ABSTRACT
On March 16, 1968, the soldiers of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Division, of the United States Army, rounded up and killed as many as 500 unarmed women, children, and elderly Vietnamese in the hamlet of My Lai 4 in Son My, South Vietnam. Charlie Company had entered My Lai 4 expecting to encounter Viet Cong, but when they did not, they proceeded to slaughter its civilian occupants. Lt. William L.Calley gave the orders to kill these civilians, and he himself was subsequently charged with and convicted of some of the murders.1 The My Lai Massacre, when it was revealed, led to a ‘crisis of conscience’ in the American people. According to some commentators, it resulted in a ‘loss of innocence’ among many who had apparently believed that their compatriots would never behave as Lt. Galley and some (but not all) of his troops had. Some people believed that Lt. Galley was innocent of the charges brought against him or that he himself was ‘only following orders.’ Others saw him as a ‘scapegoat,’ not perhaps in the sense that he was innocent but that he had been unfairly singled out for punishment for doing what other soldiers had done in wartime. Some professed to believe that the My Lai Massacre, while regrettable, did not reflect badly upon America, and that Lt. Galley and only Lt. Galley was responsible for what he had done, while others blamed the men of Charlie Company for not trying to stop him. Many people, however, had the uneasy feeling that while Lt. Calley’s conduct was reprehensible and deserving of punishment, the ultimate responsibility for what he had done rested with ‘the system,’ though it was not always clear what system they had in mind.
