The only person ever convicted over the notorious My Lai massacre of 1968 has died at the age of 80. Army Lieutenant William Calley was convicted in 1971 of murdering 22 North Vietnamese civilians and sentenced to life imprisonment and hard labor at Fort Leavenworth prison for his role in the massacre, when U.S. soldiers killed more than 500 Vietnamese women, children and old men. Calley ultimately served just three years under house arrest for the murders, and his sentence was commuted by President Nixon. In 2009, Calley issued a public apology for the massacre. The previous year, I spoke about Calley’s role at My Lai with investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who first broke the story.
Seymour Hersh: “They all got up at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, jumped on choppers and went to kill and be killed — you have to give them their due. And they got into the village, and there’s no soldiers there. The intelligence was bad, as it always is. And they gathered people. There was no fire at all, really, just old women, men and children making their — heating up water for their morning rice. And they gathered them eventually into three large ditches and began to execute them. Calley was — become infamous, but there were five or six first and second lieutenants that were also organizing it.”
Top