Word: platoonic
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...Private William Doherty found few animals or people alive when they got to the village about noon. "Billy and I started to get out our chow, but close to us was a bunch of Vietnamese in a heap and some of them were moaning. Calley ['s platoon] had been through before us, and all of them had been shot, but many weren't dead. It was obvious that they weren't going to get any medical attention, so Billy and I got up and went over to where they were. I guess we sort of finished them...
...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...
...said recently. "I doubt if I can explain all of mine." Perhaps, after the family reverses at home, he found in the Army a new emotional anchor. "He liked the Army," Queen says. "I think it kind of gave him a home." One of the members of his platoon in C Company, ex-Corporal William Kern, found Calley entirely ordinary. "There was nothing strange about him," Kern recalls. "He wasn't the best officer in the world. He wasn't the worst, either...
...illegal at his subsequent court-martial. Disobedience in combat is even riskier. More than one soldier who has ignored an order in battle has been executed on the spot, though this practice is nowhere authorized in the military code. A prominent U.S. general often recalls that as a platoon leader during the Normandy landing he shot to death a G.I. who had broken from the unit and run down the beach. Says he: "You can't have your men running under fire...