Word: calley
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...trial had not been going badly for Lieut. William L. Calley Jr. During the first three weeks. Prosecutor Aubrey Daniel easily established that a massacre of unarmed, docile South Vietnamese had indeed taken place at My Lai. But Daniel complained of being "particularly handicapped" now, nearly 33 months after the fact, in proving Calley guilty of murdering anyone, let alone the 102 victims cited in the indictment. Most of the witnesses were vague and inconclusive as to who had issued the orders and squeezed the triggers. One of Daniel's most important witnesses, Paul David Meadlo, refused to testify...
Then Witness No. 31 at the Fort Benning court-martial altered the trial's course in a full clay of dramatic testimony last week. Dennis Conti, 21, a private first class in Calley's platoon and now a truck driver in Providence, told how he and Meadlo held a group of 30 to 40 villagers-most of them women and children-on a trail in My Lai at Calley's orders. Calley returned, Conti went on, and said: " 'I thought I told you to take care of these people.' I said...
Steady Stare. What happened next? asked Daniel. "Calley and Meadlo got on line and fired directly into the people." What were the people doing? "They screamed and yelled. Some tried to get up. There were lots of heads and pieces of heads shot off, and flesh flew off the sides and arms and legs." Meadlo, Conti related, was weeping. He tried to give his rifle to Conti. "I told him I couldn't," the witness continued. "Let Lieut. Calley kill them . . . Some kids were still standing and Calley finished them off with single shots...
...second and much larger group of Vietnamese died in an irrigation ditch on the east side of My Lai. Conti approached, he said, and saw "Lieut. Calley and Sergeant [David] Mitchell standing on a dike, firing . . . There were people in [the ditch] and Calley and Mitchell were firing into it ... I saw one woman try to get up. I saw Lieut. Calley fire and blow the side of her head off. So I left...
Well spoken, unemotional, direct in manner. Conti seemed to be an effective witness for the prosecution. When Calley stared at him, he stared back steadily. When one of the defense attorneys, Richard Kay, shouted at him, trying to establish that Conti had been a heavy user of marijuana while in Viet Nam, he coolly denied it. Conti did admit when pressed that at the time of the My Lai operation he was being treated for a venereal disease...