Word: contis
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...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...
From there Kay attempted to establish that Conti had bragged to his buddies about raping women in Viet Nam; that on two occasions Calley had stopped Conti from attacking women; that, in My Lai, Conti had threatened to shoot a woman's baby if she refused to submit; that Conti hated Calley and wanted "to see Lieut. Calley hang, Kay elicited only denials on these points, but he did manage to shake Conti's calm. When Kay persisted about Conti's supposed quest for women on the day of the shootings, asking, "You found one, didn...
From the give and take at the trial so far, the vista emerging is one of vast confusion. Soldiers wandered about the hamlet setting fires, shooting at people and animals, rounding up villagers. In addition to the mass killings described by Conti, individuals and small groups were also shot down. One question that the Calley trial has not grappled with yet, and may not confront at all, is why it all happened...