A collection of photo illustrated war and post war vignettes, short stories, war nightmares, war poetry and travel writing by a Vietnam combat medic. Site includes war related videos and documents. There is some harsh language.
On the morning of 16 March 1968 Army Lieutenant William Calley Jr. led his platoon into a small Vietnamese village. There had been no report of enemy fire, yet Calley ordered the men to begin shooting. Terrified old men, women and children were slaughtered by grenades, rifles, bayonets and machine guns. Some were piled in ditches that became mass graves; others burned to death in their huts, set ablaze by the Americans. No Viet Cong were discovered in the village, no shots were fired in opposition and no U.S. troops were wounded.
What became known as the My Lai massacre is the most notorious – among many atrocities – committed by U.S. soldiers during the war against the Americans, as it it is called in Vietnam.
Medic requested Calley’s military records from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. Two pages were provided.
Much has been written about Calley’s 1st platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion /20th Infantry, 11th Light Infantry Brigade, part of the larger Task Force Barker, assigned to the area known as Pinkville, so named after the abundant red markers on intel maps indicating the presence of Viet Cong. What follows is a brief description of one fatal morning in a small coastal hamlet in central Vietnam.
My Lai, located in the South Vietnamese district of Son My, was collection of hamlets. The surrounding area was considered a Viet Cong stronghold; it was heavily mined. Charlie Company had taken heavy casualties from the mines; the surviving grunts, new to combat, under Calley’s inexperienced leadership entered the village seeking revenge. The official American estimate of those murdered is 347, but at the My Lai museum a marble plaque lists the names and ages of 504 victims. 24 families were completely wiped out. Included in the 504 were 60 elderly men, and 282 women, 17 of whom were pregnant, 173 children, and 53 infants.
Hugh Thompson
As the Americans rampaged through the village, shooting, raping and killing unarmed men, women and children, Hugh Thompson Jr., a helicopter pilot, flying over the site to provide close-air ground support, spotted dead and wounded civilians. The chopper crew repeatedly radioed for help for the wounded, then landed by a ditch full of bodies; some still alive. Thompson asked Charlie Company 1st platoon sergeant David Mitchell if he would help getting the people out of the ditch. Mitchell replied that he would “help them out of their misery.” Thompson, shocked and confused, then spoke with Lt. Calley, who claimed to be “just following orders.” As the helicopter took off, Thompson saw Mitchell firing into the ditch.
Thompson and his crew witnessed an unarmed woman being kicked and shot point-blank by Charlie company commander Captain Ernest Medina, who later claimed he thought she had a hand grenade. Thompson then saw a group of civilians at a bunker being approached by men from Charlie company. He told his crew that if the soldiers shot at the villagers while he was trying to help them, they were to open fire on the troops.
Thompson later testified that he spoke with 2nd platoon leader Lt. Stephen Brooks, telling him there were women and children in the bunker, and asked if the lieutenant would help get them out. According to Thompson, “He 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 inside the bunker, coaxed them out and led them to the helicopter, standing with them while they were flown out in two groups.
Returning to My Lai, Thompson and other air crew members noticed several large groups of bodies. Spotting survivors in a ditch, Thompson landed again. A crew member, Spec 4 Glenn Andreotta, entered the ditch and returned with a bloodied but apparently unharmed four-year-old girl, who was then flown to safety.
Very quickly Thompson received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions at My Lai. The citation for the award fabricated events, for example praising Thompson for taking to a hospital a Vietnamese child “caught in intense crossfire”. It also stated that his “sound judgment had greatly enhanced Vietnamese–American relations in the operational area. ” Thompson threw away the citation.
The Cover Up Begins
Upon returning to his base Thompson reported to his section leader, Captain Barry Lloyd, that the American infantry were no different from Nazis in their slaughter of innocent civilians: “It’s mass murder out there,” he said. “They’re rounding them up and herding them in ditches and then just shooting them.” Instead of an investigation, thus began an extensive cover up that would involve several high ranking officers. Three days after the American’s had gone beserk Americal brigade commander Colonel Oran Henderson reported to General George Young, the Americal’s assistant commander, that his investigation was complete and that there had been no indiscriminate killing at My Lai. Despite overwhelming evidence, he issued a commendation for Captain Medina, and bizarrely, after interviewing several soldiers involved in the operation, issued a report stating twenty civilians had been inadvertently killed by artillery fire, and that widespread reports that hundreds had died were “propaganda” to discredit U.S. and ARVN forces. General William C. Westmoreland, at that time the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, congratulated Charlie Company for “outstanding action,” having “dealt the enemy a heavy blow.”
Colin Powell
The following year the assistant chief of staff of operations for the Americal Division assigned to investigate the matter, 31 year old Major Colin Powell, wrote that “In direct refutation of this portrayal [the massacre] is the fact that relations between Americal Division soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent.” A 2018 Army case study noted that Powell “investigated the My Lai allegations…and proved unable to uncover either wide-spread unnecessary killings, war crimes, or any facts related to My Lai …” His handling of the assignment was later characterized by some observers as “whitewashing” the atrocities of My Lai.”
Ron Ridenhour
In 1969 Huey door gunner Ron Ridenhour wrote to thirty members of Congress. Based on his conversations with members of Charlie Company who were present at My Lai, his letter detailed the unfolding massacre. Two senators and one Congressman responded, urging the Pentagon to conduct an investigation. Named after the general who conducted it, the 1970 Peers Report concluded that “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.”
The Office of the Provost Marshal General of the Army began to examine the evidence regarding possible criminal charges. Subsequently Calley was charged with several counts of premeditated murder and 25 officers and enlisted men were later charged with related crimes.
News of the atrocities did not reach the American public until a small report appeared in The New York Times on September 7 1969, confirming that Calley had been charged with murdering civilians in Vietnam. Two months later a report by Seymour Hersh appeared on the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His more detailed account, with horrific black and white photographs taken by Sergeant Ronald Haeberle, was published one week later in The Plain Dealer. For his investigative reporting Hersh won the Pulitzer Prize
The Court Martial
On 17 November 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 Oran Henderson was the only high ranking commanding officer charged with the cover-up. Henderson had flown over the area in a helicopter as the men under his command committed their atrocities.
Around 3 PM that day Henderson seems to have received a request to investigate what happened at My Lai. He ordered Captain Medina, Charlie Company’s commander, back to the massacre site to determine the precise number of civilians killed. Someone higher in the chain of command rescinded the order. Henderson may have thought an investigation was not wanted. He assembled his men and asked if anyone had participated in indiscriminate killing. Henderson reported that all responded, “No, sir.” However many of the men later testified they had responded, “No comment.”
On 18 December 1971, after a two month trial which heard 106 witnesses, Henderson was acquitted by a jury of two generals and five colonels. He stated the verdict “reaffirms the confidence any Army man can have in the military system.” Departing the Army in 1974 Henderson oversaw the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. Ironically, he coordinated responses to devastating floods in 1977 and in 1979, and led the response to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. At first declining staff advice, he proposed a five mile evacuation radius, then reconsidered to 10 miles. He later testified to Congress about the disaster. Henderson died on June 2, 1998.
During Calley’s four-month trial he repeatedly claimed he was following orders from Captain Medina, who was defended by the bristling, flamboyant, and former Marine jet fighter pilot F. Lee Bailey. On 29 March 1971 Calley was convicted of premeditated murder of not fewer than 20 people and sentenced to life in prison.
Two days later, President Richard Nixon made the controversial decision to release Calley to house arrest pending an appeal. Calley would eventually serve three and one-half years under house arrest. In September 1974, he was paroled by the Secretary of the Army.
Public opinion at the time was divided. Many American’s viewed Calley and Medina as patriots and scapegoats. Other’s thought them war criminals. After his dismissal from the Army Calley avoided public attention and worked at his father-in-laws jewelry business. On August 19, 2009, while speaking to the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus, he issued an apology for his role in the My Lai massacre: “There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai. I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.” Calley died on 28 April 2024.
The Vietnam War Crimes Working Group
Following My Lai the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group (VWCWG), a Pentagon task force, investigated alleged atrocities committed against South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops. It created a secret archive of 9,000 pages documenting 320 alleged incidents from 1967 to 1971, including 7 massacres in which at least 137 civilians died; 78 additional attacks targeting noncombatants in which at least 57 were killed, 56 were wounded and 15 were sexually assaulted; and 141 incidents of U.S. soldiers torturing civilian detainees or prisoners of war. 203 soldiers were charged with crimes, 57 were court-martialed, 23 were convicted. The VWCWG also investigated over 500 additional alleged atrocities but could not verify them.
Kali Tal / Nick Turse / Deborah Nelson
In 1990 Kali Tal, then editor of the newsletter Vietnam Generation, was tipped off to the existence of the Vietnam Working Group records by an archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Through FOIA she received some of the records and wrote a brief article in Vietnam Generation, but did not have the resources to pursue the matter. The records were declassified in 1994 and relocated to the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, where they sat largely unnoticed.
The 9,000 page archive – the largest collection of such documents to have surfaced to date – contains 320 substantiated incidents of wanton violence perpetrated by American troops on Vietnamese civilians. It also contain allegations of more than 500 atrocities that investigators could not prove or discounted. It includes investigation files, sworn statements by witnesses and status reports for senior military officers.
In total, the documents describe a seemingly permanent violent minority within U.S. Army units in Vietnam from 1967 to 1971. In contrast to the official picture of “rogue units”, with widespread duplicity at various levels of the command structure, the Vietnam Working Group archive supports widespread anecdotal evidence presented by unofficial investigations of the time, to include the Russell Tribunal, the National Veterans Inquiry, the Citizens Commission of Inquiry, and the Winter Soldier Investigation.
Nick Turse, a freelance journalist, rediscovered the archive while researching his doctoral dissertation at Columbia University. He examined most of the files, and obtained copies of about 3,000 pages, before government officials removed them from the public shelves in 2002, stating they contained personal information exempt from FOIA.
Turse collaborated with Deborah Nelson, a former staff writer and investigative editor for the Los Angeles Times. Using the documents and other sources, including interviews with participants, witnesses, survivors and former Army officials in both the United States and Vietnam, Army IG, FBI and CID records, Turse and Nelson produce a series of articles. Turse would later publish the book Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. Nelson, who won a Pulitzer Prize, published The War Behind Me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth About U.S. War Crimes. __________
In October 1986, General Young, the Americal’s assistant commander, previously censored over his investigation of the My Lai massacre, stripped of his Distinguished Service Medal, and demoted one rank, was arrested and charged with bribing a military official in hopes of winning a $1-billion contract for a trucking company.
In 2003 Hugh Thompson, the pilot who had intervened during the massacre, said of the Peers report: “The Army had Lieutenant General William R. Peers conduct the investigation. He conducted a very thorough investigation. Congress did not like his investigation at all, because he pulled no punches, and he recommended court-martial for I think 34 people, not necessarily for the murder but for the cover-up. Really the cover-up phase was probably as bad as the massacre itself, because he recommended court-martial for some very high-ranking individuals.”
In May 2004, former Major, now Secretary of State Collin Powell told CNN, “I mean, I was in a unit that was responsible for Mỹ Lai. I got there after Mỹ Lai happened. So, in war, these sorts of horrible things happen every now and again, but they are still to be deplored.” Powell, who prior to the first Gulf war falsely testified to Congress about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, died in 2021.
William Calley Jr.
What became known as the My Lai massacre is the most notorious – among many atrocities – committed by U.S. soldiers during the war against the Americans, as it it is called in Vietnam.
Medic requested Calley’s military records from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. Two pages were provided.
Much has been written about Calley’s 1st platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion /20th Infantry, 11th Light Infantry Brigade, part of the larger Task Force Barker, assigned to the area known as Pinkville, so named after the abundant red markers on intel maps indicating the presence of Viet Cong. What follows is a brief description of one fatal morning in a small coastal hamlet in central Vietnam.
My Lai, located in the South Vietnamese district of Son My, was collection of hamlets. The surrounding area was considered a Viet Cong stronghold; it was heavily mined. Charlie Company had taken heavy casualties from the mines; the surviving grunts, new to combat, under Calley’s inexperienced leadership entered the village seeking revenge. The official American estimate of those murdered is 347, but at the My Lai museum a marble plaque lists the names and ages of 504 victims. 24 families were completely wiped out. Included in the 504 were 60 elderly men, and 282 women, 17 of whom were pregnant, 173 children, and 53 infants.
Hugh Thompson
As the Americans rampaged through the village, shooting, raping and killing unarmed men, women and children, Hugh Thompson Jr., a helicopter pilot, flying over the site to provide close-air ground support, spotted dead and wounded civilians. The chopper crew repeatedly radioed for help for the wounded, then landed by a ditch full of bodies; some still alive. Thompson asked
Charlie Company 1st platoon sergeant David Mitchell if he would help getting the people out of the ditch. Mitchell replied that he would “help them out of their misery.” Thompson, shocked and confused, then spoke with Lt. Calley, who claimed to be “just following orders.” As the helicopter took off, Thompson saw Mitchell firing into the ditch.
Thompson and his crew witnessed an unarmed woman being kicked and shot point-blank by Charlie company commander Captain Ernest Medina, who later claimed he thought she had a hand grenade. Thompson then saw a group of civilians at a bunker being approached by men from Charlie company. He told his crew that if the soldiers shot at the villagers while he was trying to help them, they were to open fire on the troops.
Thompson later testified that he spoke with 2nd platoon leader Lt. Stephen Brooks, telling him there were women and children in the bunker, and asked if the lieutenant would help get them out. According to Thompson, “He 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 inside the bunker, coaxed them out and led them to the helicopter, standing with them while they were flown out in two groups.
Returning to My Lai, Thompson and other air crew members noticed several large groups of bodies. Spotting survivors in a ditch, Thompson landed again. A crew member, Spec 4 Glenn Andreotta, entered the ditch and returned with a bloodied but apparently unharmed four-year-old girl, who was then flown to safety.
Very quickly Thompson received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions at My Lai. The citation for the award fabricated events, for example praising Thompson for taking to a hospital a Vietnamese child “caught in intense crossfire”. It also stated that his “sound judgment had greatly enhanced Vietnamese–American relations in the operational area. ” Thompson threw away the citation.
The Cover Up Begins
Upon returning to his base Thompson reported to his section leader, Captain Barry Lloyd, that the American infantry were no different from Nazis in their slaughter of innocent civilians: “It’s mass murder out there,” he said. “They’re rounding them up and herding them in ditches and then just shooting them.” Instead of an investigation, thus began an extensive cover up that would involve several high ranking officers. Three days after the American’s had gone beserk Americal brigade commander Colonel Oran Henderson reported to General George Young, the Americal’s assistant commander, that his investigation was complete and that there had been no indiscriminate killing at My Lai. Despite overwhelming evidence, he issued a commendation for Captain Medina, and bizarrely, after interviewing several soldiers involved in the operation, issued a report stating twenty civilians had been inadvertently killed by artillery fire, and that widespread reports that hundreds had died were “propaganda” to discredit U.S. and ARVN forces. General William C. Westmoreland, at that time the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, congratulated Charlie Company for “outstanding action,” having “dealt the enemy a heavy blow.”
Colin Powell
The following year the assistant chief of staff of operations for the Americal Division assigned to investigate the matter, 31 year old Major Colin Powell, wrote that “In direct refutation of this portrayal [the massacre] is the fact that relations between Americal Division soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent.” A 2018 Army case study noted that Powell “investigated the My Lai allegations…and proved unable to uncover either wide-spread unnecessary killings, war crimes, or any facts related to My Lai …” His handling of the assignment was later characterized by some observers as “whitewashing” the atrocities of My Lai.”
Ron Ridenhour
The Office of the Provost Marshal General of the Army began to examine the evidence regarding possible criminal charges. Subsequently Calley was charged with several counts of premeditated murder and 25 officers and enlisted men were later charged with related crimes.
News of the atrocities did not reach the American public until a small report appeared in The New York Times on September 7 1969, confirming that Calley had been charged with murdering civilians in Vietnam. Two months later a report by Seymour Hersh appeared on the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His more detailed account, with horrific black and white photographs taken by Sergeant Ronald Haeberle, was published one week later in The Plain Dealer. For his investigative reporting Hersh won the Pulitzer Prize
The Court Martial
On 17 November 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 Oran Henderson was the only high ranking commanding officer charged with the cover-up. Henderson had flown over the area in a helicopter as the men under his command committed their atrocities.
Around 3 PM that day Henderson seems to have received a request to investigate what happened at My Lai. He ordered Captain Medina, Charlie Company’s commander, back to the massacre site to determine the precise number of civilians killed. Someone higher in the chain of command rescinded the order. Henderson may have thought an investigation was not wanted. He assembled his men and asked if anyone had participated in indiscriminate killing. Henderson reported that all responded, “No, sir.” However many of the men later testified they had responded, “No comment.”
On 18 December 1971, after a two month trial which heard 106 witnesses, Henderson was acquitted by a jury of two generals and five colonels. He stated the verdict “reaffirms the confidence any Army man can have in the military system.” Departing the Army in 1974 Henderson oversaw the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. Ironically, he coordinated responses to devastating floods in 1977 and in 1979, and led the response to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. At first declining staff advice, he proposed a five mile evacuation radius, then reconsidered to 10 miles. He later testified to Congress about the disaster. Henderson died on June 2, 1998.
Two days later, President Richard Nixon made the controversial decision to release Calley to house arrest pending an appeal. Calley would eventually serve three and one-half years under house arrest. In September 1974, he was paroled by the Secretary of the Army.
Public opinion at the time was divided. Many American’s viewed Calley and Medina as patriots and scapegoats. Other’s thought them war criminals. After his dismissal from the Army Calley avoided public attention and worked at his father-in-laws jewelry business. On August 19, 2009, while speaking to the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus, he issued an apology for his role in the My Lai massacre: “There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai. I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.” Calley died on 28 April 2024.
The Vietnam War Crimes Working Group
Following My Lai the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group (VWCWG), a Pentagon task force, investigated alleged atrocities committed against South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops. It created a secret archive of 9,000 pages documenting 320 alleged incidents from 1967 to 1971, including 7 massacres in which at least 137 civilians died; 78 additional attacks targeting noncombatants in which at least 57 were killed, 56 were wounded and 15 were sexually assaulted; and 141 incidents of U.S. soldiers torturing civilian detainees or prisoners of war. 203 soldiers were charged with crimes, 57 were court-martialed, 23 were convicted. The VWCWG also investigated over 500 additional alleged atrocities but could not verify them.
Kali Tal / Nick Turse / Deborah Nelson
In 1990 Kali Tal, then editor of the newsletter Vietnam Generation, was tipped off to the existence of the Vietnam Working Group records by an archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Through FOIA she received some of the records and wrote a brief article in Vietnam Generation, but did not have the resources to pursue the matter. The records were declassified in 1994 and relocated to the National Archives in College Park,
Maryland, where they sat largely unnoticed.
The 9,000 page archive – the largest collection of such documents to have surfaced to date – contains 320 substantiated incidents of wanton violence perpetrated by American troops on Vietnamese civilians. It also contain allegations of more than 500 atrocities that investigators could not prove or discounted. It includes investigation files, sworn statements by witnesses and status reports for senior military officers.
In total, the documents describe a seemingly permanent violent minority within U.S. Army units in Vietnam from 1967 to 1971. In contrast to the official picture of “rogue units”, with widespread duplicity at various levels of the command structure, the Vietnam Working Group archive supports widespread anecdotal evidence presented by unofficial investigations of the time, to include the Russell Tribunal, the National Veterans Inquiry, the Citizens Commission of Inquiry, and the Winter Soldier Investigation.
Nick Turse, a freelance journalist, rediscovered the archive while researching his doctoral dissertation at Columbia University. He examined most of the files, and obtained copies of about 3,000 pages, before government officials removed them from the public shelves in 2002, stating they contained personal information exempt from FOIA.
Turse collaborated with Deborah Nelson, a former staff writer and investigative editor for the Los Angeles Times. Using the documents and other sources, including interviews with participants, witnesses, survivors and former Army officials in both the United States and Vietnam, Army IG, FBI and CID records, Turse and Nelson produce a series of articles. Turse would later publish the book Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. Nelson, who won a Pulitzer Prize, published The War Behind Me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth About U.S. War Crimes.
__________
In October 1986, General Young, the Americal’s assistant commander, previously censored over his investigation of the My Lai massacre, stripped of his Distinguished Service Medal, and demoted one rank, was arrested and charged with bribing a military official in hopes of winning a $1-billion contract for a trucking company.
In 2003 Hugh Thompson, the pilot who had intervened during the massacre, said of the Peers report: “The Army had Lieutenant General William R. Peers conduct the investigation. He conducted a very thorough investigation. Congress did not like his investigation at all, because he pulled no punches, and he recommended court-martial for I think 34 people, not necessarily for the murder but for the cover-up. Really the cover-up phase was probably as bad as the massacre itself, because he recommended court-martial for
some very high-ranking individuals.”
In May 2004, former Major, now Secretary of State Collin Powell told CNN, “I mean, I was in a unit that was responsible for Mỹ Lai. I got there after Mỹ Lai happened. So, in war, these sorts of horrible things happen every now and again, but they are still to be deplored.” Powell, who prior to the first Gulf war falsely testified to Congress about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, died in 2021.
___________________
Sources / resources
wikipedia
Video interviews with members of 1st platoon, Charlie Company, 1st /20th Light Infantry Brigade
My Lai Massacre Time Line
United States v. William L. Calley, Jr.
The Court Martial of Colonel Oran Henderson
My Lai at 50 / 2018 Army report re Collin Powell findings
My Lai at 50: Ron Haeberle Recalls Photographing a Massacre (graphic images)
A My Lai a Month: Operation Speedy Express
BBC: Was My Lai one of many massacres in Vietnam?
Vietnam War Crimes Working Group
The Winter Soldier Investigation
NPR / Nick Turse /Kill Anything That Moves
Nick Turse
The Plain Dealer/ Semour Hersh
Seymour Hersh / The New Yorker “The Scene of the Crime
Seymour Hersh / DemocracyNow interview My Lai 40 Years Later
Hugh Thompson / Obit / The Guardian
Ernest Medina OBIT NY Times
William Calley obit / Los Angeles Times
Rethinking Guernica