I am involved in a local community theater production of "A Few Good Men." The My Lai incident is mentioned in passing in the show and I was surprised that no one else in the cast knew what it was. So, I prepared the following memo for the cast discussing it. In addition we just passed the 40th Anniversary of that incident and I think it is worth remembering.
Who Was Lt. Calley and What Was My Lai?
Sam attempts to debunk Kafee’s planned defense that the defendant’s were just following orders. He says that’s a defense that did not work at Nuremburg or for Calley at My Lai. So what is Sam talking about?
Basics of the Massacre
On March 16, 1968 an Army platoon led by Lt. Calley entered a series of small Vietnamese villages, including My Lai, and proceeded to deliberately massacre everyone they could find. Women, children and infants were callously murdered. Even the animals were slaughtered and the water supply in wells poisoned. Villagers were herded into ditches, and then shot with M16s and machine guns. Before it ended an estimated 300-500 villagers were killed, most (if not all) were innocent civilians.
The build up for this massacre, and the prosecutions from it, no doubt inspired some of the ideas that appear in our play.
During a period of intense Viet Cong activity in the area Medina ordered elements of his company, to include Calley’s platoon, to assault a series of villages and clean out the VC elements. The exact nature of Medina’s orders are disputed. Calley, and other platoon leaders at the meeting, claim Medina said that the civilians would be leaving the villages in early morning leaving only guerillas behind. They claim Medina ordered that women and children be killed, along with livestock and the wells poisoned. Medina claims that he ordered only that guerillas be killed.
When Calley’s platoon entered My Lai they found no enemy fighters. However, they believed many were hiding in secret underground areas beneath huts and were being protected by their families. So, they started killing the families and burning the huts. The massacre started with just a few but quickly snowballed into deliberate mass killings. At no time did Calley’s platoon encounter any resistance.
A Hero Arrives From the Sky
The massacre did not begin to end until an American helicopter flew over commanded by Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson. Thompson and his crew were shocked at the massacre occurring below. He landed his helicopter near a ditch filled with bodies but from which there remained some movement. He asked a sergeant to help get the living out of the ditch. When the sergeant replied “I’ll help them out of their misery” Thompson thought he was kidding and took off. As they took off they saw the sergeant firing his M16 into the ditch.
Appalled, Thompson then saw a group of soldiers approaching another group of civilians. He landed his helicopter between the soldiers and the civilians and ordered his crew to fire on the Americans if they attempted to shoot the civilians. Thompson spoke to Calley and asked for his help in getting the women and children out. Calley responded “the only way to get them out is with a hand grenade.”
Thompson told Calley to keep his men where they were and he managed to coax about 15 women and children out. While he stood with them to protect them, he had them flown out in two groups. Then Thompson took off again and landed near the ditch filled with bodies. Detecting movement he sent a crewman who retrieved a bloodied but unharmed 4 year old girl. Thompson’s intervention finally took the momentum out of the massacre and Calley’s platoon began to withdraw back to base.
The Cover Up and Investigations
Thompson reported what he observed to his Commander, Major Watke, and his observations were confirmed by other pilots. However, Watke took no further action.
Thus began a series of cover ups. The Army initially reported heavy combat in the area with the successful operation killing 128 enemy soldiers.
Six months after the event a soldier named Tom Glen mailed General Creighton Abrams, the new U.S. commander in Vietnam about the incident. Abrams put a then Major Colin Powell (yes, THAT Colin Powell) in charge of an investigation. Powell issued a report generally downplaying the incident and stating that relations between U.S. soldiers and Vietnamese civilians were excellent. Some believed he whitewashed the whole thing and it later came up at his confirmation hearings for Secretary of State.
Things might have died there but for another soldier in the company named Rod Ridenhour who wrote detailed letters about the incident to the President and numerous members of Congress. Still, only Congressman Morris Udall made an issue of it. A real investigation started and the Army charged Calley with murder and 25 other members of the Platoon with related charges.
The public still had not heard about the event but with this prosecution it was harder to conceal. On November 12, 1969 (a year and a half after the massacre) the media broke the story in Time, Life and the CBS evening news. Newspapers published shocking pictures that showed numerous murdered children.
The Prosecutions and Related Fallout
In March 1970 the Army charged 17 officers, including Major General Sam Koster the Americal Division Commander, with crimes related to covering up the massacre. All charges were later dropped except for cover up charges against Col Henderson, the Brigade Commander. However, Henderson was acquitted at a court martial.
Calley’s charges proceeded and he claimed he was merely following Cpt Medina’s orders during a 10 month long trial by court martial. Calley was convicted in March 1971 of murder and sentenced to life in prison. However, President Nixon ordered him placed under house arrest where he stayed for 3 and 1/2 years.
As a side note, I actually lived for two years across the street from Calley some of that time while we were at Fort Benning Georgia. My father (a Lt. Colonel at the time) had received orders for what would have been his second tour in Vietnam compelling our family to move out of the standard officer’s quarters and into housing for families with a deployed service members. These were duplexes in another area of the post and the one we moved into was directly across the street from where Calley was under house arrest. A jeep with two Military Police was parked in our front yard, 24 hours a day 7 days a week to “guard” Calley.
But at the time the U.S. presence in Vietnam was winding down. My Dad’s orders were suddenly cancelled and changed to send him to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. Thus only two weeks after moving to that house across from Calley we packed up and moved again to San Antonio.
Calley’s sentence was subsequently commuted, first to 20 years, then to 10 years by the Secretary of the Army. In 1974 a federal court judge released Calley stating his trial had been fatally flawed and violated due process for a variety of reasons. The Army eventually successfully appealed that decision but Calley was never again taken into custody. Calley went on to run a jewelry store in Atlanta. He has never given any interviews. Last year Calley offered a journalist an interview for $25,000, but when confronted with hard questions about the massacre ended the interview and ran off.
Cpt Medina was also charged with ordering the massacre, but with F. Lee Bailey as his attorney, was acquitted. The defense successfully claimed he did not become aware of the massacre until it was too late to stop. However, he later admitted to the press that he did attempt to suppress evidence related to the massacre. Medina today lives in Michigan where he works in a helicopter manufacturing plant.
It would not be until 1998 that the Army recognized Thompson and the rest of his helicopter crew for their exceptional courage that helped end the massacre. In that year the Amry awarded them the Soldiers Medal, the Army’s highest medal for courage that does not involve combat with the enemy.
Some members of Calley’s platoon refused to participate in the massacre. Most notable of these was Sergeant Michael Bernhardt who refused to kill civilians even when ordered by Calley. Bernhardt later helped the truth get out by giving numerous interviews to the press and by testifying at Medina’s trial. At that trial he testified Medina threatened him and gave him more dangerous duties to prevent him from writing Congress or notifying the chain of command about the massacre.
Final Thoughts on the Relevance Today and Our Show
Calley and his men faced a situation very similar to what our soldiers Iraq, and others involved in the “war on terror,” face. The enemy is heavily mixed with the civilian population and telling one from the other can be a daunting task where a wrong decision can end your life. There is a tendency in such situations to protect yourself by saying “kill em all and let God sort them out.”
That is an immoral and illegal approach. Murder is not self defense. In the end it comes down to individuals making moral decisions. Calley, and many others in platoon made the wrong decisions. Men like Thompson and his crew, and Bernhardt, made the right decisions. It takes great courage to stand up to an illegal order, or to place yourself between a murdering mob and innocent civilians.
The final moments of our play discuss that process of decision making when Sam compels Dawson to admit that they failed in their duty by not protecting the weak and the innocent when they followed an order to not protect Santiago. Likewise, Calley and his platoon were in Vietnam to protect the very people they massacred.
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