Dan Snow's History Hit - The My Lai Massacre

Episode Date: March 16, 2021

On the 16th March 1968, the My Lai Massacre occurred in South Vietnam. 350-500 men, women, children and babies were brutally killed by US troops during a counterinsurgency operation. It was the worst war crime perpetrated by US forces during the Vietnam War. To try and find out what made those men snap and commit those terrible crimes I spoke to Erik Villard a Historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History, Fort McNair, DC. He talks us through the events of that fateful day, why he believes it took place and how these shocking events continue to influence US military operations today.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Today, the 16th of March 1968, the My Lai Massacre occurred in South Vietnam. U.S. troops killed between 350 and 500 unarmed people during a counterinsurgency operation. The victims included men, women, children, and babies. It was a complete breakdown in order and is widely regarded as the most shocking war crime perpetrated by US troops in the whole of the Vietnam War. US troops and the whole of the Vietnam War. What made those men snap and commit those terrible crimes on this day in 1968? Well, I talked to Eric Villani, he's a historian at the US Army Center for Military History based at Fort McNair in DC. And as you'll hear, he gives a fantastic summary of what happened and why he thinks it

happened. But as I've mentioned many times in this podcast before, I particularly enjoy discussions like this and learning about the changes that take place on the battlefield and in military planning departments to try and prevent things like this happening again. He's very interesting about its consequences. If you wish to hear these podcasts without the ads, if you wish to watch hundreds of hours of history documentaries, please head over to historyhit.tv, our new documentary, Killing God, about the murder of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March, 44 BC.

Yesterday in 44 BC. That's come up this week. Lots of people watching that. Thank you very much, everyone, for signing up to watch that brilliant documentary. We've got lots more coming up, so please go to historyhit.tv and check that out. In the meantime, everybody, here is Eric Villard talking about the My Lai Massacre. Eric, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me.

So let's start with the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. End of January, turbulent year 1968. That's the critical background to this event, right? It is. And the My Lai Massacre really, in a lot of ways, comes out of those chaotic, turbulent, confusing days and months just before and during the Tet Offensive. The US Army in January 68, they think they've got the better of the Vietnamese, right? The Viet Cong is suffering. What is their outlook in January 68?

Yeah, okay. So if we're looking at, let's say, middle of January, you know, before the fighting breaks out, before the Tet Offensive, there is cautious optimism that the trends are looking up for the allies. or anyone else who has any illusion that this isn't going to continue the war for years and have a lot of casualties and there's no guaranteed outcome. But over the last year or so, they had seen a lot of encouraging signs in the various programs. And so the trend line were definitely moving in the right direction. And this is actually one of the reasons why the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese decide to launch the Tet Offensive is they were beginning to lose some ground. They were beginning to lose control of some areas in South Vietnam, and they wanted to upend everything. And they absolutely certainly did. This part of the country we're talking about is quang nga province this is in the northern part of south vietnam and it's in a zone called icor that's a south vietnamese military zone but icor was one of the most dangerous places to be in the

country lots and lots of fighting this particular area My Lai was located is this kind of peninsula. And it had been under communist control since 1945. I mean, that's one thing to keep in mind. The communists were always really in control of these hamlets and villages. And so when the Tet Offensive happens, and this is 31 January 68, where the whole country explodes in fighting. More than 300 South Vietnamese cities come under attack. 90,000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers invade Saigon, Hue, and a lot of other places. So there's absolute chaos. Now, from a military point of view, the Allies get the upper hand pretty quickly.

Now, from a military point of view, the allies get the upper hand pretty quickly. And from a accounting point of view, the communists lose incredible casualties, up to 40,000 killed in a few weeks. And they're driven out of most of the cities quickly, except for Hue, which, of course, takes about a month. But the thing that a lot of people don't maybe know about this is one of the biggest impacts of the Tet Offensive is that the security in the countryside takes a huge hit. Because when the fighting happens, a lot of those South Vietnamese units, which had been out there defending villages and hamlets, they come back to the towns. They come back to the cities. And so there's a sort of security vacuum in many places. And so this is kind of setting up the context for my Limey operations. Following Ted, the Americans want to get the momentum back.

They want to get the South Vietnamese forces back on the countryside as quickly as possible, start working on pacification. on the country side as quickly as possible, start working on pacification. And so there's a real energy and pressure on U.S. commanders to make things happen. And that's sort of the setup for this particular operation. It was essentially an attempt to get control of areas where all the allied troops had basically moved out. And so this particular area, this part of Gwanghwai province, had been occupied by South Korean Marines, but they had recently moved. So that's like, on top of everything else, the troops that used to have been there, they weren't there anymore.

So from the American point of view, there was an opportunity, let's put it that way, opportunity to get in there reassert control and i think that's part of the thinking that led to this tragedy is catastrophe this desire to get back in come on let's hurt the vietcong when they're down let's really put the pain on them and so i think that was part of the mentality going and part of the reason these commanders and soldiers were so amped up is because they were kind of being coached to come on, let's do the knockout blow. Let's get into the weeds on counterinsurgency. What is a knockout blow?

Like, is it searching for weapons caches? Is it intelligence led assassination? Is it village to village questioning who's Viet Cong around here? Like, what does that operation look like? Right. It's something, of course, the army and, well, militaries in general are still arguing about. But one thing I think to point out here is that Vietnam was a complex war that was operating on numerous levels. At one level, there were conventional big unit battles between regular forces, all the way down to the sort of guerrilla activities where a farmer

decides to pick up an old spring field at night and take a few pot shots at the Americans, and everything in between. This area, what we're talking about is, this is a good example of the problems of pacification. You had a number of hamlets and villages, again, which were essentially under Viet Cong control. The South Vietnamese government officials only showed up during the daytime and they didn't sleep. There was no security. So how do you get control of those people? Well, it's a combination of things. Part of it is you do have to figure out who's the bad guys, who's the good guys. Do you need to develop information? That's where actually the Phoenix program comes in. It was not a CIA assassination program, like some people say.

It was basically an effort to build a national database, all the people in South Vietnam, and then determine, are they a secret VC agent? Are they simply a criminal? Are they an innocent civilian? Are they a secret VC agent? Are they simply a criminal? Are they an innocent civilian? So to do this, you need to, of course, question people, get information. And where the Americans come in is they would use cordon operations. So during an operation, the Americans would come in and create a perimeter around whatever village or hamlet that needs to be searched and find out who are are the bad guys and this was going on a lot during this time in the war so you would have for example

helicopters flying overhead you would have navy vessels off the coast and you would have a number of units which would land by helicopter surround a certain area and then move through it. Now, normally, it was a South Vietnamese who would be doing the question asking, partly because the language, right? But it's also their country. This is part of the reason why this melee operation was unusual, and it was unusual in a lot of ways. One of the reasons is in this, what was supposed to be a cordon and search operation, there were no South Vietnamese officials there to do any of the reasons is in this, what was supposed to be a cordon and search operation, there were no South Vietnamese officials there to do any of the questioning, all that sort of

thing that might happen. And so when Americans went in there, they had no way of knowing. Bad guy from good guy. Now, they've been told there was a Viet Cong battalion in the area, the 48th Local Force Battalion. And a Local Force Battalion. And a local force battalion, basically, think of it as they're full-time soldiers, but they work for a district committee.

So they're kind of like in the United States, if you think of a county, they'd be a county military force. A main force unit would be like a state military unit. This is a unit that operated fairly locally. They wear black pajamas and stuff, but they're recognizable soldiers. I mean, the ammo belts, hats, they don't look like just farmers. So the Americans knew that there was a unit like this in the area. So when they land, of course, you know, the obvious thing to do is look for people holding weapons. Well, there really were none because the VC battalion wasn't there.

It moved around a lot. And after the Tet Offensive, it actually only had about 100 guys left because it had taken such heavy casualties. So it was actually broken up into like 10, 15 people over like 50 kilometer radius. There was no unit to be found. They were all hiding. So when the Americans go in, get normal procedure, you round everyone up, you usually have like a medical clinic, you do vaccinations and you fix teeth and you play music and you entertain the

folks. You don't want to make an unpleasant experience. And then you have self-immunization officials go by and get information and check ID cards and that kind of thing. None of that happened. The Americans go in, they're amped up. They're told there's nobody friendly in the area. Accounts differ, but some of them at least say that they were told that they had the authority to destroy anything of military value to the Viet Cong. Because these folks were living in these areas. They were supporting the Viet Cong. They were giving them rice, tax, information.

But you can't just go around burning houses, killing livestock, and you certainly can't kill civilians. And so when the Americans went in, they were not supervised. And so this is the problem. If you talk counter insurgency, this is not the way to do it. This is a heavy hand on steroids. And it's part of the reason for that. They've just been involved in this brutal, surprising, weird, Tet Offensive fighting when even supposedly safe areas were insecure, and that there was fighting in the grounds of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. And everyone will know from the extraordinary pictures of Don McCullum at Hue, the U.S. Marines involved in fighting, this was intense warfare. Were these soldiers, these individuals, had they experienced that

over the previous few months? That's one of the sort of surprising aspects of this. No, very few of them had ever been in combat. So this is a unit from the 23rd Infantry Division, or the Americal, as it was known, because it was formed in the South Pacific in World War II. So it's usually called the Americal, even though it is 23rd Division. It was an odd unit because it was actually formed in Vietnam. It was cobbled together from other units and assembled in country. It had a predecessor where they took existing units, but by this time, they had three infantry brigades, the 11th, 196th and then 198, that were part of this division, but it had never traditionally worked together. And in fact, these brigades were spread out over a large area. And the force that went into My Lai, it was one company from each of the battalions in the

11th Infantry Brigade. So this is a cobbled together force from a cobbled together division. Also operating in a place it had never operated before. This is not their normal area. This is where the South Korean Marines used to be. And the Americans get permission to go in here. So on top of all those other things, most of the soldiers had not actually been in combat. Now they're reading the newspapers. They're watching the TV. I mean, most of the soldiers had not actually been in combat. Now they're reading the newspapers, they're watching the TV. I mean, they know the country is wracked by fighting, but their own experience has mostly been booby traps and sniper fire. They'd taken some casualties from enemy mines and things like that. And that certainly wore on their mental attitude,

but very few of them had ever been in combat before. And actually, I think that is a problem. It's if you're all amped up and you're told that this place is full of bad guys and you've never been in sustained combat before. I think the opportunities for dissonant problems magnify. magnify. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about the My Lai Massacre, which occurred on this day, 16th of March in 1968. More coming after this. Catastrophic warfare, bloody revolutions and violent ideological battles. I'm James Rogers, and over on The World Wars, we're on the front line of military history.

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to you by history hits there are new episodes every week Tell me about those problems. What happens when those guys go into this area and come into contact with Vietnamese civilians? So when they actually conduct this operation, which, again, is unusual because it was all done verbally. I mean, normally these operations, there's this whole staffing process and you have detailed records of the artillery. What are you going to do? What was infantry going to do? They just did it verbally, which is part of the problem is we don't have those records. So what happened is they basically landed several infantry companies in this general area with helicopters. in this general area with helicopters. And it's called Sanmi Village because it's a larger area that encompasses a number of smaller communities called hamlets. We refer to it as My Lai,

but there were in fact six My Lai hamlets. The one we're talking about where most of this happened was My Lai 4. And the one company that we're really focusing on is a company from 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry that land near this My Lai and then they sweep through this community. And as this is happening, there's other companies going in operations other places. But this one particular company kind of breaks into platoons. other places but this one particular company kind of breaks into platoons some of those platoons particularly like the one commanded by lieutenant cali just start murdering people they're rounding people up and these are old men women children i mean there's no military age males initially there seemed to be a lot of shouting and saying, hey, you know, where are the weapons, where are the bad guys? But at a certain point as they're rounding them up, they in some cases line them up by the side of the road.

And we don't know exactly who fired first or who ordered it. And there's different accounts. But basically, some of these U.S. soldiers, some of these squads just start gunning down these civilians. In other cases, and this was not widely reported at the time, they sexually assaulted some of the women. Some really, really, really horrible things were going on. And so depending on where you were in this hamlet, either things look pretty normal or if you happen to be 100 meters away, it was a horror show. So it just depended on these sections of platoons. But they end up killing dozens and dozens and dozens of people. And the company commander is radioing back, but he's not saying that there's any problems.

He's just saying, oh, we're encountering light resistance. Things are going fine. I think the first person really to know something was wrong was, it was a helicopter flying overhead, an observation helicopter. And the scout helicopter flew in lower and Hugh Thompson, the pilot, looked down and he sees these bodies, the Vietnamese bodies laying in a ditch that American soldiers are buying. He looks in his two crewmen, you know, look out and then they see firing and some of these civilians following. He's like, what the? You can't believe what he's seeing.

So he actually lands his helicopter, gets out, pulls his 45 and aims it at the Americans there and says, the next MF who shoots a civilian is going to get a.45 to the temple. Now, he just could not believe it. And so he actually does where he lands. I mean, he stops the killing there. But he's got to get back in his helicopter and continue the mission. So he reports back to his superior almost immediately what he's seen. He's like, something terrible is going on. And so that was really the first indication. And keep in mind here just how fragmented the command and control system is.

Hugh Thompson's superior is the battalion commander of the aviation company, the helicopter company, of the aviation company, the helicopter company, who is attached to the 11th Brigade, but not really in their chain of command. So it's not like Hugh Thompson can get the division commander on the phone. He just has to tell whoever his boss is. And so when the division, General Koster and Colonel Henderson, the brigade commander, Colonel Henderson, the brigade commander, do a little investigation the next day. They conclude, oh, no, a few civilians may have been killed by stray artillery rounds, but there was nothing really unusual.

Of course, the truth is that up to 400 civilians had been murdered this day in another area. But it was an absolutely horrifying experience. And some of the American soldiers who were in that company refused to take part. They just walked away. Some of them tried to get their fellow soldiers to stop. Others took part reluctantly because they thought that was their orders. And a few of them seemed to be really enthusiastic about it. So it ran the gamut. But the fact is, it happened. And it was barbaric. Why did it happen here on this day?

And was it unusual? And if it was unusual, why did it happen? It is unusual. Some people are going to say, oh, hey, you're an army historian. You're going to go the company line. We Army historians actually have the same standards of objective professionalism that any tenured academic does. The Army does not tell us what to write. We actually have a supervisory committee

who makes sure that we have our independence. So I call it like I see it. Why this? Why here? Why now? Again, I think part of it is the fragmented command and control system. When you have a cobbled together task force that is operating in a place it's never been before, operating over a pretty wide area. These companies were scattered in a lot of locations. And this is, again, an operation that was planned hastily. So all those things are kind of the setup. But there's still, you know, that question of, there are other operations like this in the war, and it didn't happen.

I mean, this almost never happened on this scale with this ferocity. A lot of people want to figure out Cowley himself, and certainly I think deserves all the blame that's coming to him. But he wasn't the only one. I don't want to psychoanalyze, but I think that when you create the conditions for chaos, you're likely to get them. And so this whole pep talk before they went into the operation, apparently the officer's like, all right, we're going to get in there and we're going to kick some ass. And the VC is on the ropes and we're going to keep them down on the mat and look sharp. And most of these guys never been in combat. So they're already a little apprehensive. And here they're getting this pep talk. We're going to go in. I mean, this was supposed to be a marquee operation. But they're pumped up and going into an area. And I think in some of these locations with some of these groups, as soon as the troops realized that they weren't being fired at, it wasn't a firefight, but they have all this anxiety and rage, in some cases, probably outright racism. Right. And you've got these people who, you know, are supporting the Viet Cong.

They know that. I mean, they not carry weapons, but they know that they are. And I think at some point someone pulls the trigger. And if you know group mentality, it's easy to kind of lose your identity if you're a part of a group. And if other people are doing it, then you do it too. And I think that was the fateful moment. You had some individuals who I think just didn't have the self-control and the leadership in place because it was a long war and this is a pretty unusual situation i just think that it was just badly planned and once they got down there these guys wanted to i think just wanted payback i think they just wanted like for the friend that had gotten his foot blown off by a mine, or concerned, hey, if we don't clear this out,

then the VCE will maybe come back and kill me next month. It's hard to explain because it happens so infrequently. And this is something the Army is still wrestling with. In fact, our center held a discussion forum in 2018. We did a public one, and then we did one at the Pentagon. And this was our office's idea. We said we want to do something on MeLive. Because, I mean, it's so awful, but it's unusual.

But what can we learn from it, right? So we're still asking those questions. And ultimately, what is the evil that resides in men's heart? I don't know. I honestly don't know. But it was not a commonplace event. And I will say this, after My Lai, the story doesn't come out for about a year. There's rumors and stuff, but it wasn't until October 69 when Seymour Hersh actually breaks the story, the public learns about this, and there's an actual reckoning. But after that, floodgates are open, and in the Army now, the Army Judge Advocate General, their whole branch is shaped by My Lai. So in the Army now, every commander has a JAG, has a legal person by them. a JAG, has a legal person by them.

So before they make these decisions, before they execute operations, before they pull the trigger, they check with the JAG. They're like, is this right? I mean, I observed this in Camp Arapjani in Kuwait, 2014. Three-star general. He's looking at his big monitor and there's a predator drone up there

and there's a single iso fighter in Syria somewhere and that general had to look at the JAG the last thing he did said is this a righteous act the JAG said yeah he cleared all the things he said execute boom bomb went that's the difference that it's made after me lie the army has put these jagged at all echelons because they realize they need the supervision so as you've already said me lie was a tragedy it was a crime but it was also a strategic event in modern u.s military history you've said the effects it's had on the u.s army but what effect did it have on the U.S. public opinion, relations between Army and the public, politicians, and eventually public support for the war? Right. Rumors of this were circulating within division for months and months afterward, but it hadn't risen to public view. And it's interesting,

I've actually read some accounts. There were a number of South Vietnamese officials who said, no, no, that's VC propaganda. They are actively trying to shoot down the claims that this had happened. But when the story finally breaks, again, this is October 69. This is five months after President Nixon has announced Vietnamization. He announced the United States is going to withdraw from the Vietnam War. When Seymour Hersh breaks the story in October, the first U.S. units have already come back. Now, it's a small number, but the United States was already headed down the road of a gradual withdrawal from Vietnam. So in terms of public opinion, it absolutely created outrage.

It didn't accelerate the pace of U.S. withdrawal. I think the main thing it did was it further enraged people that the administration and previous administrations had been lying. I mean, you talked about this credibility gap with President Johnson. Well, here something happened under President Johnson administration, not Nixon's, but the blame goes all around. And so I think it doesn't have an effect on accelerating the withdrawal of the United States. But it has, of course, a long-term impact because it really flies in the face of American society's view of the army in itself, right? We're not like that. You know, the United States Army has always been very proud that it strives for a higher standard. We don't murder and slaughter people like some other armies. So I

think that was a hard thing. That was a hard thing. And it's still a hard thing to kind of accept. Unfortunately, it probably had the most negative effect on veterans themselves, because after it came out, there were certain people in the United States, anti-war protesters, After it came out, there were certain people in the United States, anti-war protesters, who conflated My Lai to the war. And so when you hear these stories of baby killer throwing blood in veterans when they're coming home, shunning them, My Lai contributed a lot to that. The idea that people who had not been in the war, knowing the story, they look at these people differently and these soldiers coming home. Now, these soldiers may have not been in the unit in that area at that time. It doesn't matter how this would work as a citizen. You're like, holy cow, something that terrible could happen. What must these soldiers have seen and done? And so I think

that was probably the most negative impact is the public tended to kind of blame the soldiers, just all soldiers. And I think it made the reception coming home that much harder. It's a remarkable story. And thank you so much for coming on and telling me all about it. How can people get hold of your book? So it is available PDF form free. If you go to our website, which is history.army.mail, I work for the United States Army Center of Military History. And the name of my book is Staying the Course. So if you just type in Eric Villard Staying the Course, you'll find the link. It's a free PDF download, 680 pages plus. So it's a big one. You also can order it from Government Printing Office if you want a physical copy.

Go to the website and you can download it as a PDF. You can also find video of the My Lai discussion that we had in Washington, D.C., where I'm on the panel. And we also had several JAG historians. And it was a really great discussion. So that's another thing to get more information about this. We could never forget. Never forget. Eric, that was so fascinating. Hope you come back on the pod soon. Let's talk about some more military history.

Absolutely. Anytime. Thank you. Thanks, man. I hope I have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all of our gods and fish. Hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, a bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money. Makes sense.

But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there, and I need all the fire support I can get.

So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you.