One Member Of Charlie Company example essay topic

America's Inhumanity America's InhumanityAmerica's Inhumanity Essay, Research Paper America's Inhumanity The greatest tragedy is war, but so long as there is mankind, there will be war-Join The Art of Wa Military History 4/2/00 On March 16, 1968, Charlie Company of the American Division moved into the hamlet of My Lai and committed one of the most brutal atrocities in the Vietnam War and American history. However much their actions resulted from inherent stresses of the war, their brutal targeting of noncombatants was said to be an exceptional deviation from orders. Some 500 civilians were killed and it was not until a year later, with a letter from Ron Ridenhour, that the Criminal Investigation Division of the US Army checked the validity of the accusation. Then General Peers was asked to head a Commission to determine what happened and who was at fault. Since then, countless attempts have been made to explain how such an atrocity could have occurred. One of the strongest suggests that as an attempt to lift the demoralized spirit after the Tet offensive, the Charlie company platoon leader, Lt. Calley, led a mission to eliminate a Viet Cong stronghold in the vicinity of Son My village.

This mission succeeded only in the death of unarmed, innocent men, women, children and babies thus revealing the brutal nature of war. To understand why the My Lai incident happened, one must understand the events leading to it. In 1967 the North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front (NLF) decided the time had come to launch an all out offensive aimed at the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and US forces. In December of 1967 the North Vietnamese attacked the US marine base at Khe Sanh. General Westmoreland, the commanding US military officer in Vietnam, wanted the outpost at Khe Sanh held at all costs. As a result, 50,000 troops were called to the area thus weakening positions further south.

The main thrust of Tet began on January 31, 1968 at the start of the Vietnamese lunar New Year celebration when a cease-fire had been agreed upon. It was the greatest celebration, it was? Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July all rolled into one, was how it was explained to American GIs.? 4 Most of the ARVN troops had gone home on leave and the US troops were on stand down in most areas. Over 85,000 NLF soldiers simultaneously struck almost every major city and provincial capital across South Vietnam sending defenders reeling.

Previously thought invulnerable, the US Embassy in Saigon was taken over by the NLF. The imperial capital of Hue witnessed the bloodiest fighting of the entire war during this offensive. During the Tet offensive, Charlie Company was stationed at the American base LZ Dottie and put on alert.? The flashes in the west and the rolling concussions of explosions brought to Charlie Company a numbing sense of their own vulnerability.

The enemy were all around.? 5 From LZ Dottie, Charlie Company was moved south to block the enemy's line of retreat. Between where Charlie Company was stationed and the sea lay the villages of My Lai. Having succumbed to American forces, the Viet Cong's 48th Local Force Battalion had retreated towards Charlie Company. Because Charlie Company was in ARVN territory, they were unable to open fire against the retreating 48th Battalion until they received permission from South Vietnamese authorities.? I distinctly remember watching them suckers march out of there and we could not touch them, Fred Widmer remembered?

6 the enemy would never again be such an easy target. Charlie Company was frustrated, because after letting the Viet Cong retreat in the direction of My Lai, they were ordered to find them.? They were chasing phantoms. There was nothing to show for the long, hot, exhausting days tramping through paddy fields and friendless villages.?

7 Clearly this must have been a frustrating endeavor for Charlie Company. Compounding this frustration of not finding the enemy was the notion that one couldn? t tell the difference between civilian and enemy. The goal had changed from the initial mission of keeping Vietnam free from communism to simply surviving to make it home again. We weren? t fighting for democracy or the country. I realized that the majority of the people in that country did not want us there...

I bet I went through hundreds of hamlets and little villages over there, and I never had a Vietnamese come up to me and say, ? There's VC over there.? We? d go ask them, ? Where are the VC??

But they were all VC. They fed them and clothed them, sheltered them... And I thought it would be just the opposite when I got there. I thought the people in the South that weren? t carrying weapons would be on our side.

It was apparent that wasn? t the case. 8 The enemy was thus reduced to an obstacle in the way of getting home safely. Such frustration and anger was compounded by a lack of understanding of Vietnamese language and customs. In his testimony to the Peers Commission in 1970, company member Michael Bernhardt expands on this idea, ? now a person loses a certain aspect for being valued as a human being if you cannot understand them...

What they (soldiers) thought were these people were a whole lot less than human.? Morale was low with Charlie Company as feelings of isolation and abandonment set in. Weeks of K- rations, rising at dawn and digging in every night were taking its toll on the men. Just two days before the My Lai massacre, ? Gregory Olsen witnessed a brutal attack on a female civilian by several members of Charlie Company. It happened after a booby trap killed one soldier and blew the legs off another.

The men took out their frustrations by killing the first Vietnamese they saw... Olsen wrote to his father.? These are all seemingly normal guys; some were friends of mine. For a while they were wild animals.??

9 Because Charlie Company had lost some men, ? many soldiers adopted a new code of behavior, one that permitted the killing of prisoners, the torture of suspects, the cutting off of ears of the dead, and the rough treatment and rape of civilians.? 10 Because many of the US troops were being wounded and killed by booby traps and snipers (being wounded by a booby trap usually meant loss of limbs) and there were no Viet Cong visible to engage in open combat, they focused their anger on the villagers of the province. According to Fred Widmer, a member of Charlie Company, ? we never really got into a main conflict per se... So the whole mood changed... You knew there was an enemy out there- but you couldn? t pinpoint who exactly was the enemy. And I would say that in the end, anybody that was still in that country was the enemy.?

It was under these conditions that Lt. William Calley was instructed to lead Charlie Company to Son My in Quang Ngai Province and destroy a suspected Viet Cong stronghold in the hamlet of My Lai. The more hostile the area was, the more frustrated and hostile American soldiers were toward those who lived there. Paul Boehm's unit was in the vicinity of My Lai and he called it? the most heavily mined and booby trapped area in Vietnam that I was in.? 11 The mines and booby traps added a different aspect to the war because you could not fight back at the mines. As more of the Company's men were being killed and wounded by the mines the frustration grew for a traditional battle against a human, anyone would do.

Coupled with the Company's men being frustrated and angry with seeing American soldiers and there friends dieing was the poor leadership the Officers displayed in Charlie Company. Their ineptitude and poor leadership skills must be considered a contributing factor to the My Lai incident. Captain Ernest Medina, commanding officer of Charlie Company, once leaped from behind a rock to scare an old Vietnamese man. He grabbed the man, who was so scared he defficated, causing the Company to break into laughter. Another time Medina cut the ear off a Vietnamese that he was questioning. Such actions are unbecoming of an Officer.

In transcripts taken from an interview, Lt. William Calley reveals how he handled Charlie Company's abuse of civilians: ? We didn? t punish the GI's for it... if just cutting hair off a Vietnamese or beating the hell out of a prostitute or just being with a prostitute... if it increased morale I would forgive it.? Lt. Calley was not a good leader and would not have been an Officer during peace time, but because of Officers being killed by the enemy as well as friendly fire he became one. The plans of the operation of Charlie Company were to destroy the 48th VC Local Battalion, the same group they let go weeks ago. The soldiers were briefed to? burn the houses, kill the livestock, destroy foodstuffs and perhaps to close the wells.? 12 Then Captain Medina added, ? the enemy would be present... and that the enemy was to be destroyed.?

13 Charlie Company was told that the civilians were cleared out of the village and anyone left was VC or VC sympathizers.? It was quite clear that no one was to be spared in that village.? 14 As Charlie Company entered the village; ? the men were tense with fear, edgy on adrenaline, and expecting the enemy to surface at any time. So they fired their weapons, forgetting- if they ever really learned- the rules of engagement.? 15 This was a time of chaos and confusion. No one wanted to die, so anything that moved was fired upon.

At one point, Lt. Calley had his men line up some villagers.? The Vietnamese screamed, yelled... It was pure carnage as heads were shot off along with limbs.? 16 This brutal activity was compounded with rape, sodomy, and various cases of torture. According to one eyewitness account, at least one member of Charlie Company later bragged about his feats at My Lai.

Dennis Conti, ? boasted how Calley had earlier caught him with his pants down and his penis out trying to get a blow job from the Vietnamese woman, while threatening her child with a gun.? 17 Suffice to say, the horror of the individual and collective acts on March 16, 1968, border on the unimaginable. Yet, for all the carnage and crimes that were committed in My Lai 4, only Lt. Calley was found to be guilty in US Military Court. It is conceivable that no one who have been charged if Ridenhour did not send his letter, triggering an investigation. Even so the inquiry by the CID US Army and the Peers Commission found only sixteen men guilty of some wrong doing at My Lai. Four of these sixteen were brought to trial.

All with the exception of Calley were dismissed. He was found guilty of 22 counts of murder and one attempted assault and murder of a child. In many ways then, Calley served as a scapegoat for the My Lai incident. After all, 500 innocent civilians were murdered, but only 22 were accounted for in the trial. In many ways all of Charlie Company serves as a scapegoat for America.

It is easy to blame them, view them as flawed individuals. This may be the case. However, evidence suggests that the men of Charlie Company, straight from the Tet Offensive, were under extreme mental duress. They had seen their friends killed, and spurred on by their orders, they sought revenge in the village of My Lai. Charlie Company's actions on March 16, 1968 cannot be excused. They murdered, raped, and tortured people.

Nevertheless, given the circumstances their actions become more understandable, if not tolerable. If any thing can be learned from Charlie Company's actions, it is this: war is brutal. It shifts morals, distorts perceptions, and dehumanizes everyone involved. The Vietnam War was not an exception.

Charlie Company was not an exception. America must learn that these men were a product of their environment. Perhaps next time an ideological conflict occurs, images of My Lai will flood America's conscious, and this country will not be as quick to draw guns. Unfortunately, with recent actions in Kosovo, these images seem all but forgotten. 614 Primary Sources: Goldstein, Joseph, Burke Marshall, and Jack Schwartz. The My Lai Massacre and its Cover- up.

New York: The Free Press, 1976. Olson, James, and Randy Roberts. My Lai: A Brief History With Documents. New York: Bedford Books, 1993. Secondary Sources: Bilt on, Michael, and Kevin Sim.

Four Hours in My Lai. New York: Viking Penguin, 1992. Ebert, James R... A Life in a Year: The American Infantryman In Vietnam, 1965-1972. California: Presidio Press, 1993.

Where the Domino Fell, 2d ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 1996.