Christopher Levesque
Appearances
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
But from the point of view of the regular infantry soldier who's just been told to go out in patrol waiting to be shot at, that can have a pretty significant effect on their morale.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
So Charlie Company had three infantry platoons. Each of those should have had 60 or 70 men in the platoon divided up into squads and then fire teams.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Calley was the... Commanding officer of the 1st Platoon, and he had supporting noncommissioned officers. His platoon sergeant was Isaiah Cohen. And so Calley was supposed to be in charge of this group of men. The problem for Calley was that they did not respect him. And his commanding officer, Ernest Medina, also did not respect him.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
One of the things that happened that led into the effects of what happened at My Lai is that Medina regularly called Cali demeaning nicknames like sweetheart, berated them in front of not just his own platoon, but the rest of the company and his platoon sergeant. Viewed Kelly as not a particularly effective leader who he only followed due to Kelly's rank.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Yes. And that goes back to when he was in elementary school. He was the kind of student who tried to anticipate his teacher's requests and needs. Yeah. Cleaning erasers and doing that type of thing. Right.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Sergeant George Cox was killed by a booby trap. If I remember correctly, it wasn't just a landmine in the way that we probably think about a device designed for somebody to be stepped on. It was what we would call now an improvised explosive device, an IED. That had been made out of an unexploded 105mm artillery shell. Unexploded ordnance is a continuing problem in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
But what would happen is the Viet Cong would find... Bombs, whether they came from an airplane or artillery shells or mortar shells that had not exploded, and then make them into a mine. And that's the type of thing that killed Sergeant Cox. And not only was he popular, but right before the mission briefing, they held a memorial service for Cox.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And at that memorial service, Medina reemphasized their losses and said that the company needed to be more aggressive in their pursuit of the enemy. So they have lost all these people. They have this event. They have a memorial service led by a chaplain and Medina telling them that they need to remember their losses and to be more aggressive. Right.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
It can. So artillery fire, in this case, 600 meters from My Lai, which is one of a cluster of hamlets forming the village of San Mai. And They have their barrage in preparation to landing. They come into land and they're expecting combat because they have been told that there are Viet Cong in the village.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
They've been told, based on intelligence, they've been told that women and children will be away from My Lai at a marketplace. There you go. And they're expecting to have an actual battle.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Right. And so we get two platoons that initially land and they set up a security perimeter waiting for their third platoon to arrive. The idea is that the first two platoons, including Cali's first platoon, will then assault through the village and that the third platoon will provide rear area security and then eventually follow them.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And their mission is to kill the people who resist, to kill livestock, to destroy wells and to level buildings. And Captain Medina has told them that everybody that's left in the village was either Viet Cong or a Viet Cong sympathizer.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
They go wrong pretty quickly. One of the challenges is that The Hamlet of My Lai, like many Vietnamese villages, was divided by hedgerows. And so as the line of infantry proceeds through the village, they become broken up into smaller and smaller groups where it's more difficult for them to be observed and controlled by their officers.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And so their typical process is going to be that as they move through a village and they take prisoners, they hold those villagers so that those villagers can be processed by an officer. Said either keep this one as a potential enemy prisoner of war or let them go and keep them secure in this other location away from any potential combat.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And one of the things that happens is that as they get divided up and they start to gather potential prisoners, they get bogged down. And Medina orders Callie and his other platoon leaders to get their men back online and to continue to push through the village. Are they taking fire in any way? They are not. They've received no fire.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
They kill a farmer shortly after they land who is waving his arms at them from a distance. But other than that, not posing a threat. And so they haven't been fired on.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Sometimes they think they're provoked, but there aren't any shots fired at them, and they only recover three old N1 Garand rifles. So these are World War II or Korean War era weapons that they recover.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
This is going to unfold over the course of several hours. They essentially are on the ground early morning, and then everything is over by mid-afternoon. So give it a six-hour period for all of this to happen. And the first real incident for us to think about is that as First Platoon is moving through My Lai, Callie comes across some of his men.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
One of them is forcing a woman to perform oral sex on him. And Callie tells the guy to get back to work. Get back to the process of clearing the village and capturing prisoners. And as he takes this guy with him, they run into Paul Meadlow, who is going to be one of the most famous or infamous figures of the Milan Massacre.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And he finds Meadlow with a large group of prisoners and tells Meadlow to take care of them and then leaves. Shortly later, Callie comes back. He's frustrated because Medina has told him to get his men moving through the village and asks Meatlo why he hasn't taken care of these villagers.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Now, their normal procedure would be to hold the prisoners for an officer to process, to say, let them go or keep them prisoner or whatever. But that's not what Callie meant. Callie ordered Meatlo to kill the villagers. Wow. Meatlo... Didn't really want to do this. He kind of resists, but Kali forces the situation. Amidlo fired three magazines from his M16.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Kali reportedly fired four or five magazines, killing this group of prisoners. There's another soldier there who has an N79 grenade launcher who does not participate because... Not only does he not want to kill villagers, he also doesn't want to use a 40 millimeter grenade in close proximity. There's a variety of issues there. And this is the first really real evidence of what is going to happen.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
There's some disagreement about what the intent was. And also about how many of the members of Charlie Company actually took part in killing people. Many of the men who were there fired things or killed livestock, destroyed Wellsburn buildings to make it look like they were taking part. But it turns out there may have been fewer than 20 individuals who actually killed or raped people in the line.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Medina's briefing... left some questions about what the intent was. Private Dennis Bunning later said that Medina had ordered them to kill everyone because all of the women and the children were supposed to be there. James Burkhold summed up the general feeling among the company after the briefing, saying that although Captain Medina didn't say to kill everyone in the village,
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
that he had heard other members of the company talking and that they were of the opinion that everyone in the village was to be killed. And that seems to have been the message that at least Calley took from their initial briefing.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Well, he ordered Meadlow directly to kill people. And then the major incident... that sort of stands out beyond this initial killing was that a large number of villagers had been herded together toward a ditch. And some of them had been pushed into this ditch. One of them was a Buddhist monk. There were a large number of women and children and elderly men.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
There are no young men really in the village. And once they get to this ditch, Callie orders his men to open fire on the people that have been herded into the ditches. He gives them direct orders. When some of them resist, Callie threatens to kill them. The one that really stands out is Robert Maples, who was a machine gunner.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And when Callie ordered him to fire on the villagers in the ditch, he refused. Cali reportedly stuck his rifle into Maples' midsection, said he would kill him if he didn't follow orders. And Maples pulled his sidearm on Cali and threatened to shoot him as well, saying that they were going to all die in Vietnam and that they might as well die then. Yes.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Later, he said he didn't consider shooting women and children who weren't armed to be a legal, valid order, and that he just simply wasn't going to do it.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Another machine gunner, his last name was Stanley, had also, Harry Stanley, had also been ordered to fire on the villagers in the ditch, refused, threw down his M60 machine gun, and when Calley threatened to kill him, they were separated by other soldiers.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And so ultimately, some of the soldiers cooperated with Kali. Kali himself opened fire. So in regard to the larger numbers of people that were killed at My Lai – Alley appears to have been the prime mover, the perpetrator. And that's why he was ultimately convicted for murdering people in My Lai. Right.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Hugh Thompson was flying over My Lai in support of the assault of Charlie Company on My Lai and of Bravo Company on the neighboring village of My K, where there was also a smaller massacre. Hugh Thompson flew an OH-23 reconnaissance helicopter, which meant he was low to the ground, and his role was to mark potential enemies for the company to deal with using smoke to
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
communicate what was going on to helicopter gunships that were flying above him from his unit. As he did this, he can see people being killed. He marked a wounded woman with the idea that she would get medical assistance and observed Captain Medina walk up to the woman and shoot her. Medina later claimed that he thought that she was going to throw a grenade at him.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
But so Thompson's observing all of this and is he and the other pilots were getting relatively heated over the air about it. And he finally got to the point where he couldn't stand by and watch this to happen. And to understand why this happens, we have to really understand Hugh Thompson as a person. He came from a military family. His father served both in the Navy and in the Army.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Thompson joined the Navy as a young man right out of high school, got out of the Navy, became a funeral director for a short time, and then in 1966, as the war is really ramping up, joins the Army, was selected for pilot training, and was sent to Vietnam in 1967. In Vietnam, he had a reputation of being an aggressive pilot who believed in the Army's mission in Vietnam.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And that's really important to remember. He had the respect of all of the other aviators there. And some of the things he did were risky. At one point, he captured someone. And because he didn't have room in his helicopter to have a prisoner, actually forced the guy to hold on to the skid of the helicopter to fly him back to base. So this is the type of person Hugh Thompson is.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Thompson landed his helicopter, which is itself unusual, between Halley's platoon and people who were in a bunker. and approached Callie, got out of the helicopter, approached Callie, and said, well, we need to get these people out of here, and Callie's response was, well, the only way we can do that was with a grenade.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Before he had gotten out, Thompson had told his door gunners, Larry Colburn and Glenn Andriotta, to cover him, and that if somebody... started shooting at the civilians to fire upon them. Whether he was serious in that or not is conjecture. But he confronted Kelly, who was a commissioned officer. Hugh Thompson was a warrant officer and sort of sit between the NCOs and the officers in rank.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And he convinced the other helicopter pilots that were there who were flying overhead in gunships to land and evacuate the people from the bunker. He somehow convinced the people in the bunker to come out, convinced the other pilots to land and take them off away from Beeline, saving them.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And this is a really very strange thing for a helicopter gunship to land in what is supposed to be a combat operation and then to fly away with civilians.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Correct. And people further away... could hear what the pilots were saying was going on, but did not report it themselves. Yeah. This is going to be an issue later.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Even before the 17th, Hugh Thompson reported the massacre to Major Fred Watkey. And he reported it to Lieutenant Colonel Frank Barker, the commanding officer of Task Force Barker, and Colonel Oren Henderson, who was the commanding officer of the 11th Infantry Brigade. So we have this reporting structure starting to happen.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
But at the same time, we have people starting to cover it up almost immediately. Medina flat out lied to the commander of the 23rd Infantry Division, Major General Samuel Koster. And told him that all of the casualties were from artillery. There also developed a narrative that they were killed in a crossfire. The number of people was downplayed.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
So that when Watkey went to Barker and Henderson, he told them that it was 25 people. He didn't say they were killed in a crossfire because there had been no fire and no Viet Cong on site. But... The focus was on Thompson's confrontation with Cowley.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And that allowed some of the senior officers in the brigade and the division to move the investigation that they did away from this idea of a massacre. And after that, it gets bigger.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
That's a little complicated. Initially, My Lai was reported as a victory by the New York Times with 128 Viet Cong killed and three weapons captured. The media starts to take notice when Cali's court-martial is starting to begin, is becoming underway. There's an investigation going on.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Yes, but only because Ron Ridenour, who had been friends with members of Charlie Company, even though he was assigned as a door gunner elsewhere in the division, found about it from people who had been present. Okay. And he talked to multiple people who had been at My Lai to verify what was happening, because it sounded like an outlandish story, like propaganda. Where is Ron Rittenhour?
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
He's back in the States, isn't he? He's back in the United States at this point. And basically, he had found out about this when Charles Groover had a beer with him and told him we did something terrible. Oh, I see. And so he talks to all these other people and then writes a letter.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
But he only writes this letter after consulting with family and friends who basically told him, well, you don't want to be involved in this. But despite that, he wrote a letter to 22 different officials saying,
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
at the Pentagon, and in Congress, including the Secretary of the Army, Stanley Rezor, General William Westmoreland, who at this point is Chief of Staff of the Army, and Congressman Udall, Morris Udall. And that's what ultimately gets things started.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Correct. And his letter to these public officials led to two official investigations, one into the events at My Lai and one into attempts to cover up My Lai.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
These investigations, which took a year, so from September, October, November of 69 into 1970, where we start getting actual trials, resulted in charges for 14 officers and a few convicts. Enlisted personnel. But yes, it all starts with Ridenour's letter. Right.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Right. And so Sergeant Ron Haberly was a combat photographer for the Public Information Office. He was assigned to follow Charlie Company. On March 16th, along with a reporter who was a specialist. And so they follow the company through My Lai. Haverly's got multiple cameras rather than weapons and ammunition. One of the cameras was an official army camera loaded with black and white film.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And the other one was his personal camera loaded with color film. And that color film that he kept personally was what ended up being published.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
But he destroyed the really terrible pictures that he took that identified individual soldiers shooting at people. And the reason he did that is he didn't want those photos to be used to identify individuals and to prosecute them.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
We have a picture that looks like that. It, to me, reads more as people on a road rather than people in a ditch. But it gives that same type of impression.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
He's not the only one who's tried. He's the only one who's convicted. Oh, okay. Captain Medina was also tried. An enlisted soldier was also tried.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
But the reason it all falls apart is that at Captain Medina's trial, where he was acquitted, the military judge running the trial, the court-martial, told that no one who had testified before Congress, but during the congressional investigations, could testify at Medina's trial.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And because there were essentially then no witnesses that could be used, there was a lack of evidence and Medina was acquitted. Part of the reason for that is that the chair of the Armed Services Committee and the congressman who ran the congressional investigation refused to release the transcripts of the witnesses who testified in their investigation.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
All of the witnesses had testified in an executive session. It was closed. So their testimony wasn't released. And this military judge said, well, if we can't have that testimony, we're not going to allow those witnesses. And that's where it all falls apart. The public mood. Was very, very against not only the trials, but Callie's conviction. What was he charged with?
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
In March of 1968, the Tet Offensive was underway, and it was a significant shock both for the United States military and the U.S. public. While some American leaders in Vietnam had seen signs that something was coming in March of 1968, many U.S. forces were surprised by the actual attacks by the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong, which were coordinated throughout South Vietnam.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Callie was charged with murder. And the phrase they used was Vietnamese human beings. And he was eventually convicted of 22 counts.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Just him. Some people do get some reductions in rank, but not as the result of trials. Samuel Coaster, the commanding officer of the 23rd Infantry Division, received a reduction in rank from major general to brigadier general. He resigned his position as superintendent of West Point during the hearings. He was eventually cleared, but he kept that reduction in rank.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
The thing he faced was that he and his assistant division commander, Brigadier General George Young had not followed regulations and reported the war crimes allegations. And so they faced reductions of rank and eventually soon retired from the service, even though they were cleared of things like having a cover-up.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Yes, and I don't remember where that quote came from, but it is the type of thing that he and other soldiers expressed regularly about the war. And Callie was not an especially introspective type of a person. Right. But that was the feeling of most of the people who served.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
He was sentenced to life at hard labor, which is typically going to be somewhere like Fort Leavenworth, which is one of the prime locations for that type of a sentence. And that didn't really happen. So within three days of his conviction on March 31st of 1971, Calley was released to house arrest by President Richard Nixon.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Following that, Lieutenant General Albert O'Connor, the commanding general of the Third Army, used his own authority to commute Kelly's sentence to 20 years. And then Calley appealed this in district court and was freed on bond in February of 1974.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And the judge in that case held that the pretrial publicity and the House of Representatives refusal to release testimony meant that Calley couldn't have a fair trial. And so while the Army appealed that ruling, The new secretary of the Army, Howard Calloway, reviewed the conviction, reduced the sentence to 10 years. And this is part of the law. This is supposed to happen.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
What this does is that it makes Calley eligible for parole because at this point he had served three years and four months and Army regulation made prisoners eligible for parole after they had completed a third of their sentence. Wow. But this isn't over yet. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court's ruling and returned Kenley to custody. in June of 1974.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Calley appealed again in September of 1974. So he was released again. The full Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned it. The Army refused to put Calley back in prison for the last 10 days of his sentence. So at this point in September of 1974, Calley is out. Right.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
This would normally be the end, but it kept going because Callie appealed the Fifth Circuit's decision because it meant he was still guilty. And it finally comes to a close, at least in terms of legal matters, when the Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal of the Fifth Circuit's decision in April of 1976.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
One of the things that had been happening is that General William Westmoreland, commander of the Military Assistance Command of Vietnam and the Johnson administration, had been assuring the American public that the end was in sight, that a turning point was near, that the war would soon be over. And so when this large offensive throughout South Vietnam, which also penetrated the U.S.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
So ultimately, he spends maybe three and a half years total in punishment for killing at least 22 people.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
In Vietnam, it does not appear to have. We have changes to what's happening in Vietnam as a result of the election of Richard Nixon. He had promoted the process called Vietnamization, which involved withdrawing American troops and having the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, ARVN, do more of the work of defending South Vietnam. This led to a couple of changes in how we did things.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Ultimately, we are, toward the end of American involvement, just using air power. Congress starts getting to the point where they withhold funding for combat operations in Vietnam. And there are some combat refusals as a result of the Vietnamization policy. Because not only are we still not having a strategy of holding territory, but nobody wants to be the last person to die in Vietnam.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And so troops start refusing to take that hill or go on certain patrols. There's a famous revolt in the Navy where soldiers of the, I believe it was the Constellation,
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
essentially held a strike refusing to put sea so all of this is happening at the time and and the american public had been getting more skeptical of the war over the course of 1967 as casualties mounted and then really turned against it after ted yeah after vietnam though there is renewed focus and part of the reason this can happen is because we get the all-volunteer force after 1973.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And a more professional type of a military is that there's more focus on not abusing prisoners, not killing innocent civilians. It's never going to be perfect, but it becomes something that more members of the military really, really look askance at. They want to avoid that. And part of that is the perception of My Lai and other incidents in Vietnam.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
But they get their way with Operation Desert Storm.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Embassy in Saigon, occurred, it was a shock to the American public because it was clear that they had been misled about what was happening. So it's this sort of large-scale offensive that was on television every night. U.S. news media had expanded their nightly news coverage during the war from 15 minutes to 30 minutes as a means to cover it.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
So this was a sort of a constant thing for the American people.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
In this case, Charlie Company is in a special type of a situation. They're a relatively new organization. The Americal Division, the 23rd Infantry Division, had been brought back into service in a hurry to meet the demands of Vietnam. Their training was taking place at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And so one of the things that happened is they're a unit that is being brought together that's new as part of this division that's being sent to one of the most active parts of Vietnam. They're an average or above average infantry company at the time.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
87% of the non-commissioned officers had graduated from high school, which is a rate 20% higher than the average for infantry companies on the line in Vietnam. 70% of the men in lower enlisted rates had graduated from high school, which is also slightly above average. It's both ethnically and geographically mixed demographically.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
So half of the soldiers were African-American, which was pretty typical of units in Vietnam. And so one of the problems that we have is that with this background, there's little to set them apart as being the ones who are going to be responsible for this.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
The trick is that many of the most experienced noncommissioned officers and other enlisted personnel had been transferred out of Charlie Company during its training. So you get really inexperienced soldiers in what are generally leadership positions. So you get privates first class and specialists fourth class in leadership roles. And so they're not as experienced in that part of it.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Part of what is what explains why a unit that got high marks for training in Hawaii when it gets to Vietnam is seen as deficient. And so they get to Vietnam. In December of 1967, they received their orientation training from instructors of the 4th Infantry Division's NCO Academy at El Cibranco.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
They get practical training for things like airstrikes and calling in artillery and requesting medical evacuation, how to maintain the radios, how to deal with civilians and enemy prisoners of war that they interact with. Now, basically, Don't abuse them, don't kill them, but keep them separate and silent and secure. But essentially, don't be terrible, follow the laws of war.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Their training, though, did caution them that because it's difficult to tell the Viet Cong apart from other civilians, that they have to be aware everybody is a potential enemy. They're also told that children are tricky to interact with because they seem innocent, but they might have been set up with an explosive device.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And so they get one day of training before they're given their first mission. And their first mission is to set up the 11th Infantry Brigade's fire base at LZ Carrington near Duck Foe. And this was an area that had been dangerous, but at this point is relatively quiet. They set up the camp perimeter. They dig bunkers and do that type of thing. So they get about a month.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
of settling in, doing some patrols and doing some training, but they don't fire their weapons. They lay in night to night ambushes, looking for a single sniper in their area of operations. The trouble really, really begins four days before the Tet Offensive.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And so four days before the Tet Offensive, they're taken out of their regular infantry battalion. and sent to basically a scratch battalion called Task Force Barker. It's got a hodgepodge of infantry and artillery from the brigade, and they're given the mission to go after the 48th Viet Cong Local Force Battalion near Quang Nai City. So they're given a very difficult job.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
They're not used to working together. And the reason this happens is that the 11th Infantry Brigade is waiting for its 4th Infantry Battalion to arrive. They're looking for a group to go send out to do this. And they also lose part of their organization. They lose their headquarters companies from all of these smaller units before they're sent to task force Parker.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Yes, and it has a real effect on how this plays out. Yeah. So they're taken out of their normal structure and put into this sort of ad hoc structure. task force. That's a battalion size. So it's basically three companies and some infantry companies and some artillery. How many men are we talking about? The infantry companies are usually going to be about 150 men. So three of those. Okay.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Right. And one of the things that happens is when Tet occurs four days after they're put into this organization... They see things happening around them. They're not directly affected yet. But one of the things that happened is that the division headquarters in July is attacked.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And one of the messages that that sends to the men of Charlie Company is that their home base, where they get all their supplies, where they're supposed to get their support from, has been attacked, even if they're not facing those types of firefights.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And so one of the challenges they face is that they're supposed to be engaging this very effective Viet Cong unit, battalion-level unit, that doesn't engage groups of more than 30 people, that has a pretty fearsome reputation, but all they're encountering is snipers and booby traps. Guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare of the type that we normally associate with Vietnam. Yeah, terrifying stuff.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And they take significant casualties despite not being in regular combat, not facing ambushes or anything like that. So by the time we get to the middle of March, Charlie Company has lost about half of its strength. Lieutenant William Calley's 1st Platoon has lost 27 of its 45 men. Wow. So it's a much smaller fighting force that has faced an enemy that they can't come to grips with.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And at the same time, as I mentioned before, they don't have the experience of war seasons troops who had been to Vietnam. And the reason that they don't have that is that during their training in Hawaii, they found that many of those more experienced troops had been to Vietnam too recently to be sent back. And that's why they were pulled out of the unit.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
And Captain Medina, one of the things that he testified to later was that he had lost 70% of his company's strength during that and had to deal with the issue of replacements that were not as experienced.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
Right. And so there are two types of scenarios here. The assault on My Lai was just what it sounds like. They're supposed to assault a village that has a Viet Cong force in it. But their typical pattern up to that was patrols. And frequently what they would say is that they felt like they were being sent to wander around in the jungle waiting to be shot at. This is a pattern that developed.
American History Hit
Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre
The idea was that American small units, platoons and companies would go out looking for the enemy and wait to be attacked, would then either assault the people who are attacking or settle into a position and then call for support from artillery or airstrikes. The idea was to draw the enemy out and then to punish them.