The Last Child of My Lai

BY JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Around 11:30 on March 16, 1968, Captain Ernest Medina ordered a ceasefire of US troops under his command in the South Vietnamese village of My Lai 4. After nearly four hours of gunfire, there was silence. There was silence, even though the order only applied to American soldiers. There was silence because none of the Viet Cong in the village were firing back. There was silence because the Viet Cong had never fired on US troops that day. There was silence because there were no Viet Cong in the village that day. There was silence because most of the people who were in the village that day were dead.

The gunfire began at 7:50 in the morning when two Huey gunships began strafing the boundaries of the village to provide cover for Medina’s advancing platoons. The Hueys shot anyone who fled the village, under the assumption they must be Viet Cong.

A mere five minutes later, Charlie Company was already on the ground, under the command of Lieutenant William “Rusty” Calley. A radio report from Calley’s platoon claimed they’d already killed 15 Viet Cong and had as yet encountered no resistance. They continued killing for the next 210 minutes. They yanked families out of their hooches, lined them up along a ditch, and shot them. They shot people working in the fields. They shot people running for cover. They shot the wounded. They shot people who tried to aid and comfort the wounded. They shot the young and the old. They shot mothers and grandmothers. They shot everyone they saw. What they didn’t shoot was anyone who shot at them. What they didn’t shoot was anyone who had a gun. What they didn’t shoot was any Viet Cong.

By 11:30, when Medina issued his ceasefire order, US forces had killed as many as 502 people. When they combed through the piles of bodies, and searched the huts, bunkers and tunnels, they found three weapons, all of them US-made. In the entire operation, no US troops were injured by enemy fire. The closest any US troops came to being shot that day was when Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, and his two crewmates, Lawrence Colburn and Glenn Andreotti, intervened to keep GIs in the 2^nd Platoon from killing a group of Vietnamese women and children cowering in a bunker. One other US soldier shot himself in the foot to avoid being forced to kill wounded civilians.

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It was Hugh Thompson who blew the whistle on the massacre. From his helicopter, he and his crew witnessed the slaughter. They saw what looked to be Vietnamese women and children marched to a ditch and shot. What they didn’t see was any enemy fire. They didn’t see any Viet Cong, at all. Thompson and his crew were so appalled, they landed in the free-fire zone. Almost immediately after touching down, they spotted a Vietnamese woman with a gaping chest wound. Thompson called for a Medivac to help her. Before it arrived he saw a US soldier with Captain’s bars on his helmet approach the woman, kick her with his boot, take a few steps back and riddle her body with bullets from his M-16. “She’s history and I’m sitting here,” Thompson said to Colburn. “My God, he just killed her.” The man with the Captain’s bars and the M-16 was Ernest Medina….

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/01/the-last-child-of-my-lai-2/

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