My+Lai+Massacre

=My Lai Massacre=

The My Lai Massacre happened on March 16, 1968. It was said to be a brutal attack and massacre on civilians of hamlets and villages in My Lai and My Khe. This mass murder was commited by an American Army unit. Many of the civilians that were murdered were said to be women and children of the hamlets. Many of the victims were said to have been beaten, tortured, sexually abused, and some bodies were even found mutilated. The Unit that commited the massacre was told that by 07:00 hours all of the civilians will have been removed and those who remained were NLF and were to be killed. Even though the soldiers must have known that the hundreds of women and children in the hamlets that they were murdering could not have been NLF, they claimed they were only following orders and continued the killings. A helicopter Pilot by the name of Hugh Thompson was flying over the hamlet when he witnessed massive amounts of killings of women, children, and old men. He said that there were no men of draft age in sight. Thompson landed his helicopter by a ditch whitch was full of wounder bodies that were moving around. The Pilot told sergeant Mitchell (a sergeant he encountered) that help had to be called in for all of these wounded people. The Sergeant replied stating "i'll help them out of their misery". As the Pilot took off he saw Mitchell firing into the ditch. The Pilot came across another bunker full of civilians. Thompson landed and said that if the U.S. soldiers fired at the civilians to shoot back at them. Thompson then haulted the oncoming troops and flew the civilians in the bunker to safety. The Pilot and his crew were critized back in the U.S. for threatening U.S. soldiers. It was not until 30 years later that the crew was honored for their brave actions.

Citations:

Greiner, Bernd. (2009) //War without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam// New Haven: Yale University Press.


 * Sack, John. (1971) //Lieutenant Calley: His Own Story// New York: Viking.