“By the end of the day American forces had killed 347 to 504 unarmed Vietnamese women, children and old men, and raped 20 women and girls, some as young as 10 years old.
The massacre at My Lai was not the only time American troops committed war crimes against Vietnamese civilians, but it was the single worst instance; its severity, its cover-up and the eventual trial of just a handful of the unit’s leaders became a synonym for the entire American war in Vietnam.
Rape became such an endemic problem in Charlie Company that one member of its Second Platoon, Michael Bernhardt, assumed that every woman Lieutenant Calley’s platoon came across would be raped within moments.
The events at My Lai became public a year later. Several officers were brought to trial in 1971, but only Lieutenant Calley was convicted. He was released from prison in 1974.”
Source: The New York Times
Comments