Question/Problem 4: How and why did the Vietnam War divide Americans?

...on March 16, 1968, a terrible event had taken place in a Vietnamese village named My Lai (pronounced Me Lie). At 7 a.m., helicopters dropped about two hundred American soldiers into the area around My Lai. Before leaving their base, the soldiers had been told by other officers that My Lai was a Viet Cong stronghold. They were to wipe out everyone they found, because, as one soldier recalled later, 'those people that were in the village±±the women, the kids, the old men±±were VC.'

The soldiers needed no urging. Not long before, a popular sergeant in the unit had been killed by a Viet Cong booby trap. The men wanted revenge, and when they moved into the village, they showed no mercy.

They began by setting fire to the village huts and raping some of the women and girls. Before long, the men lost all control and started to fire wildly at anything that moved, even the cattle, pigs, and chickens. A large group of villagers were herded into a ditch and raked by machine guns. When one soldier refused to fire, his commanding officer, Lieutenant William Calley, threatened to report him for disobeying an officer's order.

The official report of the action described My Lai as a military victory, with 128 Viet Cong added to the body count. The task±force commander called the mission 'well planned, well executed, and successful.' Many higher officers knew the real story, but ignored it.

Some of the soldiers who were at My Lai were disturbed by what happened and told others about it. One soldier, who was appalled by what he heard, sent letters to the army and Congress asking for an investigation. But nothing happened until November 1969, when reporter Seymour Hersh broke the story. Dozens of American newspapers printed Hersh's article.

Life magazine obtained photographs of the slaughter from a soldier who had been on the scene. The piled-up bodies of the villagers appeared in full color in one of the country's leading magazines. The American public was stunned. My Lai caused a national soul-searching on the whole question of what we were doing in Vietnam-- and what Vietnam was doing to us. The mother of one of the soldiers at My Lai said, 'I sent them a good boy, and they made him a murderer.' Three officers and a sergeant who led the troops at My Lai were accused of atrocities, or crimes against civilians. But only Lieutenant William Calley was convicted-- in his case, of killing twenty-two people, including babies. Calley's testimony that the My Lai operation was 'no big deal' added to Americans' horror and disgust. However, because Calley's superior officers were not punished, many people felt he was a scapegoat who took the blame for a complete breakdown in army discipline.

A military court sentenced Calley to life imprisonment, but the secretary of teh army reduced that to ten years. Calley was paroled after serving three years under house arrest at a military base.