Word: lai
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...tale of My Lai has only been told by a few Vietnamese survivors-all of them pro-V.C.-and half a dozen American veterans of the incident. Yet military men privately concede that stories of what happened at My Lai are essentially correct. If so, the incident ranks as the most serious atrocity yet attributed to American troops in a war that is already well known for its particular savagery...
Rather Dark and Bloody. The My Lai incident might never have come to light. The only people who reported it at the time were the Viet Cong, who passed out leaflets publicizing the slaughter. To counter the V.C. accusation, regarded as standard propaganda, the U.S. Army launched a cursory field investigation, which "did not support" the charges. What put My Lai on the front pages after 20 months was the conscience of Richard Ridenhour, 23, a former SP4 who is now a student at Claremont Men's College in Claremont, Calif. A Viet Nam veteran, Ridenhour had known many...
Ridenhour's letter led to a new probe-and to formal charges. Last month, just two days before he was to be released from the Army, charges of murdering "approximately 100" civilians at My Lai were preferred against one of C Company's platoon leaders, 1st Lieut. William Laws Calley Jr., a 26-year-old Miamian now stationed at Fort Benning, Ga. Last week Staff Sergeant David Mitchell, a 29-year-old career man from St. Francisville, La., became the second My Lai veteran to be charged (with assault with intent to commit murder). The Army has another...
Before the massacre, My Lai was a poor hamlet in Quang Ngai province, whose low, marshy coastal plains had been-and still are-a base for the Viet Cong 48th Battalion. My Lai was a "fortified" hamlet whose bricked-up houses served as bunkers for marauding V.C. cadres, and was known to the G.I.s in the area as "Pinkville...
...destroy unit located a few miles from the hamlet at a firebase on Viet Nam Highway No. 1. Almost from the moment it arrived, C Company suffered daily casualties. Most of the mayhem was caused by mines and booby traps, and they were particularly plentiful in and around My Lai. By mid-March, the company, had lost a third of its original strength of more than 100 men. One day, a 155 mm. shell rigged as a booby trap killed one and injured four or five others. As Sergeant Michael B. Terry, 22, recalled it last week, "that really bothered...