My Lai Incident

Date: March 16, 1968

Massacre of Vietnamese civilians by a company of U.S. soldiers at My Lai in South Vietnam. The incident, which came to light in 1969, is the most prominent example of U.S. atrocities committed during the Vietnam War.

Origins and History

Army intelligence had reported the presence of Viet Cong in Son My village in the province of Quang Ngai in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). Consequently, a search-and-destroy operation was planned for the area. On the morning of March 16, 1968, Charlie Company approached Son My under the command of Captain Ernest Medina.

The Incident

The first platoon of Charlie Company, under Lieutenant William L. Calley, Jr., entered the hamlet of My Lai 4 in Son My village without taking fire or seeing weapons. Some Vietnamese were in front of their homes cooking rice. None attempted to run away, knowing that to do so would invite being shot as Viet Cong. The second platoon began gathering villagers for interrogation, and Paul Meadlo was directed to take them to Calley for questioning. Meanwhile, men in Calley’s first platoon also began rounding up Vietnamese.

The killing apparently began spontaneously. An eyewitness recalled one young soldier who stabbed a man in the back with a bayonet and then threw a second man down a well, tossing a grenade in after him. Meadlo had been left by Calley with a group of about forty Vietnamese. According to Meadlo, Calley told him, “You know what I want you to do with them.” When Calley returned to find Meadlo still guarding the villagers, he asked, “Haven’t you got rid of them yet? I want them dead.” Meadlo said that Calley started shooting and ordered Meadlo to join in. According to Army eyewitnesses, Calley personally machine-gunned three groups of villagers.

Another group of villagers was driven into an open area and ordered to sit. A machine gun was set up, and despite the villagers’ pleas for mercy, the shooting began. As the massacre accelerated, terrified Vietnamese frantically tried to escape the carnage. As they ran, helicopter gunships opened fire on them.

U.S. soldiers indiscriminately killed between two hundred and five hundred unarmed Vietnamese civilians. Women were raped, and children, including infants, bayoneted or shot. Fifteen to twenty women and children praying outside a temple were shot in the head. Witnesses also testified to the participation of Medina and members of the third platoon.

A helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson, repeatedly landed his helicopter to rescue villagers, including a baby pulled from a pile of bodies. At one point, Thompson placed himself in front of Vietnamese to protect them from Calley and his men. Thompson ordered his door gunners to fire on U.S. soldiers if they attempted to shoot the Vietnamese he was trying to rescue.

The incident might never have come to light if former infantryman Ron Ridenhour, who had heard of the massacre while in Vietnam, had not written to civilian and military officials in March, 1969. Ridenhour reported that “something rather dark and bloody did indeed occur sometime in March, 1968, in a village called ’Pinkville’[My Lai] in the Republic of Vietnam.” The formal inquiry that followed ultimately concluded that many war crimes had been committed, among them “individual and group acts of murder, rape, sodomy, maiming, and assault on noncombatants.”

Thirteen men were charged with war crimes, but only six were brought to trial. Medina and four others were acquitted, and Calley was convicted in March, 1971, of the first-degree murder of at least twenty-two Vietnamese civilians. Calley was sentenced to life in prison, a sentence reduced by President Richard M. Nixon to twenty years in response to a widespread perception that the low-ranking Calley had been made a scapegoat. Calley served three years under house arrest at Fort Benning, Georgia, before being paroled on March 19, 1974.

As punishment for failing to conduct an appropriate investigation, Major General Samuel Koster, superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) and former commander of the Americal Division, was demoted from two-star to one-star rank; and his assistant divisional commander at the time of the incident, Brigadier General George Young, lost his distinguished service medals. Both men also were issued letters of censure.

Impact

My Lai gave increased impetus to the antiwar movement as activists argued that the massacre confirmed their worst fears about U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Many members of the military and Congress expressed outrage over the violations of moral behavior and military law that My Lai represented and lamented the harm that the incident caused to the reputations of U.S. soldiers, most of whom had fought with honor and distinction in Vietnam.

The My Lai incident also focused attention on such issues as military justice, following orders as a defense against criminal charges, and the psychological effect on soldiers of fighting a war where the enemy is hard to identify, the terrain and climate are radically different from anything they had experienced, and sudden death by booby trap or ambush is a constant fear.

Subsequent Events

In 1998, Thompson and two of his comrades, Lawrence Colburn and Glenn Andreotta (killed in battle three weeks after My Lai), received Soldiers Awards for their heroic actions in My Lai.

Additional Information

The official report on the My Lai massacre by the U.S. Army’s Board of Inquiry was issued in 1970 and published in 1976 as The My Lai Massacre and Its Cover-Up: Beyond the Reach of Law? with Lieutenant General William R. Peers as principal author. Other reports include Richard Hammer’s The Court Martial of Lieutenant Calley (1971); Seymour M. Hersh’s My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath (1970); Lieutenant Calley: His Own Story, as told to John Sack (1971); and Facing MyLai: Moving Beyond the Massacre (1998), edited by David L. Anderson.