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Forty years on, and "My Lai" is synonymous with "massacre".
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My Lai massacre hero dies at 62
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The killing of Iraqi civilians at Haditha has often been referred to as a modern-day My Lai. The name is shorthand for slaughter of the defenceless,
the benchmark of American wartime atrocity.
The murders of 504 men, women, children and babies happened in a northerly province of South Vietnam on 16 March 1968. It proved to be a turning
point for public opinion about the Vietnam War. Yet, most of what we know about the event comes from a single, widely publicised court martial in 1970-71.
A young Lieutenant - William Calley - in Charlie Company was tried and convicted of murdering 22 "oriental human beings" in My Lai on that sunny morning in 1968.
Forgotten tapes
Media attention on Lt Calley's trial was extensive and the glare of publicity so bright it hid the wider, more awful truth. Before that trial got under way, the United States
army had, behind closed doors, completed an investigation of its own into the events at My Lai, and specifically into the possibility that those in authority had deliberately
covered up a massacre.
Convened on 1 December 1969 in the basement of the Pentagon, The Department of the Army Review of the Preliminary Investigations into The My Lai Incident, known
in abbreviated form as The Peers Inquiry, was chaired by Lt Gen William 'Ray' Peers. In just 14 weeks, the Peers Inquiry conducted a comprehensive and wide-ranging
investigation into the events of 16 March. More than 400 witnesses were interviewed, and their testimony was tape-recorded. When the inquiry concluded on 15 March
1970, those recordings were boxed-up, stored and forgotten.
In 1987, they were shipped to the US National Archives, as one small portion of a massive group of records of US Army activities in Vietnam. There they remained hidden,
never catalogued, never investigated, never uncovered - until last year.
I spent many months trying to track down the tapes. Again and again, I was told they did not exist, but after much persistence, 48 hours of recordings from the key
witnesses were declassified and made available to me. And on 15 March, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the massacre, some of the most powerful testimony
will be broadcast for the first time, on the Archive Hour on BBC Radio 4.
Some of the interviewees' statements reveal the mentality of the soldiers involved in the massacre.
"I would say that most people in our company didn't consider the Vietnamese human... A guy would just grab one of the girls there and in one or two incidents
they shot the girls when they got done," said Dennis Bunning. "That day it was just a massacre. Just plain right out, wiping out people," said Leonard Gonzales.
"Kill everything"
The wider, more awful truth that Gen Peers uncovered, was that this was an illegal operation, planned and co-ordinated at Task Force level by Lt Col Frank Barker.
It wiped out not one but three villages: My Lai, Binh Tay and My Khe. And not one, but two companies were involved: Bravo and Charlie. Both of these companies
were given the same briefing by their respective commanding officers, permitting them "to kill everything and anything."
"It's not just the people of Task Force Barker that are on trial... It's the Army, it's you and it's me... and it includes our country and our people in the eyes of the world,"
said Gen Peers, during his investigation. He concluded that 30 senior officers had been negligent in their duty. After the inquiry, 14 officers were charged with crimes.
But the only participant convicted of anything at My Lai was Lt William Calley. Gen Peers also proposed new methods of training soldiers, guidelines for the treatment
of civilians in wartime and new army leadership criteria. His recommendations still influence today's army training manuals.
"The My Lai Tapes" are a record not only of atrocity writ large but also of heroism. They are a record of how war can bring out not only the worst but also the best
in people. Above all they are a record of lessons learned 40 years ago, in My Lai, Binh Tay and My Khe - lessons that should not be forgotten.
Celina Dunlop is picture editor of the Economist. The Archive Hour: The My Lai Tapes will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 2000 GMT on Saturday, 15 March, 2008. You can also listen online for seven days after that at Radio 4's Listen again page.
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My Lai massacre hero dies at 62
Hugh Thompson Jnr, a former US military helicopter pilot who helped stop one of the most infamous massacres of the Vietnam War has died, aged 62.
Mr Thompson and his crew came upon US troops killing civilians at the village of My Lai on 16 March 1968. He put his helicopter down between the soldiers and villagers,
ordering his men to shoot their fellow Americans if they attacked the civilians. "There was no way I could turn my back on them," he later said of the victims.
Mr Thompson, a warrant officer at the time, called in support from other US helicopters, and together they airlifted at least nine Vietnamese civilians - including a
wounded boy - to safety. He returned to headquarters, angrily telling his commanders what he had seen. They ordered soldiers in the area to stop shooting.
But Mr Thompson was shunned for years by fellow soldiers, received death threats, and was once told by a congressman that he was the only American who should
be punished over My Lai. A platoon commander, Lt William Calley, was later court-martialed and sentenced to life in prison for his role in the killings.
President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence to three years' house arrest.
Lobbying
Although the My Lai massacre became one of the best-known atrocities of the war - with journalist Seymour Hersh winning a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on it - little was
known about Mr Thompson's actions for decades. In the 1980s, Clemson University Professor David Egan saw him interviewed in a documentary and began to campaign
on his behalf. He persuaded people including Vietnam-era Secretary of State Dean Rusk to lobby the government to honour the helicopter crew.
Mr Thompson and his colleagues Lawrence Colburn and Glenn Andreotta were finally awarded the Soldier's Medal, the highest US miltiary award for bravery when not
confronting an enemy. Mr Thompson was close to tears as he accepted the award in 1998 "for all the men who served their country with honour on the battlefields of
South-East Asia".
Mr Andreotta's award was posthumous. He was killed in Vietnam less than a month after My Lai. Mr Colburn was at Mr Thompson's bedside when he died, the Associated
Press reported. Mr Thompson died of cancer. He had been ill for some time and was removed from life support earlier in the week.
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