Thirty-two years ago this month, nine helicopters carrying members of Charlie
Company landed in a rice paddy just south of the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai.
Four hours later, “My Lai was no more”: its buildings were destroyed and its
inhabitants–old men, women, children–lay dead or dying in ditches. No sooner
had the massacre ended, than the cover-up began. Only because of the
persistence and courage of two men, Hugh Thompson and Ronald Ridenhour, did what
happen on the morning of March 16, 1968 come to light.

It would take three years, but finally the man who ordered the massacre of My
Lai civilians, Lieutenant William Calley, would have his fate decided by a
military jury in Fort Benning, Georgia following the longest court-martial in
United States history. Rejecting Calley’s defense of following superior orders,
the jury in March, 1971 found Calley guilty of murder and sentenced him to life
in prison. The verdict did not sit well with the American public (nearly 80%
expressed disapproval), and represented a turning point in attitudes toward the
Viet Nam war. Shortly after the Calley verdict, polls for the first time
reported that a majority of Americans disapproved of the war in Southeast Asia.

The court-martial of William Calley is tough reading, but it is a story that
contains lessons we should never forget.

Douglas Linder
University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law
linderd@umkc.edu

March 2000

Two tragedies took place in 1968 in Viet Nam.  One was the massacre
by United States soldiers of as many as 500 unarmed civilians– old men,
women, children– in My Lai on the morning of March 16.  The other
was the cover-up of that massacre.

U. S. military officials suspected Quang
Ngai Province, more than any other province in South Viet Nam, as being
a Viet Cong stronghold.  The U. S. targeted the province for the first
major U.S. combat operation of the war.  Military officials declared
the province a “free-fire zone” and subjected it 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 left homeless. 
Not surprisingly, the native population of Quang Ngai Province distrusted
Americans.  Children hissed at soldiers.  Adults kept quiet.

Two hours of instruction on the rights of prisoners and a wallet-sized
card “The Enemy is in Your Hands” seemed to
have little impact on American soldiers fighting in Quang Ngai.  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. 
GIs joked that “anything that’s dead and  isn’t white is a VC” for
body count purposes. Angered by a local population that said nothing about
the VC’s whereabouts, soldiers took to calling natives “gooks.”

Charlie Company came to Viet Nam in December, 1967.  It located
in Quang Ngai Province in January, 1968, as one of the three companies
in Task Force Barker, an ad hoc unit headed by Lt. Col. Frank Barker, Jr. 
Its mission was to pressure the VC in an area of the province known 
as “Pinkville.”  Charlie Company’s commanding officer was Ernest
Medina, a thirty-three-year-old Mexican-American from New Mexico who
was popular with his soldiers. One of his platoon leaders was twenty-four-year-old
William Calley.  Charlie Company soldiers expressed amazement
that Calley was thought by anyone to be officer material. One described
Calley as”a kid trying to play war.” [LINK
TO CHAIN OF COMMAND DIAGRAM] Calley’s utter lack of respect
for the indigenous population was apparent to all in the company. According
to one soldier, “if they wanted to do something wrong, it was alright with
Calley.” The soldiers of Charlie Company, like most combat soldiers in
Viet Nam, scored low on military exams.  Few combat soldiers had education
beyond high school.

Seymour Hersh wrote that by March of 1968 “many in the company had
given in to an easy pattern of violence.”  Soldiers systematically
beat unarmed civilians. Some civilians were murdered.  Whole villages
were burned.  Wells were poisoned. Rapes were common.

On March 14, a small squad from “C” Company ran into a booby trap,
killing a popular sergeant, blinding one GI and wounding several others. 
The following evening, when a funeral service was held for the killed sergeant,
soldiers had revenge on their mind.  After the service, Captain Medina
rose to give the soldiers a pep talk and discuss the next morning’s mission. 
Medina told them that the VC’s crack 48th Battalion was in the vicinity
of a hamlet known as My Lai 4, which would be the target of a large-scale
assault by the company.  The soldiers’ mission would be to engage
the 48th Battalion and to destroy the village of My Lai.  By 7 A.M.,
Medina said, the women and children would be out of the hamlet and all
they could expect to encounter would be the enemy.  The soldiers were
to explode brick homes, set fire to thatch homes, shoot livestock, poison
wells, and destroy the enemy.  The seventy-five or so American soldiers
would be supported in their assault by gunship pilots.

Medina later said that his objective that night was to “fire them
up and get them ready to go in there; I did not give any instructions as
to what to do with women and children in the village.”  Although some
soldiers agreed with that recollection of Medina’s, others clearly thought
that he had ordered them to kill every person in My Lai 4.  Perhaps
his orders were intentionally vague.  What seems likely is that Medina
intentionally gave the impression that everyone in My Lai would be their
enemy.

At 7:22 A.M. on March 16, nine helicopters lifted off for the flight
to My Lai 4.  By the time the helicopters carrying members of Charlie
Company landed in a rice paddy about 140 yards south of My Lai, the area
had been peppered with small arms fire from assault helicopters. 
Whatever VC might have been in the vicinity of My Lai had most likely left
by the time the first soldiers climbed out of their helicopters. 
The assault plan called for Lt. Calley’s first platoon and Lt. Stephen
Brooks’ second platoon to sweep into the village, while a third platoon,
Medina, and the headquarters unit would be held in reserve and follow the
first two platoons in after the area was more-or-less secured.  Above
the ground, the action would be monitored at the 1,000-foot level by Lt.
Col. Barker and at the 2,500-foot level by Oran
Henderson, commander of the 11th Brigade, both flying counterclockwise
around the battle scene in helicopters.

My Lai village had about 700 residents.  They lived in either
red-brick homes or thatch-covered huts.  A  deep drainage ditch
marked the eastern boundary of the village.  Directly south of the
residential area was an open  plaza area used for holding village
meetings.  To the north and west of the village was dense foliage
[MAP].

By 8 A.M., 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
VC.  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.  As many cried “No VC! No VC!”, Calley told soldier
Paul Meadlo, “You know what I want you to do with them”.  When
Calley returned ten minutes later and found the Vietnamese still gathered
in the plaza he reportedly said to Meadlo, “Haven’t you got rid of them
yet?  I want them dead.  Waste them.”  Meadlo and Calley
began firing into the group from a distance of ten to fifteen feet. 
The few that survived did so because they were covered by the bodies of
those less fortunate.

What Captain Medina knew of these war crimes is not certain. 
It was a chaotic operation.  Gary Garfolo said, “I could hear shooting
all the time.  Medina was running back and forth everywhere. 
This wasn’t no organized deal.”  Medina would later testify that he
didn’t enter the village until 10 A. M., after most of the shooting had
stopped, and did not personally witness a single civilian being killed. 
Others put Medina in the village closer to 9 A. M., and close to the scene
of many of the murders as they were happening.

As the third platoon moved into My Lai, it was followed by army photographer
Ronald Haeberle, there to document what was supposed to be a significant
encounter with a crack enemy battalion.  Haeberle took many pictures
[HAEBERLE PHOTOS]. 
He said he saw about thirty different GIs kill about 100 civilians. 
Once Haeberle focused his camera on a young child about five feet away,
but before he could get his picture the kid was blown away.  He angered
some GIs as he tried to photograph them as they fondled the breasts of
a fifteen-year-old Vietnamese girl.

An army helicopter piloted by Chief Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson
arrived in the My Lai vicinity about 9 A.M.  Thompson noticed dead
and dying civilians all over the village.  Thompson repeatedly saw 
young boys and girls being shot at point-blank range.  Thompson, furious
at what he saw, reported the wanton killings to brigade headquarters
[THOMPSON’S STORY].

Meanwhile, the rampage below continued.  Calley was at the drainage
ditch on the eastern edge of the village, where about seventy to eighty
old men, women, and children not killed on the spot had been brought. 
Calley ordered the dozen or so platoon members there to push the people
into the ditch, and three or four GIs did.  Calley ordered his men
to shoot into the ditch.  Some refused, others obeyed.  One who
followed Calley’s order was Paul Meadlo, who estimated that he killed about
twenty-five civilians.  (Later Meadlo was seen, head in hands, crying.)

Calley joined in the massacre.  At one point, a two-year-old
child who somehow survived the gunfire began running towards the hamlet. 
Calley grabbed the child, threw him back in the ditch, then shot him.

Hugh Thompson, by now almost frantic, saw bodies in the ditch, including
a few people who were still alive.  He landed his helicopter and told
Calley to hold his men there while he evacuated the civilians.  Thompson
told his helicopter crew chief to “open up on the Americans” if they fired
at the civilians.  He put himself between Calley’s men and the Vietnamese. 
When a rescue helicopter landed, Thompson had the nine civilians, including
five children, flown to the nearest army hospital.  Later, Thompson
was to land again and rescue a baby still clinging to her dead mother.

By 11 A.M., when Medina called for a lunch break, the killing was
nearly over.  By noon, “My Lai was no more”: its buildings were destroyed
and its people dead or dying.  Soldiers later said they didn’t remember
seeing “one military-age male in the entire place”.  By night, the
VC had returned to bury the dead.  What few villagers survived and
weren’t already communists, became communists.  Twenty months later
army investigators would discover three mass graves containing the bodies
of about 500 villagers.

II.

The cover-up of the My Lai massacre began almost as soon as the killing
ended.  Official army reports of the operation proclaimed a great
victory: 128 enemy dead, only one American casualty (one soldier intentionally
shot himself in the foot).  The army knew better.  Hugh Thompson
had filed a complaint, alleging numerous war crimes involving murders of
civilians. According to one of Thompson’s crew members, “Thompson was so
pissed he wanted to turn in his wings”.  An order issued by Major
Calhoun to Captain Medina to return to My Lai to do a body count was countermanded
by Major General Samuel Koster, who asked Medina how many civilians has
been killed.  “Twenty to twenty-eight,” was his answer.  The
next day Colonel Henderson informed Medina that an informal investigation
of the My Lai incident was underway– and most likely gave the Captain
“a good ass-chewing” as well. Henderson interviewed a number of GIs, then
pronounced himself “satisfied” by their answers. No attempt was made to
interview surviving Vietnamese. In late April, Henderson submitted a written
report indicating that about twenty civilians had been inadvertently killed
in My Lai. Meanwhile, Michael Bernhart, a Charlie Company GI severely troubled
by what he witnessed at My Lai discussed with other GIs his plan to write
a letter about the incident to his congressman.  Medina, after learning
of Bernhart’s intentions, confronted him and told him how unwise such an
action, in his opinion, would be.

If not for the determined efforts of a twenty-two-year-old ex-GI
from Phoenix, Ronald Ridenhour, what happened on March 16, 1968 at My Lai
4 may never have come to the attention of the American people.  Ridenhour
served in a reconnaissance unit in Duc Pho, where he heard five eyewitness
accounts of the My Lai massacre.  He began his own investigation,
traveling to Americal headquarters to confirm that Charlie Company had
in fact been in My Lai on the date reported by his witnesses.  Ridenhour
was shocked by what he learned [RIDENHOUR’S
STORY].   When he was discharged in December, 1968,
Ridenhour said “I wanted to get those people.  I wanted to reveal
what they did.  My God, when I first came home, I would tell my friends
about this and cry-literally cry.”  In March, 1969, Ridenhour composed
a letter detailing what he had heard about the My Lai massacre[LINK
TO LETTER]and sent it to President Nixon, the Pentagon, the
State Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and numerous members of Congress. 
Most recipients simply ignored the letter, but a few, most notably Representative
Morris Udall, aggressively pushed for a full investigation of Ridenhour’s
allegations.

By late April, General Westmoreland, Army Chief of Staff, had turned
the case over to the Inspector General for investigation.   Over
the next few months, dozens of witnesses were interviewed.  It 
became apparent to all connected with the investigation that war crimes
had been committed.  In June, 1969, William Calley was flown back
from Viet Nam to appear in a line-up for identification by Hugh Thompson. 
By August, the matter was in the hands of the army’s Criminal Investigation
Division for a determination as to whether criminal charges should be filed
against Calley and other massacre participants.  On September 5, 
formal charges, included six specifications of
premeditated murder, were filed against Calley.

Calley hired as his attorney George Latimer,
a Salt Lake City lawyer with considerable military experience, having served
on
the Military Court of Appeals.  Latimer pronounced himself impressed
with Calley.  “You couldn’t find a nicer boy,” he said, adding that
if Calley was guilty of anything it was only following orders “a bit too
diligently.”

Meanwhile, the issue of the My Lai massacre had gotten the attention
of President Nixon.  Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird briefed Nixon
at his San Clemente retreat.  The White House proceeded with caution,
sensing the potential of the incident to embarrass the military and undermine
the war effort.  The President characterized what happened at My Lai
as an unfortunate aberration, as “an isolated incident.”

In November, 1969, the American public began to learn the details
of what happened at My Lai 4.  The massacre was the cover story in
both Time and Newsweek.  CBS ran a Mike Wallace interview with Paul
Meadlo.  Seymour Hersh published in depth accounts based on his own
extensive interviews.  Life magazine published Haeberle’s graphic
photographs.

Reaction to the reports of the massacre varied.  Some politicians,
such as House Armed Services Subcommittee Chair L. Mendel Rivers maintained
that there was no massacre and that reports to the contrary were merely
attempts to build opposition to the Viet Nam war.  Others called for
an open, independent inquiry.  The Administration took a middle course,
deciding on a closed-door investigation by the Pentagon, headed by 
William Peers, a blunt three-star general.

For four months the Peers Panel interviewed 398 witnesses, ranging
from General Koster to the GIs of Charlie Company.  Over 20,000 pages
of testimony were taken.  The Peers Report
criticized the actions of both officers and enlisted men.  The report
recommended action against dozens of men for rape, murder, or participation
in the cover-up.

III.

The Army’s Criminal Investigation Division continued its separate
investigation.  Most of the enlisted men who committed war crimes
were no longer members of the military, and thus immune from prosecution
by court-martial.

A 1955 Supreme Court decision, Toth vs Quarles, held that
military courts cannot try former members of the armed services “no matter
how intimate the connection between the offense and the concerns of military
discipline.”  Decisions were made to prosecute a total of twenty-five
officers and enlisted men, including General Koster, Colonel Oran Henderson,
Captain Medina.  In the end, however, only few  would be tried
and only one, William Calley, would be found guilty.  The top officer
charged, General Samuel Koster, who failed to report known civilian casualties
and conducted a clearly inadequate investigation was, according to General
Peers, the beneficiary of a whitewash, having charges against him dropped
and receiving only a letter of censure and reduction in rank.  Colonel
Henderson was found not guilty on all charges after a trial by court martial. 
Peers again expressed his disapproval, writing “I cannot agree with the
verdict.  If his actions are judged as acceptable standards for an
officer in his position, the Army is indeed in deep trouble.”

Captain Ernest Medina faced charges of murdering 102 Vienamese civilians. 
The charges were based on the prosecution’s theory of command
responsibility: Medina, as the officer in charge of Charlie Company
should be accountable for the actions of his men.  If Medina knew
that a massacre was taking place and did nothing to stop it, he should
be found guilty of murder.  (Medina was originally charged also with
dereliction of duty for participating in the coverup, but the offense was
dropped because the statute of limitations had run.)  Medina was subjected
to a lie-detector test which tended to show he responded truthfully when
he said that he did not intentionally suggest to his men that they kill
unarmed civilians.  The same test, however, tended to to show that
his contention that he first heard of the killing of unarmed civilians
about 10 to 10:30 A.M. was not truthful, and that he in fact knew non-combattants
were being killed sometime between 8 A.M. and 9 A.M., when there would
still have been time to prevent many civilian deaths.  The prosecution,
led by Major William Eckhardt, was unable, however, to get the damaging
lie-detector evidence admitted.  Medina’s lawyer, flamboyant defense
attorney F. Lee Bailey, conducted a highly successful defense, forcing
the prosecution to drop key witnesses and keeping damaging evidence, such
as Ronald Haeberle’s photographs, from the jury.  After fifty-seven
minutes of deliberation, the jury acquitted Medina on all charges. 
(Months later, when a perjury prosecution was no longer possible, Medina
admitted that he had suppressed evidence and lied to the brigade commander
about the number of civilians killed.)

The strongest government case was that against Lt. William Calley. 
On November 12, 1970, in a small courthouse in Fort Benning, Georgia, young
Prosecutor Aubrey Daniel stood to deliver his opening statement: “I want
you to know My Lai 4. I will try to put you there.”  Captain Daniel
told the jury of six military officers the shocking story of Calley’s role
in My Lai’s tragedy: his machine-gunning of people in the plaza area south
of the hamlet; his orders to men to execute men, women, and children in
the eastern drainage ditch; his butt-stroking with his rifle of an old
man; his grabbing of a small child and his throwing of the child into the
ditch, then shooting him at point-blank range.  Daniel told the jury
that at the close of evidence he would ask them to “in the name of justice”
convict the accused of all charges.

Daniel built the prosecution’s case methodically.  For days,
the grisly evidence accumulated without a single witness directly placing
Calley at the scene of a shooting.  One of the early witnesses was
Ronald Haeberle, the army photographer whose pictures brought home the
horror of My Lai [TESTIMONY OF HAEBERLE]. 
Another was Hugh Thompson, My Lai’s hero.  Defense attorney Latimer’s
handling on cross of Haeberle, Thompson, and other witnesses led many courtroom
observers to conclude that his glowing reputation was undeserved. 
His questioning of Haeberle, whose credibility was largely irrelevant,
was pointless.  His attempt to question Thompson’s heroism “failed
utterly,” according to Richard Hammer, author of The Court-Martial of
Lt. Calley.

In the second week of the trial Daniel began to call his more incriminating
witnesses.  Robert Maples, a machine gunner in the first platoon,
testified that he saw Calley near the eastern drainage ditch, firing at
the people below.  Maples said that Calley asked him to use his machine
gun on the Vietnamese in the ditch, but that he refused [TESTIMONY
OF MAPLES].  Dennis Conti provided equally damning evidence. 
Conti testified that he was ordered to round up people, mostly women and
children, and bring them back to Calley on the trail south of the hamlet. 
Calley, Conti said, told us to make them “squat down and bunch up so they
couldn’t get up and run.”  Minutes later Calley and Paul Meadlo “fired
directly into the people.  There were burst and shots for two minutes. 
The people screamed and yelled and fell.”  Conti said that Meadlo
“broke down” and began crying [TESTIMONY
OF CONTI].

The prosecution’s final witness was its most anticipated witness. 
Paul Meadlo had been promised immunity from military prosecution in return
for his testimony in the Calley case, but when he was called earlier in
the trial, Meadlo had refused to answer questions about March 16, 1968,
claiming his fifth amendment right not to incriminate himself.  Daniel
called Meadlo to the stand for a second time, and the ex-GI, who had lost
a foot to a mine shortly after the massacre, limped to the stand in his
green short-sleeve shirt and green pants.  Judge Kennedy warned Meadlo
that if he refused to answer questions, two U. S. marshals would take him
into custody.

Meadlo said he would testify.  He told the jury that Calley
had left him with a large group of mostly women and children south of the
hamlet saying, “You know what to do with them, Meadlo.”  Meadlo thought
Calley meant he should guard the people, which he did.  Meadlo told
the jury what happened when Calley returned a few minutes later:

He said, “How come they’re not dead?” I said, I didn’t
know we were supposed to kill them.” He said, I want them

dead.” He backed off twenty or thirty feet and started
shooting into the people — the Viet Cong — shooting automatic. He was

beside me. He burned four or five magazines. I burned
off a few, about there. I helped shoot �em.

Q: What were the people doing after you shot them?

A: They were lying down.

Q: Why were they lying down?

A: They was mortally wounded.

Q: How were you feeling at that time?

A: I was mortally upset, scared, because of the briefing
we had the day before.

Q: Were you crying?

A: I imagine I was….

Daniel then asked Meadlo about the massacre at the eastern drainage
ditch, and in the same almost emotionless voice, Meadlo recounted the story,
telling the jury that Calley fired from 250 to 300 bullets into the ditch. 
One exchange was remarkable:

Q: What were the children in the ditch doing?

A: I don’t know.

Q: Were the babies in their mother’s arms?

A: I guess so.

Q: And the babies moved to attack?

A: I expected at any moment they were about to make
a counterbalance.

Q: Had they made any move to attack?

A: No.

At the end of Meadlo’s testimony, Aubrey Daniel rested the for the
prosecution[MEADLO’S TESTIMONY].

The defense strategy had two main thrusts.  One was to suggest
that the stress of combat, the fear of being in an area thought to be thick
with the enemy, sufficiently impaired Calley’s thinking that he should
not be found guilty of premeditated murder for his killing of civilians. 
Latimer relied on New York psychiatrist Albert LaVerne to advance this
defense argument [LAVERNE TESTIMONY]. 
The second argument of the defense was that Calley was merely following
orders: that Captain Ernest Medina had ordered that civilians found in
My Lai 4 be killed and was the real villain in the tragedy.

On February 23, 1971, William Calley took the stand.  He told
the jury he couldn’t remember a single army class on the Geneva Convention,
but that he did know he could be court-martialed for refusing to obey an
order.  He testified that Medina had said the night before that there
would be no civilians in My Lai, only the enemy.  He said that while
he was in the village, Medina called and asked why he hadn’t “wasted” the
civilians yet.  He admitted to firing into a ditch full of Vietnamese,
but claimed that others were already firing into the ditch when he arrived. 
Calley said, “I felt then–and I still do– that I acted as directed, I
carried out my orders, and I did not feel wrong in doing so” [CALLEY
TESTIMONY].

Ernest Medina was called as a witness of the court.  Medina
directly contradicted Calley’s testimony.  Medina said he was asked
at the briefing on March 15 whether “we kill women and children,” and–
looking straight at Calley behind the defense table–he said to the GIs
“No, you do not kill women and children…Use common sense.”  At the
close of his testimony, Medina saluted Judge Kennedy, then marched past
Calley’s table without glancing at him [MEDINA
TESTIMONY].

It was time for summations.  George Latimer for the defense
argued that Medina was lying about not giving the order to kill civilians,
that Medina knew perfectly well what was going on in the village, and now
he and the army were trying to make Calley a scapegoat[LATIMER
SUMMATION].  Aubrey Daniel for the prosecution asked the
jury who will speak for the children of My Lai.  He pointed out that
Calley as a U. S. officer took an oath not to kill innocent women and children,
and told the jury it is “the conscience of the United States Army”[DANIEL
SUMMATION].

After thirteen days of deliberations, the longest in U. S. court-martial
history, the jury returned its verdict: guilty of premeditated murder on
all specifications.  After hearing pleas on the issue of punishment,
jury head Colonel Clifford Ford  pronounced Calley’s sentence: “To
be confined at hard labor for the length of your natural life; to be dismissed
from the service; to forfeit all pay and allowances.”

IV.

Opinion polls showed that the public overwhelmingly disapproved of
the verdict in the Calley case [OPINION
POLLS].  President Nixon ordered Calley removed from the
stockade and placed under house arrest.  He announced that he would
review the whole decision.  Nixon’s action prompted Aubrey Daniel
to write a long and angry letter in which he told the President that “the
greatest tragedy of all will be if political expediency dictates the compromise
of such a fundamental moral principle as the inherent unlawfulness of the
murder of innocent persons” [AUBREY
LETTER].  On November 9, 1974, the Secretary of the Army
announced that William Calley would be paroled.  In 1976, Calley married. 
He now works in the jewelry store of his father-in-law in Columbus, Georgia.

My Lai mattered.  Two weeks after the Calley verdict was announced,
the Harris Poll reported for the first time that a majority of Americans
opposed the war in Viet Nam.  The My Lai episode caused the military
to re-evaluate its training with respect to the handling of noncombatants. 
Commanders sent troops in the Desert Storm operation into battle with the
words, “No My Lais– you hear?”