Word: lai
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
West, a squad leader in a platoon commanded by Lieut. Jeffrey La Cross, followed Calley's platoon into My Lai. "Everyone was shooting," he says. "Some of the huts were torched. Some of the yanigans [his term for young soldiers] were shooting kids." In the confusion, he claims, it was hard to tell "mama-sans from papa-sans," since both wear black pajamas and conical hats. He and his squad helped round up the women and children. When one of his men protested that "I can't shoot these people," West told him to turn the group over to Captain...
...Sergeant Mitchell hollered, 'Shoot him.' And so the man shot him." (Sergeant David Mitchell, 29, one of Galley's squadron leaders, has been charged with assault with intent to commit murder, but a court-martial has not yet been ordered.) Meadlo says his group ran through My Lai, herding men, women, children and babies into the center of the village?"like a little island...
...nobody to obey them?" More thoughtfully, he explains: "It just seemed like it was the natural thing to do at the time. My buddies had been getting killed or wounded. What it really was?it was just mostly revenge." Contends Corporal William Kern, who says he walked through My Lai when it was all over: "You can't just blame Calley's platoon; you've got to blame everyone. It was a tree-fire zone. And you know, if you can shoot artillery and bombs in there every night, how can the people in there be worth so much...
...occurred. Former Army Private Leon Stevenson says he was in a platoon on the other side of My Lai from Calley's and saw " 15 to 20 bodies at most ?and I doubt if that much." He also denied having heard Captain Medina suggest that civilians should be killed. "It isn't going to do those dead people any good to hang Calley," he adds...
...Quang Ngai province last week, TIME Correspondent Robert Anson talked to some of the survivors of the massacre. Do Thi Chuc, an aging woman, said she had lost a 24-year-old daughter and a four-year-old nephew at My Lai. "All I remember," she said, "was people being killed. There was blood all over. White Americans and black Americans both did the killing. Heads were broken open, and there were pieces of flesh over everyone." Sobbing, she said that she too had been wounded and had fallen among the bodies...