Word: kosters
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...high officers of the Americal, the fear that publicizing the deaths of women and children at My Lai would ruin their careers stimulated them to stay silent. When Colonel Henderson asked General Koster, commander of the Americal, why the general had countermanded the colonel's order to have troops return to count bodies during the afternoon of the day of the killings, Koster answered that he did not think it was so important to find out how the "twenty" died. The number was actually between...
Typical of the coziness among high-ranking officers in the army was the pardoning of General Koster by General Seaman, the commander at Fort Meade, Maryland. Seaman's pardon forgave Koster on the basis of the "fact" that everything Koster had done, including not reporting the massacre to his superiors, was "understandable" given the circumstances...
...powers that had created My Lai gladly left Calley to symbolize their way of war. The Army which fights with nauseating gas, white phosphorus, napalm, fragmentation bombs, and dum-dum bullets tried and convicted Calley. Medina was acquitted, Koster was reprimanded, Henderson will get off: Johnson, Rostow, Bundy, and MacNamara are above suspicion. In the center is Rusty Calley...
...massacre, and he will now be the only one. Of the 25 officers and enlisted men who were originally charged with either sharing in the killings or covering them up, only six have come to trial, and four have been acquitted-though the division commander, Major General Samuel Koster, was demoted one star, and his assistant, Brigadier General George Young, was reprimanded. The only man still on trial is Colonel Oran Henderson, who is charged with suppressing the affair instead of informing his superiors-a charge that might have been brought against Medina with better results...
...scapegoat of Calley. It would leave itself open to a charge of whitewashing if it dropped the Donaldson affair without a trial. Besides, the man behind the investigation is General William Westmoreland; the flinty Chief of Staff has announced that "the system is on trial." Brigadier General Samuel Koster, Americal Division commander at the time of My Lai, has already been reduced to his present rank on Westmoreland's recommendation. Many ranking officers are up in arms over Westmoreland's inquisition. Says a friend and brother officer of Donaldson: "He is the least likely man to have knowingly...