Word: lai
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...whip its new all-volunteer force into shape, the U.S. Army is doing its best to rid itself of the lingering legacies of Viet Nam. Two weeks ago, Army Secretary Howard H. Callaway paroled Lieut. William L. Calley, the only man convicted for taking part in the My Lai massacre. With Calley free, Callaway last week took another calculated step toward exorcising the demon of Viet Nam. Saying he wanted "to tell it like it is," the Secretary released key parts of the Army's official inquiry into what happened at My Lai on the morning of March...
Much of the bloody detail of My Lai had already been revealed either during the courts-martial or by newsmen, notably Seymour M. Hersh, a reporter for the New York Times. But the Peers report, for all its official prose and military circumlocution, holds its own special fascination: the Army, says the report, was guilty of "individual and group acts of murder, rape, sodomy, maiming and assault on noncombatants and the mistreatment and killing of detainees...
...described by the report, the My Lai massacre was less an act of intentional cruelty than a macabre happening that, given the circumstances, seemed to be almost ordained from the start. The whole operation began to lurch out of control during the planning stages, when intelligence reports gave "a false and misleading picture of the area as an armed enemy camp, largely devoid of civilian inhabitants...
Shot in Ditch. The attack started just before 8 a.m. The report states that Galley's 1st Platoon moved through My Lai killing Vietnamese. "Most of the inhabitants who were not killed immediately were rounded up into two groups. The first group, consisting of about 70-80 Vietnamese, was taken to a large ditch east of My Lai and later shot. A second group, consisting of 20-50 Vietnamese, was taken south of the hamlet and shot there on a trail...
...courts-martial growing out of what happened at My Lai, Calley was the only man convicted of any crime in the massacre. His attorneys appealed that verdict in the civil courts, and last September a federal judge overruled the Army and threw out Calley's conviction, partly on the grounds that pretrial publicity had prejudiced his case. That set the stage for last week's double denouement: the civil courts released Calley pending the Army's appeal to uphold the conviction, and Army Secretary Howard H. Callaway paroled Calley, since he had served with good behavior...