1968 the my Lai massacre: forty years ago, in one of the lowest points of the Vietnam War, U.S. troops killed hundreds of unarmed civilians and the Army tried to cover it up.

• Author: Whitney, Craig R.
• Position: TIMES PAST

It happened at the height of the Vietnam War came to symbolize all that went wrong for America in that conflict. On March 16, 1968, in a village known as My Lai, American soldiers killed more than 400 unarmed Vietnamese civilians, among them children the elderly, many of whom were rounded up, pushed into ditches or herded together, and shot.

The officer in charge later claimed that the villagers were enemy Communist guerrillas, but other witnesses painted a much more troubling picture, and what became known as the My Lai (MEE-LIE) massacre sparked widespread outrage when it was exposed more than a year later--mainly clue to of an American soldier not involved in the operation. It only added fuel to the tire of a growing antiwar movement at home.

The United States had been involved in Vietnam for more than a decade, starting with its support for France as it fought a Communist-led rebellion in its century-old colony.

The French were defeated in 1954 and Vietnam was partitioned into Communist North Vietnam, which received heavy backing from China and the Soviet Union, and pro-Western South Vietnam. It was the height of the Cold War and Dwight D. Eisenhower, trying to keep Communism at hundreds of military advisers to train the South's army.

As fighting intensified in the South, John E Kennedy' administration increased the number of advisers to 17,000 by 1963, but it was his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, who sent the first U.S. troops into combat. Many of them were draftees.

GUERRILLAS & CIVILIANS

American forces--more than 543,000 at their peak in 1969 fought against both Communist guerrillas, known as the Viet Cong, and North Vietnamese Army troops. The Viet Cong often wore the same black pajamas as the South's peasants and rice farmers, making it hard and dangerous--for American G.I.'s to figure out who was a guerrilla and who was a civilian.

The first months of 1968 were a turning point in the war. In January, the Communists launched the Tet Offensive, a series of attacks across the South timed to Tet, the lunar New Year. Militarily, the attacks were a terrible defeat for the Communists, but grisly TV images of the fierce fighting shook America's confidence in what was becoming an increasingly unpopular war.

Shortly after the Tet offensive, on March 16, the men of Charlie Company, part of the Army's Americal Division, helicoptered into My Lai, in an area known to G.I.'s as "Pinkville" because of its rice farmers' Communist Many were still angry over the death days earlier of a respected sergeant who was killed nearby in a booby-trap explosion.

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Charlie Company's Commander, Capt. Ernest Medina, had told his men that they would find a dangerous guerrilla unit in the village, and that any civilians probably would have gone to the fields by the time the troops landed; the soldiers were to kill the guerrillas and destroy the village for sheltering them. Small-arms fire from assault helicopters would rake the area first.

Led by a 24-year-old lieutenant from Florida named William Calley, the first platoon of Charlie Company's 100 men were the first to jump in. As they began sweeping through the thatch-covered huts and low brick buildings, they were met not by enemy tire but by more than 500 civilians--old men, mothers and grandmothers, and children.

Fired up by his commander's warnings that only Communist guerrillas or sympathizers would be in the village by the time they landed, Lieutenant Calley told one of his soldiers, "You know what I want you to do them. I want them dead. Waste them."

The soldiers were confused, frightened...