Editor's Pick

ON 17 NOVEMBER 1970, the court martial of Lieutenant William L Calley began at Fort Benning, Georgia in the United States. Calley was charged with murdering 109 “Oriental human beings” during the 1968 My Lai massacre.

Early in the morning of 16 March 1968, 105 soldiers from Charlie Company of the Eleventh Infantry Brigade advanced on the hamlet of My Lai 4, in the province of Quang Ngai on the northeastern coast of South Vietnam. The soldiers expected to face a crack Vietcong battalion, but instead found villagers preparing breakfast.

Over the next few hours, the soldiers killed 504 unarmed civilians, including 173 children. They raped many women and girls. They burned each home, killed the livestock, destroyed the food and contaminated sources of drinking water. The army reported the operation as a military victory, in which 128 Vietcong guerrillas—and no civilians—had been killed.

An initial investigation, by senior officers in the brigade, concluded that 20 civilians had been killed in the crossfire. It was only after a former soldier wrote letters to military and political leaders describing the murders, in March 1969, that the army conducted more detailed investigations. None of this was made public until the journalist Seymour Hersh reported on the investigations, in November 1969, and the army announced an inquiry into the massacre and its subsequent cover-up.