My Lai Massacre Research Paper

My Lai Massacre

The Vietnam War started off just a civil rights battle within the country, but it later intensified to something way bigger. The United States ended up getting involved and it got very serious. The United States did a draft causing many men to go to the war to fight for the Vietnamese people rights. During the time in Vietnam, soldiers had to do many things they didn’t like. An example would be the My Lai massacre. The My Lai massacre was not necessary and it could have been avoided, but since it wasn’t innocent people died and women were raped.

The My Lai massacre occurred on March 16,1968. It was said to be “the biggest thing going in the American Division that day” (Hersh 46). There were about three platoons from

the Charlie Company that landed to do the sweep. The first platoon had about twenty-five men, and the second and third platoon had about fifty men. Most of the men who were in the Charlie Company volunteered for the draft. Half of them were black and few of them were Mexican- Americans. Also they were mostly eighteen through twenty-two so they didn’t have a lot of knowledge. When they arrived they were shooting people without hesitation and reluctance. “’We thought it was a VC’. He was standing and waving his arms. Cowen fell back and said,’ shoot the so-so.’ I fired once, and then my {rifle] magazine fell out.” (Hersh 45). The United States soldier’s problem was they didn’t know who was the enemy. They also didn’t care because in Lieutenant Calley eyes everyone was the enemy.
In the My Lai massacre “hundreds Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai were murdered, and many raped” (Kerry 893).

When they arrived they only thing the soldiers saw were villagers getting ready for their day and eating breakfast. That didn’t stop them from killing people. In the next hours the same day they murdered about 504 civilians in Vietnam. The crazy thing about them being murdered is even before they were murdered the soldiers were told to line them up in a ditch then shot them. Fifty children three years and younger, sixty-nine people between the age four and seven years old, and around twenty-seven people between seventy and eighty years were among the rest of the Vietnamese people who got murdered. As for the women being raped nobody knows how many. That wasn’t even the worst part about the massacre. They carved the phrase “C Company” in people’s bodies to let the rest of the Vietnamese people know who did it. The C was an abbreviation for Charlie. That wasn’t the only time the Charlie Company did cruel things. In one of my sources called My Lai 4 it says “After many weeks of no combat, the company began to systematically beat its prisoners, and it began to be less discriminating about who was—or was not—a VC” (Hersh

24).
Many soldiers in the Charlie Company refused to shoot the Vietnamese people. One of the soldiers who refused to shoot was a guy name Robert Maples. He been suspicious of how Calley ran things. He said “He [Calley] was jeopardizing his people, their lives, and whatnot, just for his reputation”. He did not want to shoot innocent people and he didn’t change his mind even after his own commander officer put his gun to him. Another person who refused to do orders was High Thompson. He threatened to shoot one of his own American fellow troops in order to save a Vietnamese women and her children from the massacre. He didn’t think it was fair for them to kill the innocent people, so he called his gunship people to rescue the Vietnamese civilans who were there. If anybody tried to stop him, he was going to kill them. This was not respected at all, especially from Lieutenant Calley. Lieutenant Calley “men were the foot soldiers, the ‘GI Joes’ who understood they were to take orders and not question it”(Hersh 18).
One bad thing the soldiers did was try to cover up the massacre. The 11th Brigade only reported killing one hundred and twenty-eight Viet Cong civilians during the operation. They also only brought back three weapons that they so called “captured”. Another lied they told was that they only killed twenty to thirty civilians. They got caught lying because the helicopter pilot said it was more civilians than that.” The massacre was covered up until a 22-year-old helicopter gunner in another unit, Ron Ridenhour, wrote letters to 30 congressional and military officials a year later detailing the events at My Lai.” (Digital History 1).
Lieutenant Calley was well respected before this incident. His soldiers claimed he did everything for them and never let them go empty handed. He had many good qualities but he also had bad ones. According to Hersh “Calley was always trying to do things that would make him out to be a hero”. Calley always wanted to be the first one to do anything. He also was cocky since he knew he was the boss and nobody could tell him what to do. That changed when he stated Medina gave out the orders to kill everyone in the village including children and women. Lietuenant Calley said Medina said “’ our job.. is to go in rapidly and to neutralize everything. To kill everything” (Sack 89). Everyone knew that was lie since he was the main one pushing the soldiers to kill the civilians. In the book My Lai 4 it says Medina said “I don’t know what they’re doing. The first platoon’s in the lead. I am trying to stop it” (Hersh 62). So Medina couldn’t be the blame for all the murders only Calley could. He allowed everything to transpire and he convinced the soldiers they had to do it. He killed many himself as well. “Then the children who were old enough to walk got up and Calley began to shoot the children” (Hersh 62). So he wasn’t innocent at all and the court knew that.
The court ended up charging “Twenty-Five men plus enlisted soldiers ... with war crimes or military offenses” (Kerry 893). Out of the twenty-give men only one person was found guilty and that was Calley. He was found guilty for “premeditated murder of at least twenty-two people” (Kerry 893). The rest of the men who were being charged either got cleared or their charges was later eventually dropped. Calley only got in trouble because “he personally participated in the killing of some noncombatants in and around My Lai” (Goldstein 342). Also because “he failed to report the killings of noncombatants in and around My Lai(4) as a possible war crime as required by MACV Directive 20-“ (Goldstein 342). Calley was sentenced to a life sentence, which was reduced to twenty years at first then ten years. He didn’t serve all ten years. He only served three years and he got out on parole.
After this massacre thing changed. The soldiers and people in charged had to report the body counts of dead people. It was said that” many soldiers testified that the counts that came from the field were routinely inflated” (Kerry 893). That wasn’t the only thing that changed. People’s thoughts on the Vietnam War changed tremendously. Citizens of the United State were sick of the lies and sick of the war. According to PBS, America was unknown of the massacre until “sixteen months after the incident” They only found out what happened because a reporter name Seymour Hersh published his story in newspapers. He got all his information from an old member of the Charlie Company. Everyone wanted the truth and they wanted the end to the war. After the truth came out Calley was known for being a monster since he did horrible things to innocent people.