Word: calley
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Calley has also developed a mortal fear of accidental death, not for the usual reason but because the world might think he was a coward who took his own life. "If I got killed in my car on the way to Atlanta," he explains, "everyone would think Calley copped out. I had a room in Delmonico's Hotel in New York once with a floor-to-ceiling window. I was afraid to go to sleep at night because I thought I might sleepwalk through one of those 18th-floor windows and everybody would think Calley committed suicide...
Despite such stresses, Calley has demonstrated throughout a remarkable restraint, a stiff refusal to lapse into bitterness. He refuses to hate the Army or the country, or even the man trying to take away his life and freedom. At midtrial, Calley said of the Army prosecutor, Captain Aubrey M. Daniel: "He's just doing his job." When Daniel ended the trial with a devastating, impassioned plea for conviction, Calley remarked afterward and with obvious sincerity: "I think he did a great...
...Rusty Calley did kill innocent civilians, though not perhaps out of any inherent murderous impulses. One psychologist who tested him described him as "a rather passive young man harboring a deep-seated sense of inadequacy, insecurity and inferiority." Surmised one of his examiners: "Undoubtedly his ability to carry out the orders [he claimed] he received in the briefing the night before [My Lai] would be interpreted by him not only as a measure of his competence as an officer but of his basic efficacy as a mature male...
...That Calley is remorseful is beyond question. At a New Year's Eve party in Atlanta, he proposed a heartfelt toast to "a lot more love and happiness in the world." He speaks of the horrors of war with more than the usual self-serving rhetoric. "I had been told what war is like," he says, "but I never knew until I got there. I was never taught the tragedy of war. After seeing war, you just sit down...
...Calley first heard the news of President Nixon's order releasing him from prison on television; as he left the stockade, one of the 50-odd cheering onlookers remarked: "Now at least he's not a prisoner of war in his own country." Removing Calley from the stockade had an enormous symbolic effect, but it will not change his life all that notably. To his dismay, all beer and liquor were removed from his apartment. He has a permanent MP guard in the apartment. He may leave his home only under escort, to eat at an Army mess hall...