On the afternoon of March 15, 1968, 25-year-old Lieutenant William Culley's squad was ordered to clear the village of Mi Lai (Mai Lai as we know it in Greece) of the communist Viet Cong rebels who occupied it. The information turns out to be false. In this South Vietnamese village there are only women and children and helpless old people. The next morning (16 March), Kalei's soldiers, with only three months' experience in inhospitable Vietnam, slaughter the civilians with unprecedented ferocity. It is estimated that the death toll ranges from 350 to 500.
The incident was kept secret by the Pentagon for almost a year, until it was brought to light by the publications of the distinguished journalist Seymour Hirsch (best known these days for exposing the Abu Ghraib inferno in Iraq) and the persistence of a repatriated reservist who bombarded the US government with letters. A judicial inquiry is finally ordered and five soldiers are put on the dock at the court martial.
The trial begins on 17 November 1970 and the verdict of 31 March 1971 incriminates only the leader of the massacre, Lieutenant Culley. The lieutenant claimed that he was carrying out orders from his superiors, a claim denied by his commanding officer, Captain Ernest Medina, who testified as a witness. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1971, which was commuted to a 20-year and then a 10-year suspended sentence by a Court Martial Review Board on February 16, 1973.
Culley would remain in prison (actually under house arrest in his apartment at Camp Fort Benning, Georgia) for just three and a half years and then receive a pardon from President Nixon. Today, William Culley lives in Columbus, Georgia and owns a jewelry store. According to his loved ones, he suffers from insomnia due to typhoid fever.
The "Mi Lai Massacre" was devastating to the image of the United States. It fuelled the anti-war movement at home and inflamed anti-Americanism in the rest of the world.
Source: sansimera.gr
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