The Massacre at Mylai- page 3 of 5

from LIFE Vol. 67 No. 23; December 5, 1969

  'There were a whole lot of Vietnamese people that I especially 1iked," recalls Sgt. Charles West of his year in Vietnam. "Most of them were at this orphanage I used to visit frequently after I came off field duty. I'd go down there and the people would try to teach me more of the Vietnamese language and they would explain a lot of customs that I wanted to know something about."

Charles West led his squad of 13 men through the rice paddies and heard the sound of gunfire. They were coming down a sharply winding trail and were keeping a close watch for booby traps. They turned a curve in the trail and there, 25 feet ahead of them, were six Vietnamese, some with baskets, coming toward them. "These people were running into us," he says, "away from us, running every which way. It's hard to distinguish a mama-san from a papa-san when everybody has on black pajamas." He and his squad opened fire with their M16s. Then he and his men kept going down the road toward the sound of the gunfire in the village.

"I had said in my heart already," says West, "and I said in my mind that I would not let Vietnam beat me. I had two accomplishments to make. The first was to serve my government and to accomplish my mission while I was in Vietnam. My second accomplishment was to get back home."

"There was a little boy walking toward us in a daze," says Haeberle. "He'd been shot in the arm and leg. He wasn't crying or making any noise." Haeberle knelt down to photograph the boy. A GI knelt down next to him. "The GI fired three shots into the child. The first shot knocked him back, the second shot lifted him into the air. The third shot put him down and the body fluids came out. The GI just simply got up and walked away. It was a stroboscopic effect. We were so close to him it was blurred."

"The people who ordered it probably didn't think it would look so bad," says Sgt. Michael A. Bernhardt, who asserts he refused to take part in the killings.

As he entered the village, Bernhardt recalls, a plane was circling above, warning the people in Vietnamese to leave. "Leaflets were dropped ahead of time, but that doesn't work with the Vietnamese people. They have very few possessions. The village we went into was a permanent-type village. It had hard walls, tile roofs, hard floors and furniture. The people really had no place to go. The village is about all they have. So they stay and take whatever comes.

"It was point-blank murder. Only a few of us refused. I just told them the hell with this, I'm not doing it. I didn't think this was a law ful order."

"To us they were no civilians," says Varnado Simpson. "They were VC sympathizers. You don't call them civilians. To us they were VC. They showed no ways or means that they wasn't. You don't have any alternatives. You got to do something. If they were VC and got away, then they could turn around and kill you. You're risking your life doing that work. And if someone kills you, those people aren't going to feel sorry for you.

Lt. William Calley Jr.'s platoon was the first to arrive in the center of Mylai. "There was about 40, 45 people that we gathered in the center of the village," ex-Pvt. Paul Meadlo told CBS News. "And we placed them in there, and it was like a little island, right there in the center of the village, I'd say.

"Men, women, children. Babies. And we all huddled them up. We made them squat down, and Lieutenant Calley came over and said, you know what to do with them, don't you? And I said yes. So I took it for granted that he just wanted us to watch them. And he left, and came back about 10 or 15 minutes later, and said how come you ain't killed them yet? And I told him that I didn't think you wanted us to kill them, that you just wanted us to guard them. He said, no, I want them dead. He stepped back about 10, 15 feet, and he started shooting them. And he told me to start shooting. So I started shooting, I poured about four clips into the group.

"I fired them on automatic--you just spray the area and so you can't know how many you killed 'cause they were going fast.

"We're rounding up more, and we had about seven or eight people. And we was going to throw them in the hootch, and well, we put them in the hootch and then we dropped a hand grenade down there with them. And somebody holed up in the ravine, and told us to bring them over to the ravine, so we took them back out, and led them over too--and by that time, we already had them over there, and they had about 70, 75 people, all gathered up. So we threw ours in with them and Lieutenant Calley told me, he said, Meadlo, we got another job to do. And so we walked over to the people, and he started pushing them off and started shooting ... off into the ravine. It was a ditch. And so we started pushing them off and we started shooting them, so altogether we just pushed them all off, and just started using automatics on them. Men, women, and children.

"And babies. And so we started shooting them, and somebody told us to switch off to single shot so that we could save ammo. So we switched off to single shot, and shot a few more rounds."

"There was no expression cn the American faces," says Haeberle."I couldn't believe it. They were destroying everything. They were doing it all very businesslike. The Vietnamese saw the Americans but didn't run. They kept on walking until the GIs saw them and started shooting. Some of the people started pulling their animals off the road and hiding behind trees. The GIs were opening up with M16s, machine guns and grenade launchers. The grenade launcher made a KAPLOW sound."

Pfc. Charles Gruver of Tulsa, Okla., was the first eyewitness to report what he had seen to his old friend Ron Ridenhour, the man who set off the new Army investigation by writing to congressmen. Gruver says he had been in other operations around Mylai, "but we had never killed civilians before. We had never been under orders to wipe things out before."

Gruver told Ridenhour of seeing a small boy, about three or four years old: "The boy was clutching his wounded arm with his other hand while blood trickled between his fingers . He just stood there with big eyes staring around like he didn't under stand. Then the captain's RTO [radio operator] put a burst of 16 [M16] fire- into him."

"On other missions," says Sgt. West, "the GIs would take their fruit and maybe a can of pork and beans and give the rest to the Vietnamese people. I always thought it would be a treat if I could give them my pears or my peaches or something like that. The people seemed like they appreciated it.

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