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On March 16, 1968, Lieutenant William L. Calley Jr. led Charlie Company of the Eleventh Light Infantry Brigade into the village of My Lai, known to the Americans as Pinkville. They had been told by Captain Ernest L. Medina that they would encounter heavy enemy resistance. Medina ordered them to burn all buildings and tunnels, and to kill all livestock. It is not certain just what Medina's further orders were. The women and children were expected to be gone to market, and the Forty-eighth Vietcong Battalion would be there. Instead, Charlie Company encountered no enemy fire. In the village, they found only women, children, and old men. The Americans murdered several people immediately, but most of the Vietnamese were rounded up into a group and guarded. Calley told a soldier, "You know what I want you to do with them." Calley returned and said, "Haven't you got rid of them yet? I want them dead." Calley and some of his men lined up a group of people in an irrigation ditch and shot them. A two year old boy ran from the group. Calley chased him, threw him back into the ditch, and shot him. Charlie company killed hundreds of unarmed civilians, perhaps more than 500. The final U. S. Army estimate was 347.
Helicopter pilot Chief Warrant Officer Hugh C. Thompson couldn't believe what he was seeing. He rescued some civilians, and flew them to safety. Then he stopped Calley from blowing up a bunker full of women and children, by standing between Calley and the bunker. He ordered his men to open fire on the Americans if they fired at the Vietnamese in the bunker. Also, Harry Stanley of Charlie Company refused to shoot the civilians; Calley threatened to court-martial him. Captain Medina was seen shooting a young girl. Women were raped and mutilated.
The headline afterwards: "U. S. Troops Surround Reds, Kill 128." Word of the atrocities leaked out to the world more than a year later, in autumn 1969, when a former soldier wrote several letters to government officials. Several of the men were charged with murder, and some officers were charged with covering up the crime. Only five were court-martialed (including Medina, who was charged with one count of murder), only Lieutenant Calley was convicted. On March 29 1971, he was convicted of premeditated murder of 102 (one account says at least 22) Vietnamese civilians and sentenced to life imprisonment. In September 1974, his sentence was reduced to ten years. President Nixon then ordered that Calley be kept under house arrest in his apartment. Three years later, he was released.
The defense of several of the men amounted to the fact that they were just following orders. This, of course, is reminiscent of the Nuremberg war crimes trials. The Nuremberg trials established that it is a crime to obey immoral orders. This is now part of every American soldier's training, you cannot obey an illegal order. But apparently, you can.