My Lai lay in the South Vietnamese district of Son My. It was a heavily minded area where the Vietcong were deeply entrenched. Numerous members of the Charlie Company were maimed or killed in the area during the proceeding weeks. The troops under the command of Lt. William Calley entered the area, ready to fire.
As the " search and destroy" mission unfolded, it soon turned into a massacre of over 300 unarmed civilians including women,children and the elderly. Calley ordered his men to enter the village firing, though there had been no report of opposing fire. According to eyewitness reports, the elderly men were bayoneted. Women and children were shot in the back of the head and at least one girl was raped before she was killed. Lt. Cally was said to have round up a group of villagers, order them into a ditch and he mowed them down with a fury of machine gun fire.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/trenches/my_lai.html
I researched the same subject and I had learned about them in high school, but it still amazes me that people are capable of doing this.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds awfully similar to the images told of a concentration camp during WW2. However, it is important that we realize what war does to a person. People do things in war that they would not normally do anywhere else. It isn't necessarily true that these men are cruel and considered murderers.
ReplyDeletei know it amazes me how people can do this to the innocent.
ReplyDeleteSuch a sad story. Truly horror when killing of civilians especially women and children is done. When they start killing elderly men, that is when you know something is not right. It is not right for these unarmed people to be killed. I can remember after researching this part of the war what horror this massacre really was.
ReplyDeleteWow that is a sad story. It sounds interesting to learn about though, kinda wish I picked that topic.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the comments on this story being sad and tragic, there should be no reason for them to blindly fire into a village of innocent women and children.
ReplyDeleteThis makes me sad, I hate how innocent people get killed like this.
DeleteI'm outraged at this story. I can't believe that innocent people died because of the orders "search and destroy." It makes me not only sad to read this but also sick to think that unarmed women and children were killed.
ReplyDeleteThis blows my mind that they can just go in and kill innocent women and children.
DeleteI don't really understand how a person can just kill all of these unarmed people, who had done nothing wrong. Especially just throwing them into a ditch and letting bullets fly.
DeleteThats terrible that they raped a girl..
DeleteThats terrible that they raped a girl..
DeleteThat is very sad that they were ordered to go in firing without knowing exactly why. Innocent women and children most definitely did not not deserve to die on this day.
DeleteYou would have thought that at least one soldier could have over looked his harsh feelings toward being in this war and towards other Vietnamese, and to say speak out against what they all must have know was wrong.
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