Wednesday, December 14, 1969 THE MICHIGAN DAILY Page Five Wednesday, December 10, 1969 THE MICHIGAN DAILY Page Five in kville: When the Us. . commits war crimes EDITOR'S NOTE: The massacre at Song My, now reported by almost every newspaper in the country, was a long time in being noticed -first, because word had not leaked out, later because no respectable media would carry it. Not until Seymour Hersh, a former Asso- ciated Press Washington reporter, wrote of the massacres for the fledgling Dispatch News Service did anyone take notice. Ills original report on the Army's handling of the affair and some crucial eye-witness reports found by Hlersh are reprinted here. FORT BENNING, GA. - Lt. William L. Calley Jr., 26, is a mild-mannered, boyish- looking Vietnam combat veteran nicknamed "Rusty." The Army says he deliberately murdered at least 109 Vietnamese civilians during a search-and-destroy mission in March 1968 on a Viet Cong stronghold known as "Pinkville." Calley has formally been charged with six specifications of mass murder. Each specifi- cation cites a number of dead, adding up to the 109 total, and adds that Calley did "with premeditation murder . . . Oriental human- beings whose names and sex are unknown by shooting them with a rifle." The Army calls it murder. Calley, his counsel and others associated with the in- cident describe it as a case of "carrying out orders." "Pinkville" has now become a widely known codeword in the military in a case that many officers and some well-informed congressmen believe will become far more controversial than the recent murder charges against eight Green Berets. In terms of numbers slain, "Pinkville" is by far the worst known U.S. atrocity case of the Vietnam War. CALLEY, A PLATOON leader of the 11th Brigade of the American Division, was for- mally charged with the multiple homicides on or about Sept. 6, 1969. Calley has since hired a prominent civilian attorney, former U.S. Military Appeals Judge George W. Latimer, and is now await- ing a military determination of whether the evidence justifies a general court-martial. All sources agree that the court-martial will be ordered soon. It is expected to begin early next year. four eye witnesses recountI Editor's Note: The U.S. Court of Military Ap- peals has unanimously agreed to allow soldiers who participated in the alleged massacre at My Lai to make statements to the press. What follows 14 the story of My Lai, told in the words of four men who were there. Pai d Aleadlo, 22, forimerly in tie implicated com JinV: There was supposed to have been some Viet Cong in Pinkville a n d we began to make a sweep through it. Once we got there we b e g a n gathering up the people . . . started pitting them in big mobs. There mnust have b ee n about 40 or 45 civilians standing in one big circle in the middle of the village . . . (Lt. William) Calley told me and a couple of other guys to watch them. 'You know what I want. you to do with them,' he said. 'Haven't you gotten rid of them yet?' he asked me. 'Get with it, I want them dead.' So we stood about 10 or 15 feet away from them, then he started shooting them . . . I started to shoot them, but the 'other guys wouldn't do it. So we (Meadlo and Calley) went ahead and killed them. Meadlo says he killed at least 15 civilians.) I just thought we were supposed to do it. It took a load off my conscience for the buddies we'd lost. It was revenge, that's all it was. We had a b o u t seven or eight civilians gathered in a hootch, and I was going to throw a hand grenade in. But someone told us to take them to the ditch. Calley was there and said to me, 'Meadlo, we've got another job to do.' So we pushed our seven or eight people in with the big bunch of them. And so I began shooting them all. So did Mitchell, Calley (and oth- ers whose names he could not recall.) I guess I shot maybe 20 or 25 people in the ditch. After the ditch, there were just some peo- ple in hootches. I knew there were some people down in one hootch, maybe two or three, so I just threw a hand grenade in. We all thought we were doing the right thing . . . at the time it didn't bother me. Sgt. (regorv Olsen, 20, for- nerly in the compay ill. volved il the massacre, in a letter mailed to his father in in March, 1968: JIb Lai it was an insane act that caught on spon- taneously. It's something I don't think a p e r s o n would understand - the reality of it just didn't hit me until recently, when I read about it again in the newspapers. Xichuel Terry, 22, also of tie l11111 Brigade, a (devout Iormon d n(i iO a soph- oinore (it Brigliam Young t ii'ersitv: They just marched through shooting ev- erybody . . . seems like no one said any- thing . . . just started pulling people out and shooting them. They had a group standing over a ditch just like a Nazi-type thing .. . one officer ordered a kid to machine gun everybody down, but the kid just couldn't do it. He threw the machine gun down and the officer picked it up. I don't remember seeing any men in the ditch, mostly women and kids. I think that probably the officers didn't really know if they were ordered to kill the villagers or not, . .. A lot of guys feel that they (South Vietnamese) aren't human be- ings. We just treated them like animals. ;t. 11icliael Burnghurdlt, 23, a member of the I ith In- fantry Brigade Company: They were doing a whole lot of shooting up there. I walked up and saw these guys doing strange things. They were doing it three ways. One: they were setting fire to the hootches and huts and waiting for peo- ple to come out and then shooting them. Two: they were going into the hootches and shooting them up. Three: they were gather- ing people in groups and shooting them. As I walked in you could see piles of peo- ple all through the village . . . They were shooting women and children just like any- body else. THESE FACTS ARE not. in dispute: The Pinkville area, about six miles north- east of Quang Ngai, had been a Viet Cong fortress since the Vietnam War began. In early February, 1968, a company of the 11th Brigade, as part of Task Force Barker, stormed through the area and was severely shot up. Calley's platoon suffered casualties. After the Communist Tet offensive that month, a larger assault was mounted, again with high casualties and little success. A third attack was quickly mounted and it was successful One man who took part in the mission with Calley, in recounting what happened, said that in the earlier two attacks "we were really shot up." "We were told to just clear the area. It was a typical combat assault formation. We came in hot, with a cover of artillery in front of us, came down the line and de- stroyed the village," he said. "There are always some civilian casual- ties in a combat operation. He (Calley) isn't. guilty of murder." r 4 AMERICAN SOLDIERS cautmously enter It was a fear of the village-de(in~1I1g Sout possible, if not actually inv(itabhe, the m We met ntO resistance and I o n 1 y saw three captured weapons. We had no cas- ualties. It was just like any other Vtetna- mese village -- old papa-sans, women and kids. As a matter of fact, I don't remember seeing one military-age male in the emiire place, dead or alive. It's my belief that the company was con- ditioned 'to do t h i s. The treatment was lousy ... As it was, the Army was treating it like a vict'ory and I knew only a few guys would be able to testify without implicating themn- selves . .. Guys were saying how great it was (af- terward) -sort of 'shoot them up before they grow up and shoot at you." The order to clear the area was relayed from the battalion commander to the com- pany commander to Calley, the source added. BEYOND THESE facts, conjecture and the law came in. Calley's attorney, George Latimer, said in an interview, "This is one case that should never have been brought. Whatever killing there was was in a firefight in connection with an operation." "You can't afford to g u e s s whether a civilian is a Viet Cong or not. Either they shoot you or you shoot them," Latimer said. "This case is going to be important - to what standard do you hold a combat officer in carrying out a mission?" the attorney asked. Adding to the complexity of the case is the fact that investigators from the Army Inspector General's office, which conducted the b u1k of the investigation, considered filing charges against at least six other men involved in the action on that MarcA 16. Included were Capt. Ernest Medina, Cal- ley's company commander, and Sgt. Man- uel Lopez, Calley's main noncommissioned officer. Both are now stationed at F o r t Benning: They, and at least four other men from Calley's unit, were flown to Benning some- time in late summer during the Army's Ar- ticle 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a grand jury proceeding, which concluded that Calley should be held for court-martial. Sources report that Calley was personally accused of all of the slayings under his and Sgt. Lopez's command. The young lieuten- ant refused to say whether the order to fire came f r o m Medina, his former company commander, during the hearings. CALLEY'S FRIENDS in the officer corps' at Fort Benning, many of them West Point graduates, are indignant, but knowing the high stakes of the case, they express their outrage in private. "They're using this as a god-damned ex- ample," o n e officer complained. "He's a good soldier. He follows orders." "There weren't any friendlies in the vil- lage," the officer added. "The orders were to shoot anything that moved." Another noted, "It could happen to any of us. He's killed and seen a lot of killing ... killing becomes n o t h i n g in Vietnam. He knew that there were civilians there, but he also knew that there were VC among them." There is another side to the Calley case, one that the Army cannot reveal as yet. Interviews have brought out the fact that the investigation into the Pinkville affair was initiated six months after the incident, only after some of the men who served un- der Calley complained. A CONSTANT SOURCE of amazement among all those interviewed was that the story had yet to reach the press. "Pinkville has been a word among GIs for a year," one official said. "I'll never cease to be amazed that it hasn't been written about before." Why did the A r m y choose to prosecute this case? On what is it basing the charge that Calley acted with premediation before killing? The court martial undoubtedly will supply the answers to these questions, but some men already have their opinions. "The Army k n e w it was going to get clobbered on this at some point," one know- ledgeable military source noted. "If they don't prosecute somebody - if this stuff comes out without the Army taking some action -- it would be even worse." AS FOR CALLEY, he's now smoking four packs of cigarettes daily and getting out of shape. He's short, 5'3", slender, with expres- sionless gray eyes and thinning brown hair. He seems slightly bewildered and hurt by the charges against him. He wants nothing more than to be cleared and return to the Army. "I know this sounds funny," he said in an interview, "but I like the Army . .. and I don't wanttodo anything to hurt it." Friends described Calley as a "gung-ho Army man . . . Army all the way." Iron- ically, even his staunchest supporters admit, his enthusiasm may be somewhat to blame. "Maybe he did take some order to clear out the village a little bit,too literally," one friend said, "but he's a fine boy." An information sheet put out by the pub- lic affairs officer of the American division the day after the M a r c h 16 engagement contained this terse mention of 'the inci- dent: "The swiftness with which the units moved into the area surprised the enemy. After the battle, the 11th Brigade moved into the village, searching re a c h hut and tunnel." But much more than that would even- tually be known. Copyright, 1969, Dispatch News Service a South Vietnamese village which may be a haven for the Viet Cong or its sympathizers. h Vietnamese peasants-along with a vicious and degrading attitude toward them-that made assacre at the village called "Pinkville" by American troops. i. f Tr.a iw if " s r 'n ..Rs. .. . A . i* M ~ . yit: r i4 ., On their way back to (their landing zone), they saw a woman working in the fields. They shot and wounded her. Then t h e y kicked her to death and emptied their (ri- fle) magazines in her head. They slugged every little kid they came across. This isn't the first time, dad, I've seen it many times before. We seemed always to get the dirty jobs. Morale was terribly low. Everyone felt that we were getting the short end of the stick. yrou Any radio, TV set cassette or tape recorder with a phono jack Rour bag Gtarrard's X-10modie a precision auitomatic jurntable. Complete and ready to play. n1 I \ < s Colt 45 is 27% more unique than a 2 FOOT, 9 INCH CENTER December 4, 1969 v' MARTY McLAUGHLIN Student Body President University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Michigan My undying thanks to the faculty and alumni for making M'GOO the happiest man in California. M'GOO is ecstatically proud of his old alma mater and will make world fam- ous M'GOO'S of Hollywood national headquarters for the Michigan Wolverines and their friends. Yours in victory, An old Wolverine,