Word: lai
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Reporting for this week's cover story on the My Lai massacre was an even more difficult and painful assignment than usual for our Saigon bureau. "A mantle of almost complete secrecy descended on American officialdom in Viet Nam, both military and civilian," cabled Bureau Chief Marsh Clark. Nevertheless, Clark and his staff provided intensive coverage of the events in their area. Correspondent Burt Pines pursued the psychological aspects with doctors and chaplains at U.S. Army headquarters in Long Binh, while Stringer Harold Ellithorpe, a Viet Nam veteran, contributed the comments of Red Cross officials plus his own observations...
...terrible way that he did not mean or likely imagine, those words of Richard Nixon's came true last week as the nation grappled with the enormity of the massacre at My Lai. A young Army first lieutenant, William Laws Calley Jr., stood accused of slaying at least 109 Vietnamese civilians in the rural village in South Viet Nam, and at least 25 of his comrades in arms on that day in March 1968 are also being investigated. It will be for the courts-martial judges to determine whether Calley or anyone else is individually guilty. But that America...
...Bernhardt, another C Company veteran. At Fort Dix, N.J., he went before TV cameras accompanied by a base press officer. As Bernhardt told it, the company commander (Captain Ernest Medina, now stationed at Fort Benning) assembled hk men and announced that the Task Force was to destroy My Lai and its inhabitants...
...Company took part in the madness. At My Lai, Ridenhour reported, one soldier shot himself in the foot so that he would be Medevacked out of the area. A few others, himself included, says Bernhardt, refused to fire. That evening, he said, his company commander told him "not to do anything like write my Congressman...
...Many questions about My Lai remain unanswered. Who had ordered the attack on the hamlet, which was apparently designated as a "free-fire" zone? What exactly were the orders? The answers may come out in a court-martial; Fort Benning Commander Major General Orwin Talbott is expected to announce a decision this week on whether Lieut. Galley is to be tried. Even so, time has already erased much of the evidence...