Remember the Rape and Massacre of My Lai in Vietnam A Reminiscence of the Burning, Rape and Massacre of Samar, the 1st Vietnam – Remember General Jacob “Jake” Smith’s Call: The More You Kill And Burn Filipinos, The More You Delight Me - US President Theodore Roosevelt instructed General “Jake” Smith to pacify Samar: “I want no prisoners,” the Smith order says, “I wish you will kill and burn more; the more you burn and kill, the better it will please me.” In the aftermath of the beastly manslaughter, more than 7,000 natives were killed by the end of the year. General Jacob “Jake” H. Smith was indicted in a Court Martial but never been punished; he retired from the service with more than 7,000 medals of Filipino Freedom Fighters slaughtered by the American Interlopers under his inhumane command. – Delmar Topinio Taclibon - 1968 – Why that year became one of the most tumultuous periods in our history will probably never be known. It began on an ominous note when one of Americas most fervent enemies, North Korea, seized a U.S. Navy intelligence ship, named the U. S. S. Pueblo, in the Sea of Japan on January 23. They held the ship and its crew for many months and nearly started a full-scale war. In Vietnam, the massive Tet Offensive, launched by the Viet Cong against almost every major city in the south, caused massive casualties. The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King touched off numerous riots in dozens of American cities. Two months later, the brother of a murdered President, Senator Robert Kennedy, was assassinated in Los Angeles. Colleges across the country were enveloped in a wave of protest and violence over the Vietnam War, which was killing hundreds of young Americans every week. Richard Nixon was elected President in November and man made his first tenuous step into eternity as Apollo 10 astronauts said Christmas prayers from the dark side of the Moon. It seemed as if anything could happen that year. The Rape and Massacre of 520 Innocent Elderly, Men, Women, Children and Infants There were so many people killed that day it is hard for me to recall exactly how some of the people died, U.S. Army Pvt. Harry Stanley said to C.I.D. investigators (as reported by Seymour M. Hersh). When Capt. Ernest Medinas chopper hit the ground, he reported over the radio that the target was cold, no incoming enemy fire. But that assessment quickly changed when Medina subsequently reported that elements of the attacking force were receiving enemy fire. Some of the attacking gunships reported suspected Viet Cong on the ground and fired upon the enemy as they raced for cover. Meanwhile, the 1st Platoon, commanded by Lt. William Calley moved from the southeast into My Lai. The first killing was an old man in a field outside the village who said some kind of greeting in Vietnamese and waved his arms at us...This was the first murder, Herbert L. Carter, a tunnel rat for Calleys 1st Platoon, later testified. As the platoon sought out secure positions, some of the local villagers began to emerge. They knew full well that if they ran, the Americans would consider them Viet Cong. Unknown to them, for this day, everyone was considered Viet Cong. The Chronology of the Pandemonium of Inhuman Mass Murder 1. Soldiers from the 1st Platoon opened fired on the Vietnamese farmers; at least 5-9 were immediately killed. Cows, pigs, chickens, water buffalo, birds and gravestones were blown apart by machine gun fire and M-79 grenade launchers. 2. The platoon advanced further into My Lai without receiving any enemy fire at all. As the villagers attempted to flee, they were pushed back into the huts and the soldiers tossed in grenades. The frenzy of killing picked up speed and each violent event began to build on the last. An old Vietnamese farmer was captured by the 1st Platoon and, for no apparent reason, was bayoneted in the chest and thrown into a well. Another farmer suffered the same fate and after the second man was thrown into the well, a grenade was tossed in afterwards. 3. In at least three instances inside the village, Vietnamese of all ages were rounded up in groups of 5-10 and were shot down. Women and children, many of whom were small babies, were killed sitting or hiding in their homes, later wrote Lt. General William Peers, who performed the Armys investigation into My Lai in 1970. Numerous rapes were committed against the young girls of the village, sometimes while their families were forced to watch. Everywhere, dead bodies of women and children littered the roads and fields of the burning hamlet. Captain Brian Livingston, a helicopter pilot and commander, wrote in a letter back home on that very day: Ive never seen so many people dead in one spot. Ninety-five percent were women and kids. 4. The civilians were then assembled into a large ditch. Unknown to them, Lt. William Calley had just been reprimanded by Capt. Ernest Medina over the radio for his slow progress through the village. Calley saw the huge group of civilians, which at that time numbered about sixty. Take care of them! Calley ordered the two soldiers and walked away. Several minutes later, Calley returned and saw the civilians still alive. I thought I told you to take care of them? Paul Meadlo responded by saying, We are. Were watching over them. No, I want them killed! Calley said. Then, as the terrified villagers cowered in fear deep inside the ditch, Calley lowered his M16 from approximately ten feet away and began to fire his weapon. Meadlo was ordered to do the same. 5. For several minutes Calley fired into the panic-stricken crowd as babies and old people were torn to shreds. Meadlo finally broke into a crying fit and could not continue. But Calley pressed on. One by one he killed each survivor who tried to stand including mothers who attempted to shield their children. Months later, the Armys investigative report summed up this event in very simple terms: The villagers were herded into a ditch with the larger group of 60-70...At approximately 0900-0915 hours, Vietnamese personnel who had been herded into the ditch were shot down by members of the 1st Platoon. 6. While the killings and the rapes continued unabated on the ground, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, 25, piloted an H-23 bubble helicopter a few hundred feet above the burning hamlet. As he orbited the area, Thompson and his two-man crew saw a wounded female in a rice paddy. As he maneuvered the chopper closer, Thompson saw an Army Captain kick the woman and shoot her in the head. A few minutes later, the crew saw dozens of bodies in a ditch near a dirt road. The chopper set down several times to investigate. The crew saw American soldiers taking a smoke break, apparently there was no ongoing firefight with the Viet Cong. 7. A few hundred yards away, the crew saw U.S. soldiers firing into another ditch filled with Vietnamese. Thompson became enraged. He couldnt believe what he was seeing. As he swept over the village, he saw about a dozen civilians splashing through the rice paddies. They were running for their lives from Charlie Company. Thompson landed his chopper between the civilians and the Americans. Lt. William Calley showed up a minute later and had heated words with Thompson who was consumed with rage. He ordered his crew to turn their machine guns on the Americans and if the soldiers intervened, to fire on the young lieutenant. Thompson herded the terrified Vietnamese onto other gunships that offered assistance and flew them to safety to Quang Ngai City. 8. Just at that moment, a small child crawled away from its mother out of the ditch. According to later testimony, Lt. Willam Calley tossed the baby back into the hole and shot the child. He then pushed the monk into the ditch and shot him without provocation. 9. Within moments, the firing started. Machine guns poured a lethal wave of death into the pit as pieces of bone and flesh flew into the air. Some of the soldiers, like Pfc. Robert Maples, refused the order to fire. He later told investigators: I do now remember that Paul Meadlo was one of those firing and he was crying at the same time. I know that he or the others did not want to kill those persons. This is not true of Lt. William Calley because he seemed to want to kill. 10. A short time later, the 3rd Platoon was sent into My Lai to clean up any resistance that remained. They immediately began to slaughter every human and animal they could find. One soldier jumped on the back of a water buffalo and stabbed the helpless animal with his bayonet. Any Vietnamese who survived the initial sweep by the 1st and 2nd platoons and emerged out from their hiding places were shot down immediately. They swept through the south side of My Lai 4 shooting anyone who tried to escape, bayoneting others, raping women, shooting livestock and more. The entire village of My Lai was littered with corpses and dead animals. From the air, it looked like a huge killing field. Someone in a helicopter overhead shouted into the radio: It looks like a bloodbath down there! What the hell is going on? 11. But as far as anyone could tell, Charlie Company had not received even one round of enemy fire. The entire hamlet of My Lai 4, known as Tu Cung to the Vietnamese, had been wiped out. Families that had lived on this same ground for generations were eradicated. The village, except for the noise of the soldiers setting fire to the huts or farm animals thrashing about in the final throes of death, was quiet. Or as Pfc. Maples later told U.S. Army C.I.D. investigators: I did not see anyone alive when we left the village. 12. The cover up for what happened at My Lai began on the day of the killings. Lt. William Calleys soldiers who did not participate in the slaughter and the vast majority of Charlie Company who did not kill any civilians were so frightened and shocked by what they saw, they literally lost all sense of reason. It is important to remember that no single person who was present that day at My Lai knew the totality of what happened, not even Calley. 13. Only one person had the proof of what happened on March 16, 1968. Only one man had the irrefutable evidence of the killing and incredible brutality at My Lai. That man was Ron Haeberle, the Army photographer who witnessed the bloodbath, and his shocking photographs of the carnage would shame a nation and break the heart of America in a way it had never experienced before. 14. The Idiot Powell - In 1968, a soldier who completed his tour of duty in Vietnam wrote a letter to General Creighton Abrams, the commander of American Forces, about the mistreatment of the Vietnamese people by G.I.s. He received this reply from the assistant Chief of Staff of the Americal Division and future Secretary of State, then Major Colin L. Powell: relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent. 15. The Criminal Investigation Division of the U.S. Army estimated 374 dead, not including personnel from Binh Tay, a nearby hamlet where additional killings took place. But the Vietnamese themselves, through an official report made to the Province chief and later forwarded to Division Headquarters at Chu Lai, charged that U.S. troops assembled the people, and shot and killed more than 400 people at Tu Cung hamlet and 90 more in Co Luy hamlet. The official memorial in the village of My Lai lists 504 killed, 182 women, of whom 17 were pregnant, and 173 children, of whom 56 were of infant age. Sixty of the men were over 60 years old. Dont you have a country? Dont you live in this world? What the hell are you? -from “All My Sons” by Arthur Miller (1946). 16. On March 29, 1971, after the longest court martial in American history and thirteen days of deliberations, Lt. William Calley was found guilty of the murder of at least twenty-two Vietnamese civilians. Calley, then 27, stood erect as he heard the verdict. He saluted the jury foreman, Colonel Clifford Ford, and returned to his seat at the defense table. Of course, Calley never mentioned the fact that not one round of enemy fire was ever received at My Lai that day and no Viet Cong were ever seen or captured. There was no contact with the enemy whatsoever and Calley nor any member of his platoon ever attempted to make that claim. His platoon suffered not a single casualty and there was no battle, as some people believed. The publics reaction to My Lai was based on a misconception of fact that was never fully clarified. A few minutes after Calley read his statement, he received his sentence: life imprisonment at hard labor. In 1973, Lt. William Calley’s sentence was reduced to ten years by Secretary of the Army Howard Callaway. After a great deal of legal wrangling, he was paroled on September 9, 1974. He had served 3 years under house arrest or approximately one month for every ten Vietnamese killed at My Lai. Today, William Calley lives in a self-imposed obscurity in Columbus, Georgia, working in a family-owned jewelry store. He refuses to give interviews or talk about Vietnam in public. Dr. Delmar Topinio Taclibon, Bt., DKR, KRSS, BSCE, MBA, PhD.D.A. References: Into The Dark: The My Lai Massacre, Mark Gado Bigart, Homer. Ex-G.I. Says He and Calley Shot Civilians at My Lai Under Orders. New York Times}, January 12, 1971, p.1 and 12 Bigart, Homer. Calley Guilty of Murder of 22 Civilians at My Lai. New York Times, March 30, 1971 Bilton, Michael and Sim, Kevin (1993). Four Hours in My Lai. New York City, NY: Penguin Group Duiker, William J. (1995). Sacred War. New York City, NY: McGraw Hill Publishers. Hammer, Richard (1970). One Morning in the War: The Tragedy at Son My. New York City, NY: Coward-McCann Inc. Hersh, Seymour M. (1970) My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath. New York City, NY: Random House Kamm, Henry (1996). Dragon Ascending. New York City, NY: Arcade Publishing Kelman, Herbert and V. Lee Hamilton (1991) The My Lai Massacre Down to Earth Sociology. Henslin, James M., Editor. New York City, NY: The Free Press. Nixon, Richard M. (1978) RN:The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. New York City, NY: Gossett and Dunlap Publishers. Olson, James S. and Randy Roberts (1998) My Lai, A Brief History with Documents. Boston, MA: Bedford Books Peers, Lieutenant General William R. U.S. Army. Department of the Army Review of the Preliminary Investigations in the My Lai Incident (known as the Peers Report). Page, Tim and Pimlott, John (1988). Nam-The Vietnam Experience 1965-75. New York City, NY: Mallard Press Range, Peter. Rusty Calley: Unlikely Villain. Time magazine, April 12, 1971. Ridenhour, Ron. Letter written to government officials dated March 29, 1969 Wilson, William I Had Prayed to God That This Was Fiction American Heritage magazine, February, 1990 p. 45-53. Crime Library
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 03:30:51 +0000
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