My Lai Massacre

or we will never learn from our mistakes. This map is more the \"if there really were Viet soldiers...\" version of events. This is the real history of My Lai: The objective of the American military mission was clear: search and destroy the My Lai (pronounced, somewhat ironically, \"me lie\") hamlet of Son My village in the Quang Ngai Province of South Vietnam. What wasn’t clear was what to do with any civilians who might be encountered at My Lai. When the soldiers in Charlie Company pushed into the hamlet, they expected to be locked into fierce combat with a Viet Cong battalion believed to be at My Lai. For three months the American unit had been in no major battles but had suffered a lot of casualties from snipers, mines, and booby traps. The soldiers were ready to prove themselves, ready to exact revenge on the enemy. Charlie Company met no resistance; there were no Viet Cong soldiers at My Lai. Calley then ordered the slaughter of the civilians. People were rounded up into ditches and machine-gunned. They lay five feet deep in the ditches; any survivors trying to escape were immediately shot. When Calley spotted a baby crawling away from a ditch, he grabbed her, threw her back into the ditch, and opened fire. Some of the dead were mutilated by having \"C Company\" carved into their chests; some were disemboweled. One GI would later say, \"You didn’t have to look for people to kill, they were just there. I cut their throats, cut off their hands, cut out their tongues, scalped them. I did it. A lot of people were doing it and I just followed. I just lost all sense of direction.\" Flying high above the slaughter was helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson. Sickened by what he was witnessing, Thompson set down his aircraft and began to rescue the Vietnamese survivors. he ordered his machine gunner to open fire on any American soldiers who continued to shoot villagers. In one ditch, Thompson pulled out a three-year-old child, almost smothered in blood, but not injured. After he radioed for help from other helicopters, an enraged Thompson reported to his section leader and in graphic detail told of what he had seen. Soon afterward, Charlie Company was ordered to stop killing civilians. Coverup of the massacre began immediately. Reports on the My Lai operation stated that it was a stunning combat victory against a Viet Cong stronghold. Stars and Stripes, the army newspaper, ran a feature story applauding the courage of the American soldiers who had risked their lives. Even General William Westmoreland sent a personal congratulatory note to Charlie Company. An initial investigation into My Lai was swift and definitive: My Lai was a combat operation in which twenty civilians had accidentally been killed.
Story: The events that occured at My Lai were not really a battle but a massacre, the map\'s name was chosen to remind us of the events that occured. Horrible acts such as these must not be forgotten