MAKING HISTORY SKILLS BOOK Who was Responsible for the My Lai Massacre?


On 16 March, 1968, more than 500 Vietnamese civilians were murdered by US soldiers from Charlie Company. The events of My Lai were then covered up for over a year until the news was broken by a journalist in 1969.


Following an investigation into the massacre 14 officers were charged with committing a crime but only one, commanding officer Lt. Calley, was convicted with the murder of 109 civilians. He was sentenced to life imprisonment but only served three years under house arrest.


Who was responsible for the My Lai Massacre? Study the sources below and complete the exercises that follow.


LSource 1: An article from BBC News, 1998 Soldiers went berserk, gunning down unarmed men, women, children and babies. Families which huddled together for safety in huts or bunkers were shown no mercy. Those who emerged with hands held high were murdered. Some of the 120 or so soldiers opted out of the killing spree, but troop commander Lt William Calley was not one of them. In one incident, Lt Calley ordered two of his men to fire on a group of 60 civilians they had rounded up. When one refused, Calley took over and, standing 10 feet from the crowd, blazed his gun at them. Elsewhere in the village, other atrocities were in progress. Women were gang raped; Vietnamese who had bowed to greet the Americans were beaten with fists and tortured, clubbed with rifle butts and stabbed with bayonets. Some victims were mutilated with the signature ‘C Company’ carved into the chest.


LSource 2: Seymore Hersh, The Massacre at My Lai, 1970 The killings began without warning … Stanley [a soldier who witnessed the massacre] saw ‘some old women and some little children – fifteen or twenty of them – in a group around a temple where some incense was burning. They were kneeling and crying and praying, and various soldiers... walked by and executed these women and children by shooting them in the head with their rifles.’ There were few physical protests from the people; about eighty of them were taken quietly from their homes and herded together in the plaza area. A few hollered out, ‘No VC, No VC,’ … Women were huddled against children, vainly trying to save them. Some continued to chant, ‘No VC.’ Others simply said, ‘No. No. No.’ Carter [another solider] recalled that some GIs were shouting and yelling during the massacre: ‘The boys enjoyed it. When someone laughs and jokes about what they’re doing, they have to be enjoying it.’ A GI said, ‘Hey, I got me another one.’ Another said, ‘Chalk up one for me.’ Even Captain Medina was having a good time…


LSource 3: Gary G. Kohls, speech given at The My Lai Massacre Revisited, 2009 According to many of the soldiers in Company C, [Captain] Medina ordered the killing of ‘every living thing in My Lai,’ including, obviously, innocent non-combatants – men, women, children and even farm animals. Lt. Calley was charged with the murder of 109 civilians. In his defense statement he stated that he had been taught to hate all Vietnamese, even children, who, he was told, ‘were very good at planting mines.’ The massacre was documented by many of Medina’s soldiers and recorded by photographers, but the Army still tried to


cover it up. The cases were tried in military courts with juries of Army officers, which eventually either dropped the charges against all of the defendants (except Calley) or acquitted those accused. Medina and all the others who were among the killing soldiers that day went free, and only Calley was convicted of the murders of ‘at least 20 civilians.’ He was sentenced to life imprisonment for his crime, but, under pressure from patriotic pro-war Americans, President Nixon pardoned him within weeks of the verdict.


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