My Lai On March 16, 1968, in the Quang Ngai region of Vietnam, specifically My Lai, the United States military was involved in an appalling slaughter of approximately 500 Vietnamese civilians. There are numerous arguments as to why this incident even had the capacity to occur. Although some of the arguments seem valid, can one really make excuses for the slaughter of innocent people? The company that was responsible for the My Lai incident was the Charlie Company and throughout the company there were many different accounts of what happened that reprehensible day. Therefore there are a few contradictions about what had occurred, such as what the commanding officers exact instructions for the soldiers were. Even with these contradictions the results are obvious. The question that must be posed is whether these results make the American soldiers involved that day ‘guilty’.
There is the fact that the environment of the Vietnam War made it very confusing to the soldiers exactly who the enemy was, as well as providing a pent up frustration due to the inability to even engage in real combat with the enemy. If this is the case though, why did some soldiers with the same frustrations refuse the orders and sit out on the action, why did some cry while firing, and why then did one man go so far as to place himself between the Vietnamese and the firing soldiers? If these men who did not see the sense in killing innocents were right with their actions, then how come the ones who did partake were all found not guilty in court? The questions can keep going back and forth on this issue, but first what happened that day must be examined. Captain Earnest Medina was in charge of giving orders to the Charlie Company and in the early evening of March 15th a meeting was called. CPT Medina told the company that the next morning they would be moving into My Lai and attacking Vietcong forces there. He told them that all the civilians would be at the market or would have already been moved out by the time that the soldiers arrived to carry out their planned attack. He said all that would be left in the village would be the Vietcong of the 48th battalion and Vietcong sympathizers.
The Research paper on Charlie Company Lai One Enemy
America's Inhumanity America? s InhumanityAmerica's Inhumanity Essay, Research Paper America? s Inhumanity The greatest tragedy is war, but so long as there is mankind, there will be war-Join The Art of Wa Military History 4/2/00 On March 16, 1968, Charlie Company of the American Division moved into the hamlet of My Lai and committed one of the most brutal atrocities in the Vietnam War and ...
It was never clear what CPT Medina had said to do in the event of coming across civilians. Medina claimed in court that he had told the GI’s not to kill women and children, to use their common sense, but the soldiers did not recollect this statement. All of the soldiers were said to be excited after the meeting and they were ready for whatever the next day’s ‘battle’ would bring. They drank themselves to extreme drunkenness that night and talked of the next day’s events, cleaning out or ‘sanitizing’ My Lai. On the morning of March 16th the company moved in. They were instructed by Lieutenant William Calley to shoot every living thing in sight, from animals to babies, for the animals would feed the Vietcong and the babies would one day grow up to be them.
From many soldiers’ accounts, non-of the people shot that day seemed to pose any threat to the American soldiers. In fact, women, children and old men made up a huge majority of the victims. Barely any weapons were found and according to most of the soldiers the Vietnamese people were trying to cooperate but there was the barrier of language. When the soldiers yelled things in Vietnamese they weren’t even sure if they were saying the right thing because Vietnamese is a language based on inflection in the voice. LT Calley ordered his soldiers to kill all of the Vietnamese in massive slaughters. They were herded into big groups, and some groups were forced into ditches and then fired upon. ‘The few that survived did so because the were covered by the bodies of those less fortunate.’ (Linder) After the massacre was over there was an extensive cover-up, the commanders even reported My Lai as a success with 123 enemy deaths and some weapon recoveries.
The Essay on Vietnam War Soldiers Wanted Vietnamese
The Vietnam War The Vietnam War was a war no one could win. It was made more difficult for the US, Australian and South Vietnamese soldiers to fight because the enemy had the same physical appearance as the South Vietnamese, and often even children were armed and fought as part of the militia. Not only did the enemy look the same but the soldiers had to battle impenetrable jungle, hot sticky ...
It wasn’t until a man named Ronald Ridenhour, over a year later, began to write letters about the incident to very important people including the President of the United States at the time, Richard Nixon. Ridenhour became informed about My Lai through stories that his fellow veterans had told him. He stated, ‘I wanted to get those people. I wanted to reveal what they did. My God, when I first came home, I would tell my friends and cry-literally cry.’ (Linder) The letters he wrote, for the most part were cast aside, but some recipients were curious. Representative Morris Udall decided the letter was not to be ignored and what Ridenhour claimed had happened needed to be investigated. This is where the trials and the questioning of what actually happened, who was to blame, and what the reasons for this calamity were, began. The real query though was, even if the above questions could be answered would there ever be a clear explanation/excuse for this tragedy.
As mentioned before the Vietnam War caused the soldiers to harbor a lot of hostility directed at their situation as opposed to just their enemy. These were all relatively young men fighting, 18-22, most without anything more than a high school education. They were in a strange foreign country fighting a war that most of them did not even understand. They were fighting ‘in an oppressively hot climate among peasants of an alien culture.’ (Goff, Moss Terry, Upshur, 445) The main problem was that Vietnam was not a conventional war, it was very difficult to tell who the enemy was. ‘Members of the 48th Battalion reportedly lived with the local villagers in order to conceal their presence, often working as farmers during the day and fighting as guerillas at night.’ (Olson and Roberts, 45) Also the Tet offensive occurred just about a month and a half before the My Lai incident, on January 30, 1968. The North Vietnamese launched an attack on the South during the traditional Vietnamese New Year. Although it is said that the American forces did not lose the battle, ‘with nearly total surprise, enemy forces had unleashed a massive attack that cast doubt on almost every premise of American involvement in Vietnam.’ (Chafe, 346) This doubt reinforced how the soldiers were already feeling.
The Essay on War Soldiers Home Fighting
Explain The Changing Attitudes Of British Soldiers And Civilians Towards The War When war broke out in 1914 soldiers were ready and eager to fight a war they believed would be over by Christmas. They volunteered to beat the Germans, to fight for King and country, to protect their land and families and they believed it was their duty. There was also huge public pressure to join up and objectors ...
As more and more causalities and injuries added up, from such things as booby traps and mines, the American soldiers wanted to fight. There was specific case of this in the Charlie Company. Two days before the My Lai incident occurred, on March 14th, a Vietcong booby trap had killed one man, blinded another and still wounded several others, all members of the Charlie Company. The funeral was held the day before the massacre, only shortly before CPT Medina’s speech. Therefore the rage was at near a peak for these men. After CPT Medina’s speech the soldiers believed that ‘Medina’s main message was that it was time for revenge, that they should think about all their friends who had been killed or wounded and then go into My Lai and settle some scores.’ (Olson and Roberts, 19) The main reason that the soldiers used in defense of their actions during the trials was that they were simply following orders given by their ranking officers.
The soldiers asserted that following orders was one of the most essential points that they had learned in training. Paul Meadlo, a rifleman with the Charlie Company, said in the hearings, ‘from the first day we go in the service, the very first day, we all learned to take orders and not to refuse any kind of order from a non-commissioned officer. . .If you refuse the order, the son-of-a-bitch might shoot you or the next day you spend the rest of your life in stockade for refusing an order.’ (Olson and Roberts, 11) According to the rules of land ….
