My Lai 4 by Seymour M. Hersh

My Lai 4 by Seymour M. Hersh

The words "My Lai" will forever be infamous in the annals of American military history, for they denote the site of the event that shames America most in a war she would rather forget. The book in question is an account pieced together by journalist Seymour Hersh of the Associated Press. His account of the incident itself is based entirely upon personal interviews with the men involved, frequently two or three each. Unsurprisingly, given the nature of eyewitness testimony, there is a great deal of contradiction between these various accounts, and to his credit, Mr. Hersh does an excellent job of cross-referencing and combining them into a single picture. Where necessary, he enumerates anywhere from two to ten different recollections of a single event, allowing the reader to draw his own conclusions from the data.

Unless new evidence someday comes to light, the account contained in this book will likely remain the most accurate description of the events that took place in and around the hamlet of My Lai 4 on 16 March, 1968. The remainder of the book traces the aftermath of the incident, both in Vietnam and in America. This section is much more precise, for the simple reason that all the events he relates are matters of public record. The response of the American people to revelations of the events at My Lai 4 is shocking, not to mention quite instructive.

Briefly, this is what probably happened at My Lai 4: an assault was planned upon the hamlet and executed by Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion of the 20th Infantry Division, United States Army. After being inserted into the area by helicopter, the company proceeded to sweep the area and essentially massacre anywhere from 100 to 1000 unarmed civilians (there is still much debate about the exact figure). Anyone attempting to run was shot. The houses and huts of the village were systematically demolished or burned. Unarmed old men, women, and even children were shot in cold blood. The best-known part of the massacre was when Lt. Calley ordered several hundred civilians to lie on top of one another in a ditch, whereupon he and some of his men raked them with automatic-weapons fire and tossed grenades into the ditch. Some time later, noise from some surviving people in the ditch attracted the attention of men from another platoon of Charlie Company, who put those still alive out of their misery.