Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 16, 1993 TAG: 9303160350
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID BRANCO
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
MY LAI MASSACRE AMERICA'S NOTORIOUS WARTIME ATROCITY
TODAY marks the 25th anniversary of one of the most notorious days in U.S. military history.On March 16, 1968, three platoons of Charlie Company, U.S. Army infantry, marched into Son My village in South Vietnam and slaughtered more than 450 unarmed people in what came to be known as the My Lai massacre.
The four-hour rampage included dozens of murders, rapes, mutilations and other atrocities committed by American soldiers.
The news media and the public did not become aware of the event until nearly 20 months later; by then My Lai and its only convicted perpetrator, Lt. William L. Calley, became arguably the most prominent reasons for America's final estrangement from the Vietnam War.
My Lai gave substance to the war protesters' refrain, "baby killers." Photographs taken at the scene showed numbers of murdered infants in the arms of their murdered mothers.
The American soldiers received no return fire, and no enemy weapons were discovered at the scene. No military-age men were among the bodies. A ditch was filled with corpses and blood. Young girls had been raped and then killed by gunfire or grenade or bayonet. People were lined up and shot. Children were killed pleading for mercy. All animals were killed.
Yet, remarkably, there seems to be almost no memory or knowledge of all this today. For people in their 30s and younger, the words "My Lai" mean nothing. Those old enough to remember My Lai prefer to forget it.
How could this be?
The United States has mounted a number of swift military interventions since the Vietnam War, many of them largely designed to cure the nation of its "loser's syndrome." We also have erected the Wall in Washington, D.C., and other Vietnam memorials to salve the sacrifice of our hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded from the war.
Those gestures seem to have succeeded in restoring the American hubris about our role in the world. But we do not teach and do not recall My Lai, and in the process we deny ourselves knowledge of something very ominous about ourselves as a people.
Consider that the My Lai soldiers were later found to comprise a typical cross-section of America's male youth. Consider that My Lai was only a spectacular event in what was a frequent stream of morally questionable actions committed by American combat soldiers in Vietnam.
Consider that veterans counselors now are encountering increasing numbers of Persian Gulf war veterans seeking help for feelings of guilt and other problems associated with their having shot fleeing Iraqi soldiers in the back, or with having committed "mercy killings" of prisoners, or with having pushed buttons that resulted in numerous civilian deaths. Perhaps knowledge of My Lai would have prevented those horrible experiences.
The German people have not allowed themselves to forget their Nazi atrocities. They live with the knowledge that ordinary men are capable of committing and sometimes do commit unimaginably atrocious acts.
In the United States, Vietnam veterans hold this knowledge, but talk about it mostly among themselves. Textbooks give the war little space; My Lai rarely even is mentioned.
Without discourse, we don't remember, our children don't learn. As novelist John Knowles said, wars are not made by "generations and their special stupidities," but rather "by something ignorant in the human heart."
David Branco, a Vietnam War veteran who is working on textbooks about the war for high-school and college students, wrote this for Newsday. Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service