Four Hours in My Lai: A War Crime and Its Aftermath [Paperback]

The book offers exceptional detail on the events of and after the My Lai Massacre. A good example of the detailed research is the memo penned by the oft lauded Collin Powell in which Powell shows his true colors-politician/careerist. Powell was a staffer at the time and wrote a memo responding to a commander's request for information about a rumored massacre. In the memo Powell talked of both the unliklihood of the event and the Vietnamese locals' love for the Americans. Most of us GIs, even decades later, know the Americal Division was ill-disciplined and prone to criminal acts. And this is where the author falls short. The military and political leaders that created an entire division, say 12-15,000 men, from primarilly "shake and bake" officers and NCOs ought to be taken out and shot. The results of such desparate schemes to keep from calling up Guard and Reserve units are both forseeable and, in this book, documented in one incident. The Americal had many others. I pity the good soldiers and officers who were almost vainly placed in the Division to try and inject some professionalism. Politicians unwilling to act to win a war, top level generals afraid to resign to defy ludicrous policies, careerism at nearly all levels of command, and the seeming ease with which a murderous mob can be created are what the book fails to fully address. Although, perhaps this begs for a second volume.

An upsetting book but thats war for you I'm afraid. All countries have been guilty of war crimes but most are covered up and forgotten and not widely publicised. I recall my grandfather telling me how he watched a British officer shooting German prisoners in the back of the head during WW1 rather than take them behind the lines. In the Falkland incident there were reports of British soldiers killing enemy soldiers who were trying to surrender. The Germans killed over 6 million Jews and I have seen disturbing photographs of little Russian children hanged from telegraph poles by retreating German soldiers. The Malmedy massacre was a war crime in which 84 American prisoners of war were murdered by their German captors during World War II. The Japanese also have a pretty evil record for war crimes. Even further back in history British soldiers were guilty of raping and murdering Indian civilians when we poked our noses into India! Dont forget that in Vietnam the American soldiers were mostly conscripts - they weren't professionals, and they had gone through basic training which taught them to be brutal killers, thats no excuse for murder I know, but turning people into killers will open the door to incidents like My Lai. Drugs were widely available to troops and that war was in the middle of the 'hippie era' where so many young people took to drugs as part of the scene - that may have been another factor in the way soldiers behaved? In WW2 American soldiers about to embark on the Pacific campaign where 80,000 of them perished were told: "Take no prisoners" - probably very good advice considering the enemy they faced? The book mentioned incorrectly that 'America had never been bombed by an enemy' - they obviously forgot Pearl harbour, where several thousand navy personnel were killed.
But as far as the My Lai massacre is concerned then at the very least America did show up these particular 'bad apples' for being murderers, and a disgrace to their uniforms, and also to the 55,000 young Americans who died in that unpopular war. We should take heart when we read of the two exceptionally brave and compassionate helicopter crewmen who rescued civilians and threatened to open fire on their own soldiers if they continued with the killing - remember,there's good and bad in all nationalities!
Civilians were known to carry hand grenades or concealed weapons and I can imagine if you had witnessed a comrade being killed by one then you would no doubt be very ready to react if you were on patrol near a village. If your officer told you to do something do you refuse to take that order and risk being shot? Of course nobody can order you to commit murder, but would you take the chance and refuse the order with a dodgy officer like Calley around?
But My Lai of course, was inexcusable in the fact that the soldiers were as bad as their officer. As far as the travesty of justice in this incident goes, I think it was a weak President Nixon who bowed down to public pressure and allowed Calley to escape the punishment he deserved.
We must not lose sight of the fact that this book is not a history of the Vietnam War - only a four hour incident in it. There were atrocities committed by the Vietcong as well.
Odd that we and our allies can drop bombs on Berlin and Hiroshima killing hundreds of thousands of civilians (retaliation maybe - but does that make it right?) and yet we armchair historians with no experience of warfare make such a fuss of a comparitively small but equally horrible incident as My Lai?

Sometimes it would seem, murder becomes addictive within a group of people? Try reading 'Helter Skelter' - the story of Charles Manson and his 'family'. Young girls and young men who seemed to get caught up in an orgy of killing. A great read and available on Amazon.

What happened on March 16th, 1968 in the village of My Lai, South Vietnam? The soldiers of "Charlie Company" under the command of Captain Ernest Medina went completely mad, that's what. Four hours of bayoneting civilians, raping women, killing children and babies and generally turning the entire village into a living nightmare. Many were even relishing their horrific acts. Between 300 and 400 Vietnamese civilians were slain and not a single U.S. soldier received any kind of sentence for such an act, regardless of the fact that the massacre was well-documented and known to the military courts in the United States.

Only Lieutenant William Calley even went on trial, received a 10 year sentence (if I remember correctly) and served a couple of months and was released. All others were let off because of "lack of evidence". What a farce! Now after something like that, how can victims of U.S. war crimes expect any kind of justice?? Now we all know why America refused to sign up to an international tribunal for war crimes; they simply do not want to tarnish their "good guys" reputation.