Word: ditch
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...trial, claiming the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination.) According to Sledge, Calley went up to Meadlo and ordered him to "waste 'em, and Meadlo started shooting into the people−about ten feet away." Next, "someone hollered that Sergeant [David] Mitchell had some people at a ditch outside the village. Lieut. Calley walked up to Sergeant Mitchell. They started talking. They started shoving people into the ditch. Then they started firing at the people in the ditch. The people started falling and screaming...
Sledge's testimony also accounted for the two specific deaths charged to Calley in the overall indictment. Calley is charged with killing no fewer than 30 people along the trail, no fewer than 70 people in the ditch, plus an old man and a young child. Sledge testified that he and Calley came upon a monk dressed in white robes at the end of a ditch. Calley started interrogating the monk, "then he hit him with the butt of his rifle in the mouth ... He [the monk] was sort of like pleading. He was about 40 to 50 years...
...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...
...defense also underscored a discrepancy between Conti's testimony last week and his earlier statements at the trial of David Mitchell, who was acquitted. At the Mitchell trial, Conti was not as definite as he was last week about whether Calley and Mitchell were shooting into the ditch or merely near...
...prosecution witnesses swore that they saw Mitchell standing at the ditch, and that they heard rifle fire. But neither could swear that they saw Mitchell shoot anyone. The third, Radioman Charles Sledge, said he was "positive" he saw Mitchell firing at the civilians. Mitchell's civilian defense attorney, Ossie B. Brown, discredited Sledge's account, quoting testimony Sledge gave to Army investigators: "I believe it was Sgt. Mitchell firing into the ditch." The testimony of a prosecution witness, Dennis Conti, was weakened when fellow Army witnesses swore that they had heard Conti declare: "He [Mitchell] tried...