The My Lai Sager

Forty years on, and "My Lai" is synonymous with "massacre"
Published 15th March 2008
All credits: BBC News

Forty years on, and “My Lai” is synonymous with “massacre”. The killing of Iraqi civilians at Haditha has often been referred to as a modern-day My Lai. The name is shorthand for slaughter of the defenceless, the benchmark of American wartime atrocity.

The murders of 504 men, women, children and babies happened in a northerly province of South Vietnam on 16 March 1968. It proved to be a turning point for public opinion about the Vietnam War. Yet, most of what we know about the event comes from a single, widely publicised court martial in 1970-71. A young Lieutenant - William Calley - in Charlie Company was tried and convicted of murdering 22 “oriental human beings” in My Lai on that sunny morning in 1968.

Forgotten tapes

Media attention on Lt Calley’s trial was extensive and the glare of publicity so bright it hid the wider, more awful truth. Before that trial got under way, the United States army had, behind closed doors, completed an investigation of its own into the events at My Lai, and specifically into the possibility that those in authority had deliberately covered up a massacre.

Convened on 1st December 1969 in the basement of the Pentagon, The Department of the Army Review of the Preliminary Investigations into The My Lai Incident, known in abbreviated form as The Peers Inquiry, was chaired by Lt Gen William ‘Ray’ Peers. In just 14 weeks, the Peers Inquiry conducted a comprehensive and wide-ranging investigation into the events of 16 March.

Read full article >

The My Lai Tapes (BBC)
Part One >
Part Two >




Other reports:

1968: The My Lai Tapes
Saturday 15th March 2008 (Radio 4 FM)

Survivors reflect 40 years after My Lai
By Ben Stocking Associated Press Writer
16th March 2008

'Blood and fire' of My Lai remembered 30 years later
CNN News
16th March 1998