Word: bernhardts
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Sergeant Michael Bernhardt said no one shot at the G.I.s. "We met no resistance, and I only saw three captured weapons. As a matter of fact, I don't remember seeing one military-age male in the entire place, dead or alive." He claims Calley's men were "doing strange things?they were setting fire to the hootches and waiting for people to come out and then shooting them; they were gathering people in groups and shooting them. I saw them shoot an M79 [grenade launcher] into a group of people who were still alive...
...it?and he was the only U.S. casualty of the day's action. At one point, a private stopped firing his M60 machine gun into a group of 20 people, refused to resume on Calley's orders?so Calley took the gun over and blasted away. Bernhardt said he had refused to take part, but feels guilty because "I just stood back and let it happen." One helicopter pilot, Warrant Officer Hugh Clowers Thompson Jr., 27, saw 15 children hiding in a bunker. He landed, ferried them to safety, returned to pick up a wounded boy. Amazingly, the Army...
...pursued the matter for a year and talked to a dozen participants in the massacre. He finally found one, Sergeant Bernhardt, who agreed to verify the details if Ridenhour reported the affair to authorities. Discharged last December, Ridenhour asked friends what he should do about the matter, was repeatedly told "to forget about it." But last April he decided to mail his letters. "I thought that what happened in that village was so terrible nobody should get away with it," he explains. "The shocking thing is not that I wrote, but that there weren't other letters...
...Army in 1966 and was commissioned in 1967. Some of Calley's men raced from house to house, setting the wooden ones ablaze and dynamiting the brick structures. Others routed the inhabitants out of their bunkers and herded them into groups. Some of them tried to run, said Bernhardt, but "the rest couldn't quite understand what was going on." Sergeant Terry saw a young C Company soldier train an M-60 on the first group of huddled villagers, "but the kid just couldn't do it. He threw the machine gun down." Another man picked...
...Company took part in the madness. At My Lai, Ridenhour reported, one soldier shot himself in the foot so that he would be Medevacked out of the area. A few others, himself included, says Bernhardt, refused to fire. That evening, he said, his company commander told him "not to do anything like write my Congressman...