On
the morning of March 16, 1968, soldiers of Charlie Company,
a unit of the Americal Division's 11th Infantry Brigade
arrived in the hamlet of My Lai in the northern part of
South Vietnam. They were on a “search and destroy”
mission to root out 48th Viet Cong Battalion thought to
be in the area.
The
unit met no resistance in My Lai, which had about 700 inhabitants.
Indeed, they saw no males of fighting age. They only found villagers
eating breakfast. Nevertheless,
over the next three hours they killed as many as 504 Vietnamese
civilians. Some were lined up in a drainage ditch before being
shot. The dead civilians included fifty age 3 or younger, 69 between
4 and 7, and 27 in their 70s or 80s.
In
addition, Vietnamese women were raped; other civilians were clubbed
and stabbed. Some victims were mutilated with the signature "C
Company" carved into the chest. One soldier would testify
later, "I cut their throats, cut off their hands, cut out
their tongues, scalped them. I did it. A lot of people were doing
it and I just followed. I lost all sense of direction." Only
one American was injured - a GI who had shot himself in the foot
while clearing his pistol.
In
one incident, a soldier, Robert Maples, refused an order to fire
his machine gun on people in a ditch, even when his commanding
officer trained his own weapon on him. Hugh Thompson, a helicopter
pilot, had threatened to fire on the American troops in order to
rescue Vietnamese women and children from the slaughter. After
seeing U.S. troops advancing on a Vietnamese family, he landed
his helicopter, called in gunships to rescue the civilians, and
ordered his gunner to fire on any American who interfered.
The
My Lai massacre took place shortly after the Tet offensive. Late
in January 1968, Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese soldiers
had launched attacks on urban areas across South Vietnam. Charlie
Company had arrived in Vietnam three months before the My Lai
massacre. Charlie Company had suffered 28 casualties, including
five dead. Just two days before the massacre, on March 14, a "C"
Company squadron encountered a booby trap, killing a popular sergeant,
blinding one GI and wounding several others.
