American History Hit - Vietnam: The My Lai Massacre

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

How did a US Army mission in Vietnam end with the massacre of up to 500 people?In this episode, Don is joined by Christopher Levesque to examine one of the most harrowing chapters of the war in Vietnam. They return to March 1968, when the men of Charlie Company undertook a 'search and destroy' mission in the Quang Ngai province village of Son My.Chris holds a joint appointment at the University of West Florida Libraries and the UWF Historic Trust. He is an archivist and teaches at the University of Western Florida, Pensacola, and the University of Charleston.Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. Hi, everyone, it's Don. Just jumping in with a gentle warning, the episode which follows,

contain some very distressing content. November 1970, Fort Benning, Georgia. A convoy of military trucks moves by on the wet pavement. MPs patrol the curb. In the distance, the cadence of marching boots echoes through the air. All of this is a reminder that we are standing on an army base, a place built for war. But here, as we face the stark and simple building ahead of us,

war is not being waged, but it is being judged. Today marks the beginning of the trial of Lieutenant William Calley Jr., accused of the premeditated murder of unarmed civilians at a small village called Milai in South Vietnam. Today, there will be an American soldier, not an enemy, standing in the dock. It will be the United States Army, which will decide whether one of its own committed an unspeakable crime. Within the building, inside the courtroom, the wooden witness stand is, for the moment, empty, and the courtroom still. Then, as the attorneys rise to present their opening statements, the jurors instinctively leaned forward.

The young prosecutor, Aubrey Daniel, takes a breath and begins. Your Honor, thank you. Gentlemen of the jury, I want you to know me lie. I will try to put you there. This is American History yet. I'm Don Wildman. Today, we'll discuss the not-so-distant past, at least for some of us. Though I was but a youngster at the time, I can vividly recall the images of horrific fighting in a faraway land called Vietnam. While my sisters and I lived our normal childhood lives going to school and playing sports and having family dinners at night,

that war overseas was escalating, as was reported nightly on the news with body counts and footage of firefights in the jungle. It was a weird dichotomy here on the home front, one we lived with for years until it all came to a chaotic conclusion in 1975 with helicopters evacuating Americans from the roof of the U.S. Embassy. Vietnam was never the right kind of war, if there is such a thing. Victory and surrender would never be formalized. In the aftermath, the nation had to come to terms with both the courage and honor of those servicemen and women who sacrificed so much, but also with the difficult news of stunning atrocities committed by some U.S. troops in combat, most notorious of all, the Milai Massacre

of 1968, which is our subject today with guest, historian, and archivist Christopher Leveck, who teaches at the University of Western Florida, Pensacola, and the University of Charleston. Hello, Chris, nice to have you on the show. Nice to be here. Chris, the events at hand happened in March 1968. At this point, we're a few years. into the buildup of U.S. troops in Vietnam. Nixon has taken the presidency. Lyndon Johnson is long gone. But on the ground in Vietnam, the U.S. is reeling from the Tet Offensive. Can you describe the general circumstances for the U.S. military in Vietnam at this time? In March of 1968, the Tet Offensive was underway. And it was a significant shock, both for the United States military and the U.S.

public. While some American leaders in Vietnam had seen signs that something was coming in March of 1968, many U.S. forces were surprised by the actual tax by the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong, which were coordinated throughout South Vietnam. One of the things that had been happening is that General William Westmoreland, commander of the military assistant's command of Vietnam and the Johnson administration had been assuring the American public that the end was in sight, that a turning point was near, that the war would soon be over. And so when this large offensive throughout South Vietnam, which also penetrated the U.S. embassy in Saigon, occurred, it was a shock to the American public because it was clear that they had been misled about what was happening. So it's this sort of large-scale offensive that was on television every night.

Yes, U.S. news media had expanded their nightly news coverage during the war from 15 minutes to 30 minutes. as a means to cover it. So this was a sort of a constant thing for the American people. Yeah, as I mentioned in the opening there, I am one of those kids who saw all that happening on television. It was a strangest kind of television to watch for all of American, which is really what distinguishes this war for so many on the home front here. Everything that we're talking about is important to understand that context that you just

gave us. Everything we talk about happens in the midst of this. You know, as a high, high drama is happening both, you know, in Vietnam. during a war, of course, but also at home. I mean, there's a lot of pressure going on here. We're going to be talking about a specific mission that is in reaction to the Tet Offensive, just part of the operations, of course, but it involves a specific unit called Charlie Company, which is part of a larger unit, and we'll get into all of this. So let's take this one step at a time. We're talking about a specific company called Charlie Company, which is part of a platoon,

which is part of a brigade and all sorts. It's one of those small units that we have seen in the movies, of course. They're on their way to Vietnam in December of 1967, having been trained in Hawaii, and this group of young men arrive there and are camped out in a province called Kwonghai, right? Right. It's just important to me to understand how this operation gets started for these guys. So you can understand how they are thrown into the deep end, which is typical with these situations, isn't it? In this case, Charlie Company is in a special type of a situation. They're a relatively new organization. The Ameri-Cal Division, the 23rd Infantry Division, had been brought back into service in a hurry to meet the demands of Vietnam. Their train was

taking place at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. And so one of the things that happened is they're a unit that is being brought together that's new as part of the division that's being sent to one of the most active parts of Vietnam. They're an average or above average infantry company at the time. 87% of the non-commission officers had graduated from high school, which is a rate 20% higher than the average for infantry companies on the line in Vietnam. 70% of the men in lower enlisted rates had graduated from high school, which is also slightly above average. It's both ethnically and geographically mixed demographically. So half of the soldiers were African American, which was pretty typical of units in Vietnam. And so one of the

problems that we have is that with this background, there's little to set them apart as being the ones who are going to be responsible for this. The trick is that many of the most experienced non-commission officers and other enlisted personnel had been transferred out of Charlie company during its training. So you get really inexperienced soldiers in what are generally leadership positions. So you get private's first class and specialist fourth class in leadership roles. And so they're not as experienced. And that part of it, part of what is what explains why a unit that got high marks for training

in Hawaii when it gets to Vietnam is seen as deficient. And so they get to Vietnam in December of 1967. they receive their orientation training from instructors of the 4th Infantry Divisions in CO Academy at L.C. Bronco. They get practical training for things like airstrikes and calling in artillery and requesting medical evacuation, how to maintain their radios, how to deal with civilians and enemy prisoners of war that they interact with. Now, basically, don't abuse them, don't kill them, but keep them separate and silent and secure. but essentially don't be terrible, follow the laws of war. Their training, though, did caution them that because it's difficult to tell the Viet Cong apart from other civilians, that they have to be aware.

Everybody is a potential enemy. They're also told that children are tricky to interact with because they seem innocent, but they might have been set up with an explosive device. And so they get one day of training before they're given their first mission. Their first mission is to set up the 11th Infantry Brigades fire base at LZ Carrington near Duck Foe. And this was an area that had been dangerous, but at this point is relatively quiet. They set up the camp perimeter. They dig bunkers and do that type of thing.

So they get about a month of settling in, doing some patrols and doing some training, but they don't fire their weapons. They lay in nights and night ambushes looking for ACE. single sniper in their area of operations. The trouble really, really begins four days before the Ted offensive. Wow. And so four days before the Ted offensive, they're taken out of their regular infantry battalion and sent to basically a scratch battalion called Task Force Barker. It's got a hodgepodge of infantry and artillery from the brigade, and they're given the mission to go after the 48th the Viet Cong, the local force battalion, near Kwongnai City. So they're given a very difficult job. They're not used to working together. And the reason this happens is that the 11th Infantry

brigade is waiting for its fourth infantry battalion to arrive. They're looking for a group to go send out to do this. And they also lose part of their organization. They lose their headquarters companies from all of these smaller units before they're sent to task force worker. Chris, this is going to be a complicated conversation about military structure in some regard, because we're talking about a group called Charlie Company, but I want the listeners to understand what I learned in prepping for this, that Charlie Company is part of a first battalion, which is itself part of the 20th Infantry Regiment, which is part of the 11th Infantry Brigade, also part of the 23rd Infantry Division. In this smaller version, which is the company, they are part of five platoons, all led by a guy named Ernest, Mad Dog Medina. So that gives you some sense of what's missing from the Vietnam movies and so over. That this is, when you are in this war, you are part of an enormous structure. And I think that audiences that watch those movies don't have a real sense of what that must have felt like, that you are an integral part of a unit that is part of something bigger and bigger and bigger and

bigger. And that is part of the problem with fighting these big wars is that you're sort of out of touch with who you're working for. You really are taking your orders from the officer right there, and he's in that vast chain of command. It's just an interesting context to imagine yourself in, right? Yes, and it has a real effect on how this plays out. Yeah. So they're taken out of their normal structure and put into this sort of ad hoc task force. That's a battalion size. So it's basically three companies and some infantry companies and some artillery. How many men are we talking about? The infantry companies are usually going to be about 150 men.

So three of those. Okay. So that's part of the camp that they're living in. Right. And one of the things that happens is when Tet occurs four days after they're put into this organization, they see things happening around them. They're not directly affected yet. but one of the things that happened is that the division headquarters in July is attacked. And one of the messages that that sends to the men of Charlie Company is that their home base,

where they get all their supplies, where they're supposed to get their support from, has been attacked even if they're not facing those types of firefights. And so one of the challenges they face is that they're supposed to be engaging this very effective Viet Cong unit, battalion level unit, that doesn't engage groups of more than 30 people that has a pretty fearsome reputation. But all they're encountering is snipers and booby traps. Guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare of the type that we normally associate with Vietnam. Yeah, terrifying stuff. And they take significant casualties despite not being in regular combat, not facing ambushes or anything like that.

So by the time we get to the middle of March, Charlie Company has lost about half of its strength. Lieutenant William Calle's first platoon has lost 27 of its 45 men. Wow. So it's a much smaller fighting force that has faced an enemy that they can't come to grips with. And at the same time, as I mentioned for, they don't have the experience of war-seasoned troops who had been to Vietnam. And the reason that they don't have that is that during their trading in Hawaii, they found that many of those more experienced troops had been to Vietnam too recently to be sent back. And that's why they were pulled out of the unit. And Captain Medina, one of the things that he testified to later, was that he had lost 70% of his company's

strength during that and had to deal with the issue of replacements that were not as experienced. I mean, this is the craziness of this war, is that they're thrown into a land that is very unusual environment for your average American to be in. What we're talking about happens over a course of about three months, two and a half months, really, from January of 68 until the middle of March. A typical day in their lives, when they were doing their missions anyway, they would have been picked up by the helicopters, taken to a place, dropped off, and told to clear an area or confront the enemy in some regard. That was how the operation was going on, right? What we've seen in the movies. Right. And so there are two types of scenarios here. The assault on Milai was just what it sounds like.

They're supposed to assault a village that has a Viet Cong force in it. But their typical pattern up to that patrols. Yeah. And frequently what they would say is that they fail. felt like they were being sent to wander around in the jungle waiting to be shot at. Yeah. This is a pattern that developed. The idea was that American small units, thetoons and companies would go out and go out looking for the enemy and wait to be attacked, would then either assault the people who are attacking or settle into a position and then call

for support from artillery or airstrikes. The idea was to draw the enemy out and then to punish them. but from the point of view of the regular infantry soldier who's just been told to go out in patrol waiting to be shot at, that can have a pretty significant effect on their morale. Yeah. We mentioned leadership and some leaders who weren't so good. And you also mentioned William L. Cali. Explain to me where he sits in this story as one of those leaders of a squadron or a company. He's leader of a platoon.

A platoon, I'm sorry. So Charlie Company had three infantry platoons, each of those. should have had 60 or 70 men in the platoon divided up into squads and then fired teams. Callie was the commanding officer of the first platoon, and he had supporting non-commission officers. His platoon sergeant was Isaiah Cohen. And so Callie was supposed to be in charge of this group of men. The problem for Cali was that they did not respect him. And his commanding officer, Ernest Medina, also did not respect him.

One of the things that happened that led into the effects of what happened at Mili is that Medina regularly called Callie demeaning big names like Sweetheart, berated them in front of not just his own platoon, but the rest of the company. And his platoon sergeant viewed Callie as not a particularly effective leader who he only followed due to Callie's ring. Yeah. He was kind of a people pleaser personality, wasn't it? He wanted to, do good, but too well, like he was trying too hard. Yes. And that goes back to when he was in elementary school. He was the kind of student who tried to anticipate his teachers' requests and needs. He's cleaning erasers and doing that type of thing.

Right. We've all met those people. And they, you know, while you can see they're trying hard, their heart is it's also annoying as heck. And so you're like, ugh, you know, and that was kind of this weird chemistry with this guy. So there was no reason to kick him out of the role, but everyone kind of resented him for what he was doing. and the personality quality that he had.

Unfortunately, that translates, as we'll see, into some military choices that are really bad. March 15, 1968, they received new orders about a group of villages called Mili, an area known as Pinkville for its color on the maps. This is a hotbed of Viet Cong activity, according to intelligence reports, which were a little sketchy.

Medina organizes this effort that they're going to go out into this area, but reminds the troops of their long And one particular one, Sergeant Cox, a very popular leader, as opposed to a Cali. This guy had stepped on a landmine, right? Sergeant George Cox was killed by a booby trap. If I remember correctly, it wasn't just a landmine in the way that we probably think about a device designed for somebody to be stepped on. It was what we would call now an improvised explosive device, IED, that had been made out of an unexploded, 105-millimeter.

artillery shell. Unexploited ordinance is a continuing problem in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. But what would happen is the Viet Cong would find bombs, whether they came from an airplane or artillery shells or mortar shells that had not

exploded and then make them into a line. And that's the type of thing that killed Sergeant Cox. And not only was he popular, but right before the mission briefing, they held a memorial service. for Cox. And at that memorial service, Medina reemphasized their losses and said that the company

needed to be more aggressive in their pursuit of the enemy. So they have lost all these people. They have this event. They have a memorial service led by a chaplain and Medina telling them that they need to remember their losses and to be more aggressive. Right. So these are the preexisting conditions when March 16th comes around. 5.30 a.m. They are roused from bed to gear up. Nine helicopters leave their zone. More will follow. The key point here before we get into what happens is that the artillery fire, as you mentioned before, was used to clear the area. Typical strategy to try to clear the area so that they could land their helicopters and be not under fire. But it has a strange effect on the overall strategy, doesn't it?

It can. So artillery fire, in this case, 600 meters for Milai, which is one of a cluster of hamlets forming the village of Sonmai. And they have their barrage in preparation to landing. They come into land and they're expecting combat because they have been told that there are Viet Cong in the village, based on intelligence, they've been told that women and children will be away from Mili. at a marketplace.

There you go. And they're expecting to have an actual battle. Right. So they think that because it's early in the morning, dawn, really, the women and children

will have left for market as they normally would, and that will leave only the fighting few behind, and they'll be able to take care of them. The effect of the artillery is that it actually

scares those villagers back into their shelters, back to the village, and they end up not leaving that area. So now you have unarmed civilians and supposedly the Viet Cong that are there together. And that's the situation that this company lands into, this platoon lands into. Right. And so we get two platoons that initially land and they set up a security perimeter

waiting for their third platoon to arrive. The idea is that the first two platoons, including Cali's first platoon, will then assault through the village and that the third platoon will provide rear area security and then eventually follow them. And their their mission is to kill the people who resist, to kill livestock, to destroy wells and to level buildings, and Captain Medina has told them that everybody that's left in the village was either Viet Cong or a Viet Cong sympathizer. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. The blood is high as you've said, this memorial service, all the feelings they have about everything, the urgency and the push that they've gotten from command, they arrive, and how do things go wrong? Because

they go very wrong. They go wrong pretty quickly. One of the challenges is that the Hamlet of Mili, like many Vietnamese villages, was divided by hedgerows. And so as the line of infantry proceeds through the village, they become broken up into smaller, smaller groups where it's more difficult for them to be observed and controlled by their officers. And so their typical process is going to be that as they move through a village and they take prisoners, they hold those villagers so that those villagers can be processed by an officer. said either keep this one as a potential enemy prisoner of war or let them go and keep them secure in this other location away from any potential combat. And one of the things that happens is that as they get divided up and they start to gather potential prisoners, they get bogged down.

And Medina orders Cali and his other platoon leaders to get their men back online. and to continue to push through the village. Are they taking fire in any way? They are not. They've received no fire. They kill a farmer shortly after they land who is waving his arms at them from a distance. But other than that, not posing a threat. So they haven't been fired on.

So the actions that they take, which will famously be told in trials and so forth, are unprovoked, That's correct. Mine. Okay. Sometimes they think they're provoked, but there aren't any shots fired at them, and they only recover three old N-1 garroned rifles. So these are World War II or Korean War era weapons that they recover. Okay.

Well, I'll leave it to you to explain and illustrate what we're talking about. I mean, it's called the Milai Massacre for a reason. What happens over what period of time? This is going to unfold over the course of several hours. they essentially are on the ground early morning and then everything is over by mid-afternoon. So give it a six-hour period for all of this to happen. And the first real incident for us to think about

is that as First Blatoon is moving through Mili, Callie comes across some of his men. One of them is forcing a woman to perform oral sex on him. And Callie tells the guy to get back to one. work. Get back to the process of clearing the village and capturing prisoners. And as he takes this guy with him, they run into Paul Meadlow, who is going to be one of the most famous or infamous figures of the Milat massacre. And he finds Meadlo with a large group of prisoners and tells Meelow to take care of them and then leaves. Shortly later, Callie Kelle,

back, he's frustrated because Medina has told him to get his men moving through the village and asks Meadlo why he hasn't taken care of these villagers. Now, their normal procedure would be to hold the prisoners for an officer to process to say, let them go or keep them prisoner or whatever, but that's not what Callie meant. Callie ordered Meadlo to kill the villagers. Wow. Meadlow didn't really want to do this. He kind of resists, but Callie forces the situation.

Meadlo fired three magazines from his M16. Callie reportedly fired four or five magazines, killing this group of prisoners. There's another soldier there who has an N79 grenade launcher who does not participate because not only does he not want to kill villagers, he also doesn't want to use a 40-millimeter grenade in close proximity. There's a variety of issues there. And this is the first really, real evidence of what is going to happen.

The question will become, how much are they working on orders? How much did everyone decide that this is how they're going to behave when they get there in the first place? One way or the other, extraordinary things are happening, as you're explaining. In the end, upwards of 500 civilians of this community are killed. and these are unarmed civilians, as you've said, including pregnant women and children. They are raped. There are gang rapes. Grenades are thrown into buildings. They're torched. The homes and places are burned down. It's just an extraordinary thing to imagine happening, unless you had already decided to do it. I mean, are we talking about mass hysteria here

among these troops, or is this something that they came in with a plan for? There's a disagreement about what the intent was. And also, about how many of the members of Charlie Company actually took part in killing people? Yes. Many of the men who were there fired things or killed livestock, destroyed Wellsburned buildings to make it look like they were taking part. But it turns out there may have been fewer than 20 individuals who actually killed or raped people in Milan. Medina's briefing left some questions. about what the intent was.

Private Dennis Bunning later said that Medina had ordered them to kill everyone because all of the women and the children were supposed to be there. James Berkhold summed up the general feeling among the company after the briefing saying that although Captain Medina didn't say to kill everyone in the village, that he had heard other members of the company talking and that they were of the opinion that everyone in the village was. to be killed. And that seems to have been the message that at least Callie took from their initial briefing. Yeah. Much will come out later in the testimony at the trial, but here's

one snippet here. Vernado Simpson, a member of the second platoon, interviewed in a book, quote, I cut their throats, I cut off their hands, I cut out their tongue, their hair, scalp them. I did it. A lot of people were doing it. And I just followed. I lost all sense of direction. That man, Simpson later took his own life. I mean, it's an extraordinary thing to imagine. Of course, we've watched the movies. Everyone has sought to understand what happened in this world. That's why we've spent so much time explaining the circumstances before they get there and while they're getting ready to do this. You try to make some sense of it in your mind, but it's almost impossible. I want to spend a little more time on Callie. I mean, as far as the

story goes later on told, how much was he actually responsible for giving the orders directly for this action. Well, he ordered Meadlow directly to kill people. And then the major incident that sort of stands out beyond this initial killing was that a large number of villagers had been herded together toward a ditch. And some of them had been pushed into this ditch. One of them was a Buddhist monk. There were a large number of women and children, elderly men. There are no young men, really.

in the village. And once they get to this ditch, Callie orders his men to open fire on the people that have been herded into the ditches. He gives them direct orders. When some of them resist, Callie threatens to kill them. The one that really stands out is Robert Maples, who is a machine gunner. And when Callie ordered him to fire on the villagers in the ditch, he refused. Cali reportedly stuck his rifle into Maples midsection, said he would kill him if he didn't follow orders, and Maples pulled his sidearm on Callie and threatened to shoot him as well, saying that they were going to all die in Vietnam and that they might as well die that. Later, he said he didn't consider shooting women and children who weren't armed to be a legal valid order, and that he just simply wasn't going to do. it. Another machine gunner, his last name was Stanley, had also, Harry Stanley had also been ordered to fire on the villagers in the ditch, refused to threw down his M-60 machine gun,

and when Cali threatened to kill him, they were separated by other soldiers. Yeah. And so ultimately, some of the soldiers cooperated with Cali. Callie himself opened fire. So in regard to the larger numbers of people that were killed at Mili, Ali appears to have been the prime mover, the perpetrator, and that's why he was ultimately convicted for murdering people in Mili. Right. I want to talk about Hugh Thompson.

He comes in on a helicopter, and there's a very dramatic moment when they actually land the helicopter between the civilians and American troops. So there were those, of course, who saw what was happening, whose heads were above water here. explain Hugh Thompson's role. Hugh Thompson was flying over Mili in support of the assault of Charlie Company on Mili and of Bravo Company on the neighboring village of Miquet, where there was also a smaller massacre. Hugh Thompson flew an OH-23, a reconnaissance helicopter, which meant he was low to the ground, and his role was to mark potential enemies for the company to deal with, using smoke, to communicate. communicate what was going on to helicopter gunships that were flying above him from his unit. As he did this, he can see people being killed. He marked a wounded woman with the idea that she would get medical assistance

and observed Captain Medina walk up to the woman and shoot her. Medina later claimed that he thought that she was going to throw a grenade at him. But so Thompson's observing all of this and is he and the other pilots were getting, getting relatively heated over the air about it. And he finally got to the point where he couldn't stand by and watch this to happen. And to understand why this happens, we have to really understand Hugh Thompson as a person. He came from a military family. His father served both in the Navy and in the Army.

Thompson joined the Navy as a young man right out of high school, got out of the Navy, became a funeral director for a short time. And then in 1966, as the war is really rampant, up, joins the Army, was selected for pilot training, and was sent to Vietnam in 1967. In Vietnam, he had a reputation of being as an aggressive pilot who believed in the Army's mission in Vietnam, and that's really important to remember. He had the respect of all of the other aviators there, and some of the things he did were risky. At one point, he captured someone, and because he didn't have room in his helicopter to have a prisoner, actually forced

the guy to hold on to the skid of the helicopter to fly him back to base. So this is the type of person who Thompson is. Thompson landed his helicopter, which is itself unusual, between Callie's platoon and people who were in a bunker. And approached Callie, got out of the helicopter, approach Callie and say, well, we need to get these people out of here. And Callie's response was, well, the only way we can do that was with a grenade. Before he had gotten out, Thompson had told his doorgunners, Larry Colburn and Glenn Andriota, to cover him and that if somebody started shooting at the civilians to fire upon them, whether he was serious in that or not is his conjecture. But he confronted Cali, who was a commissioned officer, Hugh Thompson was a

warrant officer and sort of sit between the NCOs and the officers in rank. And he convinced the other helicopter pilots that were there who were flying overhead and guns. ships to land and evacuate the people from the bunker. He somehow convinced the people of the bunker to come out, convince the other pilots to land and take them off away from Bly, saving them. And this is a really very strange thing for a helicopter gunship to land and what is supposed to be a combat operation. Yes. And then to fly away with civilians. Well, they had to be aware, as opposed to other missions.

they'd been on, nobody was firing at them. That's a really important point here, right? I mean, he would have automatically been, what the heck is going on here? We're not taking any fire from anyone. And yet there's tremendous amounts of things going on on the ground, violent things going on. This is all out of whack for anybody who had any perspective at all. Correct. And people further away could hear what the pilots were saying was going on, but did not report it themselves. Yeah. This is going to be an issue later. This is all over the next day, March 17th. There now becomes the issue of how does this story get handled by the military?

And how does it eventually come out? Even before the 17th, Hugh Thompson reported the massacre to Major Fred Watkey. And he reported it to Lieutenant Colonel Frank Barker, the commanding officer of Task Force Barker, and Colonel Orrin Henderson, who was the commanding officer of the 11th Infantry Brigade. So we have this reporting structure starting to happen. But at the same time, we have people starting to cover it up almost immediately. Yeah. Medina flat out lied to the commander of the 23rd Infantry Division,

Major General Samuel Coaster, and told him that all of the casualties were from artillery. They also developed a narrative that they were killed in a crossfire. The number of people was downplayed. so that when Watkey went to Barker and Henderson, he told them that it was 25 people. He didn't say they were killed in the crossfire because there had been no fire and no Via Kong on site. But the focus was on Thompson's confrontation with Cali. And that allowed some of the senior officers in the brigade and the division to move the investigation that they did away from this idea of a massacre.

And after that, it gets bigger. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. The report is flat out declared false on April 24, 1968, by the commander of the 11th Infantry Brigade. It's really a year later when it starts to come clear, right, in March of 1968. Yes. It eventually becomes what is a Pulitzer-winning news reports for Seymour Hirsch, very famously, it becomes a gigantic journalist as a result of this. that's when I became aware of it.

I remember as a kid to understand that we're suddenly hearing the word massacre, which is something that we just hadn't heard before. Of course, Vietnam was controversial. Walter Cronkite was, you know, having questions about it. Dan Rather was on the news. It was all that kind of, you know, new experience for Americans to see the journalists covering this in not a supporting role any longer, but rather a critical role. Because a lot of this stuff had been getting out through the bars of Saigon.

sure and all kinds of information was being had, it officially gets out in October of 1969. That's when Seymour Hirsch begins to publish. Chris, when does the news media officially start talking about this? When is it reported? That's a little complicated. Initially, Milai was reported as a victory by the New York Times with 128 Vietcon killed and three weapons captured. the media starts to take notice when Callie's court-martial is starting to begin, is becoming underway. There's an investigation going on. So the military had taken a different tack on this. They had already started to handle this internally.

Yes, but only because Ron Ridenauer, who had been friends with members of Charlie Company, even though he was assigned as a doorkner elsewhere in the division, found about it from people who had been present. Okay. And he talked to multiple people who had been at Mili to verify what was happening because it sounded like an outlandish story, like propaganda. Where is Ron Rittenauer? He's back in the States, isn't he? He's back in the United States at this point. And basically, he had found out about this when Charles Gruver had a beer with him and told him, we did something terrible. Oh, I see. And so he talks to all these other people and then writes a letter. But he only writes this letter after consulting with family and friends.

basically told him, well, you don't want to be involved in this. But despite that, he wrote a letter to 22 different officials at the Pentagon and in Congress, including the Secretary of the Army, Stanley Reesor, General William Westmoreland, who at this point is chief of staff of the Army, and Congressman Udall, Morris Udall. And that's what ultimately gets things started. It's such an interesting lens, because that's an ex-s, soldier talking to active soldiers, his friends. I mean that as a lens because you're looking into the unease that soldiers had about what they were doing in Vietnam. And that speaks to the lack of goal, lack of objective, the missions that they were on. There was no sense of that in Vietnam,

or at least there was less than there needed to be as far as, you know, what the U.S. military was doing in this country. And that comes down to the average, you know, grunt soldier. Like, why am I being told to do things that I don't even understand what I'm doing? And that became a hotbed, you know, as much of a protest as what was happening back in the United States, back in this, you know, the student populations and the protests and so forth. That was really the weirdness of this war. It started with Korea. Some of that was already happening in Korea as well. But really in Vietnam, that's what really creates the whole problem, the negativity of the whole mission that we had there. And at Brittenauer is one example of these people who are talking among,

themselves. So he's the source of the information that then only snowballs, right? Correct. And his letter to these public officials led to two official investigations, one into the events at Nilai and one and two attempts to cover up Mili. These investigations, which took a year, so from November of September, October, November of 69 into 1970, where we start getting actual trials resulted in charges for 14 officers and a few enlisted personnel. But yes, it all starts with Ridenauer's letter. Right. And the photographs that were taken that day, right?

Right. And so Sergeant Ron Haberly was a combat photographer for the Public Information Office. He was assigned to follow Charlie Company on March 16th, along with a reporter who was a specialist. And so they follow the company through Mili. Haverly's got multiple cameras rather than weapons and ammunition. One of the cameras was an official army camera loaded with black and white film. And the other one was his personal camera loaded with color film. And that color film that he kept personally was what ended up being published.

It's gory stuff. Let's just say it. They're gory stuff. It's hard to look at. But he destroyed the really terrible pictures that he took that identified individual soldiers shooting at people. Yeah. And the reason he did that is he didn't want those photos to be used to identify individuals and to prosecute.

Right. We have no pictures of the people in the pit, you know, although I don't know. Maybe we do, but. We have a picture that looks like that. It, to me, reads more as people on a road. Yeah. rather than people in a ditch. But it gives that same type of impression.

So how does this then go to trial? We're talking about a court martial, right? Yes. Why is it only Cali that ends up being tried? He's first. He's not the only one he's tried. He's the only one who's convicted. Oh, okay.

Captain Medina was also tried. An enlisted soldier was also tried. But the reason it all falls apart is that that Captain Medina's trial, where he was acquitted, the judge, the military judge running the trial, the court marshal, told that no one who had testified before Congress, but during the congressional investigations, could testify at Medina's trial. And because there were essentially then no witnesses that could be used, there was a lack of evidence and Medina was acquitted. Part of the reason for that is that the chair of the the Armed Services Committee and the congressman who ran the congressional investigation refused to

release the transcripts of the witnesses who testified in their investigation. All of the witnesses had testified in an executive session that was closed, so their testimony wasn't released. And this military judge said, well, if we can't have that testimony, we're not going to allow those witnesses. And that's where it all falls apart. That in the public mood. was very, very against, not only the trials, but Calle's conviction. What was he charged with? Callie was charged with murder of, and the phrase they used was Vietnamese human beings. And he was eventually convicted of 22 counts.

22 counts of premeditated murder. Right. And no one else goes down because of this, just him. Just him. two people do, some people do get some reductions in rank, but not as the result of trials. Samuel Coaster, the commanding officer of the 23 infantry division, received reduction in rank from Major General to Brigadier General. He resigned his position as superintendent of West Point during the hearings. He was eventually clear, but he kept that reduction in rank. And what he was,

the thing he faced was that he and his assistant division commander, Brigadier General George Young had not followed regulations and reported the war crimes allegations. And so they faced reductions rank and eventually soon retired from the service, even though they were cleared of things like having a cover-up. I want to read a quote from Cali. I'm not sure where he said this. You can help me with that. Quote, my troops were getting massacred and mulled by an enemy I couldn't see. I couldn't feel and I couldn't touch. that nobody in the military system ever described them as anything other than communism. They didn't give a race, they didn't give a sex, they didn't give it an age. They never let me believe it was just a philosophy in a man's mind.

That was my enemy out there. I suppose he's speaking more generally about the experience of being in Vietnam, but he applies that mindset in defending himself at Milai. Yes, and I don't remember where that quote came from, but it is the type of the type of thing that he and other soldiers expressed regularly about the war. And Callie was not an especially introspective type of a person, but that was the feeling of most of the people who served. Tell me what punishment he serves as a result. In a lot of ways, it's not much.

He was sentenced to life at hard labor, which is typically going to be. somewhere like Fort Leavenworth, which is one of the prime locations for that type of a sentence. And that didn't really happen. So within three days of his conviction on March 31st of 1971, Callie was released a house arrest by President Richard Nixon. Following that, Lieutenant General Albert O'Connor, the commanding general of the Third Army, used his own authority to commute Callie's sentence to 20 years. and then Cali appealed this in district court and was freed on bond in February of 1974, and the judge in that case held that the pre-trial publicity and the House of Representatives' refusal to release testimony meant that Cali couldn't have a fair trial. And so while the Army appealed to that ruling, the new secretary of the Army, Howard Calloway, reviewed the conviction, reduced the sentence.

to 10 years. And this is part of the law. This is supposed to happen. What this does is that it makes Cali eligible for parole because at this point he had served three years and four months and Army regulation made prisoners eligible for parole after they had completed a third of their sentence. Wow. And so, but this isn't over yet. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court's ruling and returned Calle to custody in June of 1974. Callie appealed again in September of 1974. So he was released again. The full court of appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned it.

The army refused to put Callie back in prison for the last 10 days of his sentence. So at this point in September of 1974, Callie is out. Right. This would normally be the end, but it kept going because Callie appealed the Fifth Circuit's decision because it meant he was still guilty. And it finally comes to a close, at least in terms of legal matters, when the Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal of the Fifth Circuit's decision in April of 1976. So ultimately, he spends maybe three and a half years total in punishment for killing at least 22 people. Geez, four or 500, we'll never know. It is a symbolic moment, of course. It polarizes the whole war debate at that point, galvanizing all the anti-Vietnam war movement. But many people don't agree with the verdict. I mean, there is a general sense in America that he wasn't guilty of anything but killing Vietnamese, which, you know, even to that time, we still didn't understand back here what was really going on. All those things, all those movies, all those, you know, all that media that would one day changed the story for us, had yet to come out. So the White House received, I read

300,000 letters and telegrams in three months in support of Cali. So you can understand the qualms that were going on as far as the punishment of this guy goes. That's as far as the domestic side of things. Did the Milai Massacre change U.S. strategy in Vietnam and afterwards? In Vietnam, it does not appear to have. We have changes to what's happening in Vietnam as a result of the election of Richard Nixon, he had promoted the process called Vietnamization, which involved with drawing American troops and having the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, Arvin, do more of the work of defending South Vietnam. This led to a couple of changes in how we did things. Ultimately, we are toward the end of American involvement, just using air power.

Congress starts getting to the point where they withhold funding for combat operations in Vietnam. And there are some combat refusals as a result of the Vietnamization policy. Because not only or we're still not having a strategy of holding territory, but nobody wants to be the last person to die in Vietnam. And so troops start refusing to take that hill or no uncertain. patrols. There's a famous revolt in the Navy where soldiers of the, I believe was the constellation, essentially held a strike refusing to put sea. So all of this is happening at the time. And the American public had been getting more skeptical of the war over the course of 1967 as casualties mounted and then really turned against it after Ted.

After Vietnam, though, there is renewed. focus. And part of the reason this can happen is because we get the all-volunteer force after 1973. And a more professional type of a military is that there's more focus on not abusing prisoners, not killing innocent civilians. It's never going to be perfect. But it becomes something that more members of the military really, really look askance at. They want to avoid that. And part of that is the perception of Milai and other instance in Vietnam. And a whole generation of future officers and leaders of the U.S. military comes out of this, Colin Powell, first and foremost, who speak of taking no action unless there's a way out, you know, unless we can clearly see the way in and the way

out, which holds for a while and then comes Afghanistan. Right. We're there for 25 years. But they get their way with Operation Desert Storm. Yeah, exactly. We see that enacted there. My own closure, for what it's worth, is that we went back into the 2000 to shoot a TV show. I have never been treated more kindly and more generously than by the average person in Vietnam, both north and south. It was an extraordinary trip of my life where I had nothing to do with the Vietnam War, except I watched it as a kid. But I went over there wondering how I would be viewed as an American, and it was a startling kindness that I met. It was extraordinary. Christopher Leveck holds a joint appointment of the University of West Florida Libraries and the UWF Historic Trust.

He is an archivist, teaches classes of American history at the University of Western Florida, Pensacola, and the University of Charleston. Nice to have you on the show. Nice to be here. Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political. movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great,

but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support.