My Lai-Vietnam Black History

At 0750 Hrs on the 16th of March, 1968, nine US Army helicopters touched down in an open field 2 Klicks west of the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai (pronounced ‘Me Lie‘). My Lai was part of a village called Son My. One hundred and twenty men jumped off the birds and ran, pressed into a low, flat-backed crouch by the rotor wash. They reflexively established a defensive perimeter in case of hostile fire. An unnecessary precaution as it turned out. As soon as all of the men had disembarked, the helicopters lifted off safely and returned to base.

The infantrymen were armed with M-16 assault rifles, hand grenades, M-60 machine guns and M-71 grenade launchers. These troops made up the 1st, 2nd and 3rd platoons of Charlie Company, 11th Infantry Brigade of the 23rd Division. At a briefing the evening before, the company’s commander; Captain Ernest Medina, told his platoon leaders that since any innocent villagers would be tending to business at the local market after 0700 Hrs, his men could be certain that any people still left in the village would either be VC or VC sympathizers. He told the officers to expect a firefight.

US Army investigative report; the platoon commanders took this to mean that they were to shoot and/ or capture anybody they found in the hamlet. An Army combat photographer by the name of Sgt. Ronald Haeberle of Cleveland, Ohio was accompanying the unit during operations.

Son My is located northeast of the city of Quang Ngai on the central coast of Vietnam. Known for the close support it has historically afforded the Viet Cong and their predecessors the Viet Minh, the entire area was referred to as ‘Pinkville’ by Army Intelligence. During the Tet offensive 2 months before, the Viet Cong’s 48th Battalion attacked Quang Ngai. Army Intelligence believed that remnants of the 48th were hiding in the Son My area and planning on making their escape west along the Annanite mountains to the Ho Chi Minh trail. The Annanites protrude like a long rocky finger from Cambodia into the central coast of Vietnam. The VC and NVA had been using the Annanite route for years to infiltrate Quang Ngai province. Between 1965 and 1968 it was estimated that US forces, in trying to subdue the VC, had destroyed 70% of the province’

Huey gunship (Slicks) rockets, white phosphorous (Willie Peter) and Napalm. Ground troops were in charge of cleanup operations called ‘Zippos’ wherein any surviving structures were burned to the ground. The Zippo was a cigarette lighter popular with US troops at that time. Many of the area peasants, preferring their own battered hamlets to the squalor of US government sponsored refugee camps, would sneak back to their land and dig shelters under the charred ruins of their homes. By 1968 it was estimated that civilian casualties in Quang Ngai province were approaching 55,000 people per year. In the Spring of 1967 General Westmoreland, commander of US forces in Vietnam, began a tactical operation called ‘Task Force Oregon’ in Quang Ngai province. Its purpose was to seek out and destroy as many enemy combatants as possible. There was no consideration given to holding ground or ’winning hearts and minds’ as the ‘body count’ became the primary indicator of US success in Vietnam or lack thereof. Violence in the region expanded exponentially.

Died in 2006.rear which meant that the very people they had just cleared of suspicion were now training weapons upon them. On the morning those nine helicopters set down outside My Lai, Charlie Company was looking forward to a little payback time. In their minds and to some degree; in fact, the local population and the enemy were one and the same.

At 0840 Hrs the third platoon remained behind to secure the LZ (landing zone) while the 1st Platoon, under commander; 2nd Lieutenant William Calley, flanked the south end of the hamlet, an area called Binh Dong and swung his men north into the heart of the settlement. The 2nd Platoon started maneuvering north just east of the LZ to engage a cluster of homes known as Binh Tay.

One of Calley’s men, (Paul Meadlo of Terre Haute, In.) arrived on the scene a few minutes after he heard the shooting erupt and described what he witnessed to Army investigators. He said that the normal procedure would have been for the men to set fire to the homes and then arrest anybody escaping the flames for interrogation later. According to his sworn statement he saw three things happening.

Photo taken by Haeberle during the assault.the US soldiers shot people as they ran out of the burning structures, or they went into the homes and shot the occupants within or they gathered the villagers in groups outside their homes and shot them en masse using machine guns and in at least one instance, a grenade launcher. People found hiding in underground shelters were dispatched with hand grenades. The victims were old men, women and children as young as newborns. A soldier murdered one baby with multiple shots from a .45 caliber pistol while the infant lay on the ground. There was at least one officially confirmed rape and the probability of more. The same scene was being played out to the northeast by 2nd Platoon in Binh Tay. The difference was that Sgt. Haeberle, the combat photographer, was with Calley’s 1st Platoon. This fact would become important later.

Above the fray, an OH-23 Raven observation helicopter piloted by Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson took in the scene. At 0800 Hrs he observed 3 Vietnamese in an open field. One of the Vietnamese was wounded.

to base for interrogation. He re-fueled and returned to the field where he discovered that the wounded Vietnamese he had previously marked for evacuation was now dead of new gunshot wounds. Two hundred meters south of My Lai he found a wounded Vietnamese woman. He again marked her location with a green smoke grenade and hovered a short distance away to watch her. In a sworn disposition he stated that he saw Captain Ernest Medina approach the woman, nudge her with the barrel of his rifle and shoot her. Thompson then flew over an irrigation ditch running through the hamlet and observed numerous dead and wounded Vietnamese lying in the ditch. He landed his aircraft and was immediately approached by Lt. Calley. He asked Calley what was going on and Calley told him to mind his own business. Thompson then watched squad leader Sgt. David Mitchell approach the ditch and shoot the wounded.

Northeast of My Lai Thompson found 10 villagers, women and children, running towards a bunker while being pursued by a squad of American soldiers. He landed his aircraft between the soldiers and the Vietnamese and got out to talk to the soldiers.

Some things take a while.he told the soldier riding shotgun in his helicopter to cover him and to shoot the GI’s if they tried anything. He ordered the pursuing troops to back off, which they did. He radioed for help and succeeded in getting the women and children evacuated. By 1100 Hrs it was all over and the men of Charlie Company ate chow next to the corpse filled irrigation ditch.

Thompson made a full report to his military superiors which was never acted upon. A year later a soldier by the name of Ron Ridenhour, who was not at the massacre but had heard about it from participants he later served with wrote letters reporting what he had learned to President Nixon, the State Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and members of Congress. The only person of that group to move forward with an investigation was Morris ‘Mo’ Udall, a Congressman from Utah. While all of this was going on, Ron Haeberle, the combat photographer, who had been discharged from the Army in August of 1968, was still in possession of the photographs he had taken during the ‘Event‘.

List of victim names. The word 'Nam' means man. 'Nu' means woman.he presented to groups of citizens in his hometown of Cleveland. Local organizations like the Kiwanis, Elks and Rotary Clubs. He did this to show the good citizens back home what the war in Vietnam was really like. Nobody who saw those pictures in all of that time batted an eye. Nobody saw fit to contact local media with the horror in the photos because by that time most US citizens were used to it. Nightly news was always showing some innocuous village being burned or bombed or forcibly evicted. It wasn’t until August of 1969 that an investigator from the US Army got in touch with Haberlae to see exactly what it was he had in his Kodak Carousel. Shortly thereafter the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper became the first publication to run their hometown boy’s now infamous picture of the bodies on the road. Go figure.

After a ‘full’ investigation (a thirty-one year old officer named Colin Powell was one of the authors of the final report) the Army brought murder charges against Calley. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Simple little affair. Six trains stop here over the course of the day. Three each heading North and South.Richard Nixon. When the story broke in South Vietnam the government denied everything, evacuated every villager still living in Son My and subjected the area to three days of uninterrupted artillery barrages to cover up any evidence. Estimates of the total number of people killed in the massacre range from 500 to 700.

Today there is a museum and a memorial on the Son My site. According to guide books the memorial is worth seeing.