Word: platooner
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...edgy company, expecting a firefight and anxious to at last even the score for their comrades picked off by an invisible enemy, split into three platoons. Two were assigned to take up flank positions and block the escape of anyone from the village. The central platoon (apparently about 30 men), commanded by Lieut. Calley, headed into the village. It met no resistance on the outskirts. But despite the lack of enemy fire, Galley's men in less than 20 minutes ignited "hootches" and chased all the villagers?whether fleeing, standing or begging for mercy?into groups, and shot everyone...
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...
Another soldier in the group following Calley's was SP4 Varnado Simpson, 22. "Everyone who went into the village had in mind to kill," he says. "We had lost a lot of buddies and it was a V.C. stronghold. We considered them either V.C. or helping the V.C." His platoon approached from the left flank. "As I came up on [the village], there was a woman, a man and a child, running away from it toward some huts. So I told them in their language to stop, and then they didn't and I had orders to shoot them down...
...detailed account came from Paul David Meadlo, 22, a member of Calley's platoon. As they walked toward the village, he told CBS, "there was one gook in a shelter, he was all huddled down in there?an older man. And 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...
...refugee camp at nearby Son My, the operation was grimly efficient. The inhabitants, who had a long record of sheltering Viet Cong, scrambled for cover around 6 a.m. when an hour-long mortar and artillery barrage began. When it stopped, helicopters swooped in, disgorging C Company's three platoons. One platoon tore into the hamlet, while the other two threw a cordon around the place. "My family was eating breakfast, when the Americans came," said Do Chuc, a 48-year-old peasant who claims to have lost a son and a daughter in the shooting that followed. "Nothing...