Sunday, August 23, 2009

The My Lai 4 Massacre in Vietnam - Pinkville

Lt. William Calley finally apologized for the killing of "22 civilians" at the hamlet known as My Lai 4, better known to the soldiers who were there, as Pinkville.

I've followed this incident over the years and the truth of the matter is that Calley and others murdered over 500 civilians (according to most informed sources) and thoroughly and cold-bloodedly wiped out, tortured and raped the village to total destruction. 26 soldiers out of all of the unit were tried in court, but only Calley was convicted and then secretly released. Most all of the soldiers did not take part in the killing, but Calley was the ring leader and his Capt. (Medina) if I remember right was totally complaisant. He was witnessed shooting civilians with a hand gun out of the helicopter.

After these soldiers herded civilians into a ditch, they threw grenades and shot all of the people, then sat down and ate lunch. I put Calley almost in the same league as Jane Fonda for deplorable behavior. Makes me sick to my stomach. This is just one of the reasons my Dad told me to never do anything "over there" that you will regret for the rest of your life and the same advice I gave my son.

This is an incident every American should never forget.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

There are few (if any) things worse than a psychopath withe authority and government backing. Bruno

Anonymous said...

Events like this is what gave our brave young soldiers the bad reputation that they did not deserve. Our returning soldiers were treated as criminals when they came home. They had to go fight in a war that we had no business butting into in the first place, than they were not well received once they were able to come home.
Laurie

Anonymous said...

You are correct and the advice your Dad gave was correct however the war in Vietnam was a war in which our troops could not ID the enemy and many of the villages housed and feed the enemy and help support them and even killed our troops. This included children. We had no business in Vietnam since we got little to no support from the people.

This can also be said about Afganistan and the the Taliban who now control 50% of the country's villages and the people.

War is won from the blood of the enemy as stated by Patton and in the case of Vietnam and Afganistan this included more than the men in uniforms. Our goal in Vietnam was to stop communism and our goal in the Middle East is democracy. Do the people really want this. If not the blood of our troops is not worth it.

Charles

. . . . . said...

The My Lai massacre is basically a forgotten subject in America. This is very unfortunate, as forgotten history will be repeated.

Anonymous said...

In Vietnam it was impossible to distinguish the VC from the innocent population. How do you fight a war and not have innocents killed? I would like to think that the blood of Americans left in the soil of Vietnam was not in vain. God only knows.

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