My Lai Massacre Research Paper

During the course of the Vietnam War, many infamous events occurred, including the disastrous My Lai Massacre. On the morning of March 16, 1968 the Charlie Company, led by Lieutenant William Calley, marched into the small village of My Lai in Vietnam prepared to fight the enemy; the whole operation took less than an hour to complete. In the end, more than five hundred people-mostly women, young children and infants, and the elderly-were killed (Trueman “My Lai Massacre”). A frantic cover-up by the American army followed in an attempt to hide it from the public eye. One year later, it was publicized and reluctantly investigated by the government; however, the soldiers involved were not entirely open to discussion about the massacre and did not
Before invading My Lai, many soldiers report that they were ordered to kill all of the people in the village without hesitation. They testify being told that the village of My Lai was inhabited solely by the Viet Cong and that no regular civilians were living there or had ever lived there. They were additionally told to treat it as a free fire zone where they could kill anyone that they wanted to kill (Raimondo “Four Hours in My Lai”). These soldiers ended up destroying the village and executing many innocent villagers without realizing that they were not members of the Viet Cong. Other soldiers claim that their commanding officers had told them that the residents of My Lai had already been told evacuated and that only the Viet Cong would be left: “The company commanders were told that most of the population of My Lai were ‘Viet Cong’ or ‘Viet Cong sympathizers’ and were advised that most of the civilian inhabitants would be away from My Lai” (Goldstein, Marshall, and Schwartz 44). The villagers were then killed indiscriminately because it looked as though all of the innocent residents no longer lived there. The My Lai Massacre was a horrendous episode in the Vietnam War that occurred towards its end. It was caused mostly by poor training for the Charlie Company, misunderstood orders between the soldiers and
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