William Calley, who has died aged 80, was the only American soldier convicted in the wake of the My Lai massacre in March 1968, when hundreds of unarmed civilians were murdered, and some women and children gang-raped, in the most horrific incident of the Vietnam War; the slaughter shocked the world and helped to galvanise opposition to American involvement in Vietnam.
The village and surrounding districts were known to troops as “Pinkville”, thanks to the colour used on US Army maps to indicate more densely populated areas, and the atrocity was originally known as the “Pinkville Massacre”. The area was later described as a soldier’s nightmare, full of mines and booby-traps, and the day before the killings a popular member of the company had been blown up.
When troops asked their commanding officer, Ernest Medina, when they would be able to extract retribution, he reportedly told them that they would get their chance the following day.
One of the survivors, Do Chuc, described how between 50 and 100 US troops entered My Lai – which had been marked out as a Viet Cong stronghold – as the villagers were eating breakfast. They ordered or dragged residents from their huts, divided them into three groups, set up what one of the villagers called “a gun on legs” and opened fire, while other soldiers set fire to the huts.
One witness described how Second Lieutenant Calley shot a praying Buddhist monk, and that when he saw a young boy crawl out of a ditch, he threw him back in and shot him.
For more than a year the army managed to cover up the massacre, claiming the incident as “a big success” with 128 enemy fighters disposed of. Then a helicopter gunner, Ronald Ridenhour, who had not been at My Lai but had been told what had happened, wrote to President Nixon and other members of his administration calling “in the principles of Justice” for a thorough investigation.
He wrote: “I think it was Winston Churchill who said a country without a conscience is a country without a soul and a country without a soul cannot survive.” He contended that the massacre was “not unprecedented”, but it was only when he contacted the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh that the story began to be told.
One of Calley’s comrades, Michael Bernhardt, said he had been threatened and told to keep quiet, and had been ostracised for expressing his disquiet.
Another comrade, Charles Gruver, told an interviewer: “We’d never been ordered to wipe out everybody before. Most of the guys didn’t dig it at all. When it was all over they were almost sick.” One soldier, he said, had gone behind a tree and shot himself in the foot so he would not have to take part in the massacre.
Gruver also insisted that though Calley was unpopular with his men, he was acting under orders from Captain Medina (who in 1971 would be acquitted at court martial of giving orders to kill unarmed non-combatants but later admitted that he had “not been completely candid”).
In September 1969 the Associated Press reported that Calley was being held, but it was not until November that year, largely through Hersh’s diligence, that the full story came out, after he tracked Calley down to the senior officers’ quarters at Fort Benning (now Fort Moore) in Georgia, where he was awaiting court martial. Hersh went on to receive the Pulitzer Prize for his work.
Twenty-six soldiers were eventually charged for their roles in the massacre, but only Calley was convicted. An army investigation concluded that 347 men, women and children had been murdered, though a Vietnamese estimate claimed 504 deaths.
At his court martial Calley insisted: “I was ordered to go in there and destroy the enemy. That was my job on that day. That was the mission I was given.” In a briefing, he said, Medina had ordered them to eradicate everything “walking, crawling or growling”, and told them that innocent villagers would all be away at the market.
Found guilty of murdering 22 unarmed civilians, Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour but eventually served about three years, much of it under house arrest.
Meanwhile, President Nixon had received so many requests for clemency for Calley from members of the public that he reportedly told Henry Kissinger, “Most people don’t give a s--- whether he killed them or not.”
William Laws Calley was born on June 8 1943 in Miami; his father, William Laws Calley Snr, was a US navy veteran of the Second World War who sold building equipment. He was below average at school, having to repeat seventh grade after being caught cheating in an exam.
He spent a couple of years in military academies then graduated from Miami Edison High School near the bottom of his class. He went on to Palm Beach Junior College but dropped out a year later having flunked most of his courses.
He spent a few years moving between jobs that included bellhop and dishwasher, while as a strike-breaking train conductor he caused an accident when he allowed freight-train carriages to smash into a ramp.
In 1964 he tried to enlist in the US Army but was turned down due to a hearing defect. He worked unenthusiastically as an insurance assessor in Mexico before receiving notice that his Army rejection was being reconsidered; his stints in military academy led to his selection for officer training.
Evaluations described him as of distinctly average ability: some of his colleagues later spoke of how he lacked common sense and was unable to read a map, but the army was desperately short of junior officers and he was dispatched to Vietnam. In his 1970 memoir Lieutenant Calley: His Own Story, he complained that during his training, he was never told “There will be innocent civilians... It was drummed into us ‘Be sharp! On guard! As soon as you think these people won’t kill you, ZAP!’”
After his release, expressing the desire to “sink into anonymity”, he moved to Columbus, Ohio, where he met and married Penny Vick and worked at her father’s jewellery shop. They had a son but divorced. He reportedly often went out with an umbrella to shield himself from any pressmen.
In 2009 he finally issued an apology, saying that, while he was only following orders, “there is not a day goes by that I do not feel remorse.”
Though William Calley died in April this year his death went unreported until a Harvard Law School graduate noticed it while looking through public records.
William Calley, born June 8 1943, died April 28 2024
