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On the early morning of March 16, 1968, American soldiers from three platoons of Charlie Company (1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division), entered a group of hamlets located in the Son Tinh district of South Vietnam, located near the Demilitarized Zone and known as "Pinkville" because of the high level of Vietcong infiltration. The soldiers, many still teenagers who had been in the country for three months, were on a "search and
destroy" mission. The Tet Offensive had occurred only weeks earlier and in the same area and had made them jittery; so had mounting losses from booby traps and a seemingly invisible enemy. Three hours
after the GIs entered the hamlets, more than five hundred unarmed villagers lay dead, killed in cold blood. The atrocity took its name from one of the hamlets, known by the Americans as My Lai 4. Military authorities attempted to suppress the news of My Lai, until some who had been there, in particular a helicopter pilot named Hugh Thompson and a door gunner named Lawrence Colburn, spoke up about what they had seen. The official line was that the villagers had been killed
by artillery and gunship fire rather than by small arms. That line soon began to fray. Lieutenant William Calley, one of the platoon leaders, admitted to shooting the villagers but insisted that he had
acted upon orders. An exposé of the massacre and cover-up by journalist Seymour Hersh, followed by graphic photographs, incited international outrage, and Congressional and U.S. Army inquiries began. Calley and nearly thirty other officers were charged with war crimes, though Calley alone was convicted and would serve three and a half years under house arrest before being paroled in 1974.My Lai polarized American sentiment. Many saw Calley as a scapegoat, the victim
of a doomed strategy in an unwinnable war. Others saw a war criminal. President Nixon was poised to offer a presidential pardon. The atrocity intensified opposition to the war, devastating any pretense of
American moral superiority. Its effect on military morale and policy was profound and enduring. The Army implemented reforms and began enforcing adherence to the Hague and Geneva conventions. Before launching an offensive during Desert Storm in 1991, one general warned his brigade commanders, "No My Lais in this division--do you hear me?"Compelling, comprehensive, and haunting, based on both exhaustive archival research and extensive interviews, Howard Jones's My
Lai will stand as the definitive book on one of the most devastating events in American military history.
On the early morning of March 16, 1968, American soldiers from three platoons of Charlie Company (1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division), entered a group of hamlets located in the Son Tinh district of South Vietnam, located near the Demilitarized Zone and known as "Pinkville" because of the high level of Vietcong infiltration. The soldiers, many still teenagers who had been in the country for three months, were on a "search and
destroy" mission. The Tet Offensive had occurred only weeks earlier and in the same area and had made them jittery; so had mounting losses from booby traps and a seemingly invisible enemy. Three hours
after the GIs entered the hamlets, more than five hundred unarmed villagers lay dead, killed in cold blood. The atrocity took its name from one of the hamlets, known by the Americans as My Lai 4. Military authorities attempted to suppress the news of My Lai, until some who had been there, in particular a helicopter pilot named Hugh Thompson and a door gunner named Lawrence Colburn, spoke up about what they had seen. The official line was that the villagers had been killed
by artillery and gunship fire rather than by small arms. That line soon began to fray. Lieutenant William Calley, one of the platoon leaders, admitted to shooting the villagers but insisted that he had
acted upon orders. An exposé of the massacre and cover-up by journalist Seymour Hersh, followed by graphic photographs, incited international outrage, and Congressional and U.S. Army inquiries began. Calley and nearly thirty other officers were charged with war crimes, though Calley alone was convicted and would serve three and a half years under house arrest before being paroled in 1974.My Lai polarized American sentiment. Many saw Calley as a scapegoat, the victim
of a doomed strategy in an unwinnable war. Others saw a war criminal. President Nixon was poised to offer a presidential pardon. The atrocity intensified opposition to the war, devastating any pretense of
American moral superiority. Its effect on military morale and policy was profound and enduring. The Army implemented reforms and began enforcing adherence to the Hague and Geneva conventions. Before launching an offensive during Desert Storm in 1991, one general warned his brigade commanders, "No My Lais in this division--do you hear me?"Compelling, comprehensive, and haunting, based on both exhaustive archival research and extensive interviews, Howard Jones's My
Lai will stand as the definitive book on one of the most devastating events in American military history.
Acknowledgments
Editor's Note
Abbreviations
Prologue: The My Lai Story
Part I: Pinkville
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Part II: Aftermath and Cover-Up
Six
Seven
Eight
Part III: My Lai on Trial
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Epilogue: The My Lai Story Continues
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Howard Jones is University Research Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Alabama, where he taught for thirty-nine years. He is a New York Times-bestselling author of Mutiny on the Amistad (the basis for Steven Spielberg's film Amistad), as well as The Bay of Pigs, Death of a Generation, and To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. He lives with his wife, Mary Ann, in Northport, Alabama.
"This book about the famous massacre of Vietnamese villagers by
American soldiers may be difficult to read - but it is essential
for understanding our recent history, and should become the
standard reference on the subject." -The New York Times
"Empirically, Jones has succeeded in including the perspective of
Vietnamese victims and Viet Cong commanders -- a focus that the
existing historiography lacks." -- Marcel Berni, Journal of
Contemporary History
"Jones is a versatile historian . . . and here, he successfully
accomplishes two tasks: first, he provides as comprehensive a
history of My Lai as we are likely to see for some time. Second, he
thoughtfully probes the myriad ways that the My Lai story has been
told. Jones succeeds on all counts." -Kirkus, Starred Review
"Nearly 10 years in the making, this exhaustively researched and
well-written narrative bores in on the details of what has become
known as the My Lai Massacre. . . . Jones, professor emeritus of
history at the University of Alabama, mined an array of sources,
including some original oral histories and interviews with
Americans and Vietnamese, in producing this authoritative account
of a dark moment in American history." --Publishers Weekly
"This important work deserves a wide audience and is essential for
anyone interested in the Vietnam War." -LIBRARY JOURNAL
"Jones' volume is a meticulous and detailed review of what happened
in My Lai, the subsequent investigations and the courts-martial.
His analysis is brutally frank yet fair, objective and balanced . .
. Every graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, ROTC and OCS should
be required to read this book before pinning on the gold bars."
-Brigadier General David T. Zabecki, for HistoryNet
"Howard Jones has produced the definitive work on My Lai.
Beautifully written, balanced, and thorough, it makes full use of
all the diverse sources previously unavailable to those who have
written about My Lai, including those directly involved in its
aftermath. Henceforth this significant work will be the go-to book
on and authoritative reference to this American tragedy." --William
G. Eckhardt, Col. (Ret.) JAGC, Chief Prosecutor My Lai Ground
Action,
Teaching Professor Emeritus, University of Missouri, Kansas City
School of Law
"The best book by far on the My Lai massacre and its
aftermath--exhaustively researched, persuasively argued, and a
page-turner to boot. A must-read for anyone interested not only in
the Vietnam era, but also in how things can go terribly wrong in
the midst of armed conflict, the laws of war notwithstanding. Truly
exceptional!" --Ralph B. Levering, author of The Cold War: A
Post-Cold War History
"Nearly 10 years in the making, this exhaustively researched and
well-written narrative bores in on the details of what has become
known as the My Lai Massacre. . . . Jones, professor emeritus of
history at the University of Alabama, mined an array of sources,
including some original oral histories and interviews with
Americans and Vietnamese, in producing this authoritative account
of a dark moment in American history." --Publishers Weekly
"[A]n exhaustively researched and well-written narrative and
analysis of the My Lai Massacre....[Jones] has produced a thorough
and, as he says, 'balanced and accurate' analysis of the massacre
itself, along with the event's controversial and convoluted legal
and political aftermath."--Vietnam Veterans of America
"A powerful and discerning account of one of the darkest days in
American military history. Judicious and unsparing, My Lai
chronicles anew the 'Descent into Darkness,' and considers how we
should think about the massacre today, half a century later."
--Fredrik Logevall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Embers of War:
The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam
"Howard Jones' My Lai is one of the most important books of the
past decade on the Vietnam War. He has masterfully peeled away the
complexity of the My Lai massacre and its cover-up to reveal more
clearly than ever the dark horror, willful deceit, moral
incompetence of this mass killing and its aftermath. Thanks to
Jones, we now have a deeper understanding of My Lai and Vietnam."
--William Thomas Allison, Georgia Southern University, author of
My
Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War
"A searing investigation of a war crime so savage it could not be
ignored or excused, and whose aftermath still courses through the
veins of America's conscience, Howard Jones' My Lai now takes its
place among the indispensable studies of modern American military
history and the laws of war." --Roger Spiller, George C. Marshall
Professor of Military History, emeritus, US Army Command and
General Staff College
"Howard Jones has written a powerful account of America's darkest
hour in the Vietnam War. The victims' pain, the soldiers' guilt,
and their leaders' culpability are all laid out for us to read in
this gripping history. For anyone who wants to understand the
tragedy of that war, this is essential reading." --Lien-Hang T.
Nguyen, Dorothy Borg Professor in the History of the United States
and East Asia, Columbia University
"My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness"... is a
masterpiece. Jones utilizes virtually every document available
about the massacre." - Counterpunch
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