Word: home
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...disciplined them. But shared in what measure? Only months and years of accumulated judgment might tell. Above all, the event weighed on the individual soldiers, most of them back in their peaceful home towns, living with the knowledge of what they did. When Private Meadlo stepped on a land mine shortly after the massacre and it ripped away his foot, he screamed: "God has punished me for what I did in the village." Other men of the company have recurrent nightmares about My Lai. The scene itself is quiet now. All that remains today is a low pile...
Both the extent of the massacre and the number of soldiers involved make it incredible that the matter could have been kept quiet for so long. Some men of Charlie Company contend that Captain Medina assembled them, told them not to complain about the affair to anyone back home, and promised to back them up if there was an investigation. As a result of Pilot Thompson's complaint, the commander of the 11th Brigade, Colonel Oran K. Henderson, quizzed Captain Medina and some of the troops. He asked a group of the men whether they had seen any soldiers shooting...
...qualms about the U.S role in Viet Nam, but rarely talked about it. "I guess everyone has their own feelings about the war," he said recently. "I doubt if I can explain all of mine." Perhaps, after the family reverses at home, he found in the Army a new emotional anchor. "He liked the Army," Queen says. "I think it kind of gave him a home." One of the members of his platoon in C Company, ex-Corporal William Kern, found Calley entirely ordinary. "There was nothing strange about him," Kern recalls. "He wasn't the best officer...
...came back with a Bronze Star with cluster and a Purple Heart, and thought seriously of making the Army a career?"until this happened." Bearing a charm bracelet for his youngest sister, a ham for his father and a couple of bottles of liquor for his buddies, Calley returned home on leave from Viet Nam last Christmas.This was nine months after My Lai. Tony Massero, a high school friend, says: "He didn't seem like he was nervous or in some sort of shock." To Smith, "he looked like the same old Rusty...
...while he was on duty in Viet Nam and liked the lieutenant. "He was sort of an all-American boy, a real nice guy. The only hang-up he had was the same one everybody there had, to stay out of the line of fire until you could get home." Says William Thomas, who was dean of boys when Rusty was attending Edison High School: "He was just an average American...