11/12/1969: Story Breaks of My Lai Massacre

The My Lai massacre took place on March 16th 1968, when a unit of U.S. infantry massacred an entire village of over 300 civilians including men, women and children in a collection of hamlets in South Vietnam. Although this atrocity had occurred in March 1968, it took 20 months for the story to reach the American public.

Perhaps it would never have broken if it wasn’t for a returned serviceman, Ron Ridenhour, who completed his one-year tour at the end of 1968 and was no longer in the army. Ridenhour had started hearing rumors of a massacre at a town called “Pinkville” while he was still in Vietnam. He had followed up the rumors by asking various people who had heard of, witnessed or participated in the incident, and gathered a number of unverified but consistent details that led him to conclude that the men of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, 11th Light Infantry Brigade had indeed slaughtered an entire village of civilians. Unsure what to do with the information, he wrote a letter and sent it to various members of congress and government officials, saying “I have considered sending this to newspapers, magazines and broadcasting companies, but I somehow feel that investigation and action by the Congress of the United States is the appropriate procedure”. An investigation proceeded.

Journalist Seymour Hersh extensively interviewed 1st Lt. William Calley, who was the officer implicated as a lead antagonist in Ridenhour’s letter, and who had personally slaughtered dozens of victims and ordered the other soldiers in his command to do so. Hersh cabled the story through the left-leaning Dispatch News Service on November 12th 1969 (copied here). The story was picked up and published by Time, Life and Newsweek magazines, and a segment was aired on CBS TV. The public reacted with outrage and the strength of the anti-war sentiment grew, as those who already opposed the war felt vindicated and renewed their efforts, and many who had not previously taken a position felt they could no longer stand on the sidelines.

As James S. Olson and Randy Roberts observe in My Lai: A Brief History with Documents:

“The signs of indiscriminate killing of civilians were apparent… the only casualty of Charlie Company was one self-inflicted wound … officially the “battle” of My Lai listed 128 enemies killed, but only three weapons recovered.  Looking just at the numbers, any experienced officer could have guessed what had taken place.”

In other words, it could hot have been anything but obvious that an extraordinary atrocity had been committed, and a military cover-up had taken place.  But the initial investigation that took place shortly afterwards in April 1968 concluded that no massacre had taken place.  

By the time a proper investigation was conducted, most of the soldiers involved had already left military service, and thus could not be court martialed.   Company Captain Ernest Medina was courtmartialed in 1971.  His trial lasted approximately 60 minutes, and he was found not guilty, alleging that he did not know his troops were out of control until the crimes had already been committed.  Nevertheless, it was the end of his career.  Eventually, only Lt. Calley was found guilty of a crime and was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 22 civilians, but the sentence was later reduced and he was released in 1974.

(Note: the image at the top of the article is public domain. It, and many others like it, are so disturbing I considered not including it. I can only imagine the shock these images caused at the time they were first seen).