WILLIAM Calley, who during the Vietnam War led his US Army platoon into the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai and carried out one of the worst war crimes in US military history, has died, according to media reports. He was 80.
The Washington Post on Monday first reported Calley’s death, which happened in April, according to a death certificate the newspaper cited. The New York Times, citing Social Security Administration death records, also reported Calley’s death, but neither paper reported the cause of death.
US soldiers killed 504 people on March 16, 1968, in Son My, a collection of hamlets between the central Vietnamese coast and a ridge of misty mountains, in an incident known in the West as the My Lai Massacre. The killings shocked the United States and galvanised the anti-war movement.Initially charged in an Army court martial for 102 deaths, Calley was failed for life in 1971 for killing 22 civilians. He was behind bars just three days before then president Richard Nixon ordered him released under house arrest.Despite being told that My Lai was a hotbed of communist National Liberation Front guerrillas, US forces met no serious armed resistance and found very few weapons, according to the Army Historical Foundation. Still, they killed almost everyone there and raped women and girls.
Four soldiers were brought up on charges over the massacre but only Calley was convicted.
Maintaining that he had merely followed orders, Calley became a lightning rod for a country bitterly divided over the unpopular Vietnam War.
In later years, he refused to talk about My Lai with reporters or historians, but friends said he admitted to the deeds and had learned to live with it. In 2009, he made his first public apology.
“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” Calley said at the time.
“I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.” — Reuters
