, and took off. Andreotta observed a sergeant shooting into the ditch. When Thompson returned later, he saw all were dead. Thompson then saw a small boy bleeding. Once again, he marked the spot with smoke, and watched as someone shot the child. He them came across yet another bunker filled with children, and observed soldiers approaching the area. He landed again, placing himself between the bunker, and the oncoming soldiers. He told his gunner, Lawrence Colburn, that he was to set his weapon on the soldiers, and that if the troops fired while Thompson tried to get the civilians out of the bunker, Colburn was to fire on the American soldiers. He asked a Lieutenant (reportedly Brooks) to help them get the civilians out, and was told, "The only way to get them out is with a hand grenade". Soon two helicopters landed and helped evacuate the people. The mission was said to have been a complete success with a count by body count standards. One-hundred and twenty-eight Vietnamese were known to have been killed. One detail stood out, though. Only three rifles and ten hand grenades were seized from what should have been a significant enemy encampment. Overall, a total of five-hundred and four My Lai civilians were killed. The only American Casualty during this massacre was a soldier whose weapon discharged while he was cleaning it. Seventeen officers were court-martialed, but eleven were dismissed for lack of evidence. Five of those were acquitted. Only Lieutenant Calley was found guilty of premeditated murder of at least thirty-three Vietnamese . He was dishonorably discharged and sentenced to life. The sentence was reduced to twenty years by President Nixon, and after Calley had served three years of house arrest, President Nixon pardoned him. A situation like this really sheds some light on the animalistic mentality of war. William Calley was a man void of any real sense of reality or morality. During the course of the Vietnam war, watching fellow comrades dying left and right, twisted his mind into a type of killing machine. What he did was horrendous and he should never had been pardoned from his sentence. But perhaps the real problem is war itself. Under such circumstances, anyone could turn into the monster he became. Forgive it, understand it, or loathe it, My Lai will always serve as a reminder of American's tragic involvement in Vietnam. Bibliography: Word Count: 1504
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