Lt. William Calley peers from his door as Alabama Governor George Wallace leaves after a visit to Calley who is currently under house arrest on post at Ft. Benning, William Laws Calley Jr. is a former United States Army officer convicted by court-martial of murdering 22 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai Massacre on March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War. Calley's next door neighbor snaps a photo of the governor's departure.
The Mỹ Lai Massacre (/ˌmiːˈlaɪ/; Vietnamese: Thảm sát Mỹ Lai [tʰâːm ʂǎːt mǐˀ lāːj] (About this sound listen)) was the Vietnam War mass murder of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by troops in Sơn Tịnh District, South Vietnam, on 16 March 1968. Between 347 and 504 unarmed people were massacred by the Army soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division. Victims included men, women, children, and infants. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated.[1][2] Twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader in C Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but served only three and a half years under house arrest. The massacre, which was later called "the most shocking episode of the Vietnam War",[3] took place in two hamlets of Sơn Mỹ village in Quảng Ngãi Province.[4] These hamlets were marked on the Army topographic maps as Mỹ Lai and Mỹ Khê.[5] The Army slang name for the hamlets and sub-hamlets in that area was Pinkville,[6] and the carnage was initially referred to as the Pinkville Massacre.[7][8] Later, when the Army started its investigation, the media changed it to the Massacre at Songmy.[9] Currently, the event is referred to as the My Lai Massacre in the United States and called the Sơn Mỹ Massacre in Vietnam.[10] The incident prompted global outrage when it became public knowledge in November 1969. The massacre increased to some extent[11] domestic opposition to the involvement in the Vietnam War when the scope of killing and cover-up attempts were exposed. Initially, three servicemen who had tried to halt the massacre and rescue the hiding civilians were shunned, and even denounced as traitors by several Congressmen, including Mendel Rivers, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
Size: 4236px × 2935px
Location: Fort Benning, Georgia
Photo credit: © Ken Hawkins / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: army, benning, calley, cally, children, civilian, civilians, columbus, convict, convicted, court, federal, fort, ft., ga, george, georgia, guilty, kill, killed, lai, lieutenant, lt., martial, massacre, men, military, murder, nam, officer, police, prison, prisoner, rusty, shot, stockade, trial, viet, vietnam, wallace, william, women
