My Lai massacre immoral, lecturer declares
by Shannon Harrison, ne news editor

     “TV made us aware of what was going on with the war, but people were more interested in the body count than in anything else,” a local attorney told NE Campus students last week while discussing the Vietnam war.

     Jim Lane, Fort Worth city councilman, presented The My Lai Massacre: An American Tragedy, a speech held in conjunction with an anniversary of one of the most talked about massacres in history.

     “The government was telling the nation that everything was going okay, but they were lying. The old men were sending the young men to a war that we knew nothing about,” he said.

     During the Vietnam War, under the order of Lt. William Calley, the U. S. Army was instructed to attack the civilian village, My Lai. On that day, the Army killed dozens of people in just hours, stopping at nothing to kill, Lane said.

      The group that was given the authorization to attack was Charlie Company.

     Many in Charlie Company thought it would be immoral to kill innocent civilians, but they believed they had no choice.

     Some resisted the commands and paid the price set by the Army, but altogether, at the end, their action turned out to be the right thing to do.

     “The My Lai massacre will never be forgotten, for it was the most immoral thing that the United States has ever done,” Lane said.

     When the military started running out of people to draft, the 100,000 brigade was created. It consisted of people the government drafted that didn’t meet typical military standards, Lane explained.

Charlie Company consisted of many of those 100,000. When the government brought those soldiers in, the Army had to teach them everything that was needed to know to fight in such a war.

     Lt. Col. Barker put together Charlie Company to destroy the 48th Viet Cong battalion. The Viet Cong had cut into American troop strength through snipers, land mines and booby traps.

     On March 15, commanding officer of Charlie Company, Ernest Medina, briefed the entire company, working them up for a confrontation and a chance to get even with the Viet Cong. The intelligence reports given claimed that one of the Viet Cong’s top units was established in My Lai-4, a subhamlet of the village of Son My.

     The orders were to destroy the enemy battalion and the hamlet. By attacking at 7:30 a.m., it was believed that the women and children would not be there, leaving 250-280 enemy troops.

     “The soldiers did what they were told to do, and no matter what the government says, everything happened like it was supposed to,” Lane said.

     Right on schedule, Calley’s 25 men came off the helicopters firing into what they thought was an area infested with Viet Cong, but it was not.

     Twenty minutes later as the troops approached the hamlet, some Vietnamese began to run across the open fields and were shot down. Those fleeing Vietnamese turned out to be women and children.

     Most of the villagers knew better than to run and get shot. Instead, they sat inside their huts and waited as the soldiers came.

     The first platoon began rounding up the villagers. The second platoon began killing them as soon as they reached the western edge of the hamlet. Many soldiers yelled at the villagers to come out, and when no one responded, grenades were thrown in.

     Word was relayed back to Capt. Medina at the airstrip that no Viet Cong were present, and the company asked what was going on at the time. Medina reportedly told the men to continue what they were doing. During all this, Medina called headquarters to tell them that 85 Viet Cong had been killed and 20 suspects captured.

     This, of course, was not the case, Lane said. The body count reached 400-500 villagers dead and one U.S. injury—a soldier who shot himself in the foot.

     As it turned out, an Army photographer accompanied Charlie Company. When he came out of the war, he sold pictures of the massacre to the highest bidder.

     “This was the turning point of the war,” Lane said. “When this case went to court, it was treated as a unified code of military justice and not a war crime.”

     “The Army’s defense for the prosecution was that these soldiers’ order was palpably illegal, which means so illegal you can see it on their face. I have never heard of such a thing, and to this day I don’t know anyone that has,” Lane said.

     When the court made its decision, all the soldiers of Charlie Company were acquitted except for Lt. Calley because someone had to be a scapegoat, Lane said.

     “When Calley was pleading for his life, he said, ‘You took my honor, please don’t take my life,’” Lane said.

     “You don’t get medals unless you have a war, and younger people need to remember that history always repeats itself,” he said.

     Lane closed with advice to his audience.

     “Your politicians and government will continue to deceive you unless you do something about it. Your vote counts—vote right,” he said.