My Lai

Howard Jones’s book describes one of the most horrifying episodes of the Vietnam War. On 16 March 1968, two US Army infantry companies swept through a group of hamlets, of which My Lai 4 became the most famous, in Quang Ngai province of South Vietnam. They were under-strength because they had been suffering casualties from mines, booby traps and snipers. They were told they were about to get revenge for their losses, fighting an important enemy unit, the Viet Cong 48th Local Force Battalion. The 48th turned out not to be there, though it was only three miles away. The American troops also were told they would not find civilians in those hamlets; the peasants would have gone to market in a nearby town. That was not just false but preposterous; nobody who understood the pattern of village life would have believed it. The American troops found only unarmed peasants. The few Viet Cong who had been there had fled when they heard the Americans approaching. What followed has become known as the ‘My Lai massacre’, though not all the 500-odd dead, most of whom were women and children, were in hamlets formally named My Lai. American troops who threw hand-grenades into homes usually believed that there were, or at least might be, armed enemies inside. Others shot peasants out in the open, often after getting a good look at them at close range. Those who raped women (there were at least twenty rapes) clearly were not under the impression that they were in combat against enemy troops. Not all the Americans present participated in the slaughter, but hardly any tried to stop it. Most of the American troops killed peasants where they found them, but there was one platoon that herded them together in large groups. Lieutenant William Calley, commander of that platoon, made himself the face and symbol of the massacre by killing many of the peasants in these groups himself and directly ordering subordinates to kill the others

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