Lt William Calley

Lessons from My Lai & The Extras

On 16th March, 1968, there was a massacre at My Lai, where US soldiers under the command of Lt. William Calley slaughtered the inhabitants of a small Vietnamese village without regard to their noncombatant status.

A helicopter gunship crew commanded by Hugh Thompson Jr. heroically put themselves in danger’s way to save threatened villagers, and also accepted the risk of court-martial when, following Thompson’s commands, they threatened to shoot their fellow US servicemen unless they stopped the slaughter. They then went on to report and testify against their murderous fellow soldiers.

Chief My Lai prosecutor William Eckhardt described how Thompson responded to what he found when he put his helicopter down: “[Thompson] put his guns on Americans, said he would shoot them if they shot another Vietnamese, had his people wade in the ditch in gore to their knees, to their hips, took out children, took them to the hospital…flew back [to headquarters], standing in front of people, tears rolling down his cheeks, pounding on the table saying, ‘Notice, notice, notice’…then had the courage to testify time after time after time.” [source]

, to use the depersonalised military lingo. It took years for the truth to come out, and even then only Calley and a few others were court-martialled, even though all indications were that a long chain of command condoning the massacre had existed. Calley and others did what their commanders were careful not to directly order although they made their approbation clear: kill, kill, kill whether they are VietCong or not. Some men who took part later acknowledged that they knew it was wrong but “went along” through group loyalty and fear of the consequences of standing apart.

Thirty years after the massacre, Hugh Thompson was finally awarded the Soldier’s Medal, “for bravery not involving direct contact with the enemy”, the closest that the US Army has come to openly acknowledging that there was no military justification for the slaughter at My Lai.

Thompson rejected any imputation that his bravery was unique, taking pains to laud one of the soldiers on the ground, who when threatened with death by his platoon-mates if he didn’t take part in the slaughter, shot his own foot off rather than kill civilians in cold blood. Not having a helicopter, that man had fewer options and no ability to save others as Thompson could, so he mutilated himself for life as the only option he could see to save his own life while not taking other’s lives.

The Military in America, from the Colonial era to the present

43 American Response to the Trial of Lt. William L. Calley HERBERT C. KELMAN AND LEE H. ... Lieutenant William Calley was tried by General Court-Martial and ...

The trial of Lt. William Calley

LIFE

This was the trial of Lt. William Calley Jr., charged with murdering 102 men, women and children during the course of a rampage by his company through the ...

Social psychology

American soldiers under the command of Lieutenant William Calley landed near the village in helicopters. The troops moved into the village, rounding up men, ...

America on trial, inside the legal battles that transformed our nation

Because the name most closely associated with My Lai is that of Lieutenant William L. Calley Jr., and because Calley's sentence was repeatedly ...