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Books > History > American history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945 > Vietnam War
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My Lai - Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness (Hardcover)
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My Lai - Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness (Hardcover)
Series: Pivotal Moments in American History
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On the early morning of March 16, 1968, American soldiers from
three platoons of Charlie Company (1st Battalion, 20th Infantry
Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division), entered a group of
hamlets located in the Son Tinh district of South Vietnam, located
near the Demilitarized Zone and known as "Pinkville" because of the
high level of Vietcong infiltration. The soldiers, many still
teenagers who had been in the country for three months, were on a
"search and destroy" mission. The Tet Offensive had occurred only
weeks earlier and in the same area and had made them jittery; so
had mounting losses from booby traps and a seemingly invisible
enemy. Three hours after the GIs entered the hamlets, more than
five hundred unarmed villagers lay dead, killed in cold blood. The
atrocity took its name from one of the hamlets, known by the
Americans as My Lai 4. Military authorities attempted to suppress
the news of My Lai, until some who had been there, in particular a
helicopter pilot named Hugh Thompson and a door gunner named
Lawrence Colburn, spoke up about what they had seen. The official
line was that the villagers had been killed by artillery and
gunship fire rather than by small arms. That line soon began to
fray. Lieutenant William Calley, one of the platoon leaders,
admitted to shooting the villagers but insisted that he had acted
upon orders. An expose of the massacre and cover-up by journalist
Seymour Hersh, followed by graphic photographs, incited
international outrage, and Congressional and U.S. Army inquiries
began. Calley and nearly thirty other officers were charged with
war crimes, though Calley alone was convicted and would serve three
and a half years under house arrest before being paroled in 1974.
My Lai polarized American sentiment. Many saw Calley as a
scapegoat, the victim of a doomed strategy in an unwinnable war.
Others saw a war criminal. President Nixon was poised to offer a
presidential pardon. The atrocity intensified opposition to the
war, devastating any pretense of American moral superiority. Its
effect on military morale and policy was profound and enduring. The
Army implemented reforms and began enforcing adherence to the Hague
and Geneva conventions. Before launching an offensive during Desert
Storm in 1991, one general warned his brigade commanders, "No My
Lais in this division-do you hear me?" Compelling, comprehensive,
and haunting, based on both exhaustive archival research and
extensive interviews, Howard Jones's My Lai will stand as the
definitive book on one of the most devastating events in American
military history.
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