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Wednesday, July 31, 2024

William Calley, Army officer and face of My Lai Massacre, is dead at 80

William L. Calley Jr., a junior Army officer who became the only person convicted in connection with the My Lai Massacre of 1968, when U.S. soldiers slaughtered hundreds of unarmed South Vietnamese men, women and children in one of the darkest chapters in American military history, died April 28 at a hospice center in Gainesville, Fla. He was 80.

The Washington Post obtained a copy of his death certificate from the Florida Department of Health in Alachua County. His son, Laws Calley, did not immediately respond to requests for additional information. Other efforts to reach Mr. Calley’s family were unsuccessful.

The Post was alerted to the death, which was not previously reported, by Zachary Woodward, a recent Harvard Law School graduate who said he noticed Mr. Calley’s death while looking through public records.
-bogsidebunny

12 comments:

  1. US military war crimes easily go back to the war of Southern secession. To pretend otherwise is to deny reality.

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    1. Jack Hinson and his two young sons come to mind.

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    2. The War of Northern Aggression. Fixed it for you.

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  2. Just to expand the narrative, his platoon kept being ordered to patrol around that village. Very often these patrols ended up taking KIA and maimed/wounded from booby traps as the villagers watched. Over and over, as the villagers watched. Put yourself there.

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    1. The platoon kept taking losses, one here, one there, and weren't allowed to initiate combat with the villagers. Then the VC in the village killed a key sergeant, kind of the heart of the platoon, and it turned into one of those 'don't give an order that won't be followed' moments.

      Eh, the villagers FAFOed. Funny thing, afterwards, no-one from that village FAFOed again.

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  3. But what really happened? Was he instructed by the CIA whose war this really was? I've never been convinced this wasn't stoked by the anti-war crowd and it was mostly Viet Gong killed.
    Remember the nightly body counts?

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  4. I would have preferred Jane Fonda was the dead pool winner.

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  5. https://genius.com/C-company-battle-hymn-of-lt-calley-lyrics

    WiscoDave

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  6. fuck um , bury him , his incompetence threw shade on 4 million guys who served in that fuckin place with honor .

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  7. If you can't kill your enemies you're not at war, you're a target and the assholes that put you there should be hanged at dawn...
    JD

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  8. The USAF shoulda Arc Light’d that whole place after the third ambush or boobytrap. If no one is left alive to complain about their village being leveled, then does it even matter at that point?

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  9. There was a helicopter pilot who saw what was going on and told them to stop or he would have his door gunner open fire on them.
    They tried to find the gunner later to ask him if he would have followed that order but he was Kia.

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