Word: soldiers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Roberts also watched while troops accosted a group of women, including a teen-age girl. The girl was about 13 and wearing black pajamas. "A G.I. grabbed the girl and with the help of others started stripping her," Roberts related. "Let's see what she's made of," a soldier said. "V.C. boom-boom," another said, telling the 13-year-old girl that she was a whore for the Viet Cong. "I'm horny," said a third. As they were stripping the girl, with bodies and burning huts all around them, the girl's mother tried to help her, scratching...
Continued Roberts: "Another Vietnamese woman, afraid for her own safety, tried to stop the woman from objecting. One soldier kicked the mother and another slapped her up a bit. Haeberle [the photographer] jumped in to take a picture of the group of women. The picture shows the 13-year-old girl, hiding behind her mother, trying to button the top of her pajamas. When they noticed Ron, they left off and turned away as if everything was normal. Then a soldier asked, 'Well, what'll we do with 'em?' 'Kill 'em,' another answered. I heard...
...soldier try to stop the slaying? One saw what was happening, then shot himself in the foot so he could get out of it?and he was the only U.S. casualty of the day's action. At one point, a private stopped firing his M60 machine gun into a group of 20 people, refused to resume on Calley's orders?so Calley took the gun over and blasted away. Bernhardt said he had refused to take part, but feels guilty because "I just stood back and let it happen." One helicopter pilot, Warrant Officer Hugh Clowers Thompson...
...deliberate national policy of genocide is not the same as the unlawful actions of groups of soldiers running amuck. The U.S. as a nation bears no guilt equivalent to that of Nazi Germany, though perhaps the individual soldier in the American Army who commits an atrocity should be judged more harshly than a storm trooper. All the sanctions of his state, his education, his training were brought to bear on the Nazi soldier to obey any order, including the killing of civilians; it was more difficult for him to disobey. An American butchering non-combatants must act against...
Those conditions breed fear and paranoia, in which the young soldier sees all Vietnamese as threatening. When he is also weary from hours of trudging through swamp and jungle and then sees a friend killed beside him ? and friendships are highly emotional bonds in combat ? a soldier can easily go wild. At My Lai, however, the rampage was a group affair rather than individual breakdowns, something much harder to understand...