William Calley William Calley was born in Miami, Florida in 1943. Calley graduated from Miami Edison High School in Miami and then attended Palm Beack Junior College in 1963. However, being presented with unsatisfactory grades, he drops out the next year. He then worked at a variety of jobs before enlisting into the military.
During Calley's enlistment into the military, he underwent basic combat training at Fort Bliss, Texas and advanced individual training as a company clerk at Fort Lewis, Washington. He later applied for and was accepted into Officer's Candidate School (OCS). Upon graduating from OCS Class No. 51 on September 7, 1967, he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant of Infantry followed by the assignment to Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Infantry Brigade, and began traing at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, in preperation for deployment to Vietnam. During his command through My Lai, his men did not respect him as a leader. Men in his platoon reported to army investigators that Calley posessed no common sense; he could not read a map or compass properly. As a result of being so disliked, a number of men secretly discussed assassinating him. Upon arrival in Vietnam, Calley's Charlie Company didn't find much action. Before the massacre, he spent most of his time keeping his men from gifting the Vietnamese children candy. He said he was not only afraid, but also hateful upon the Vietnamese children. Right before the massacre, Calley ordered his men to enter the village firing, though there had been no report of opposing fire. According to eyewitness reports offered after the event, several old men were bayoneted, praying women and children were shot in the back of the head, and at least one girl was raped and then killed. For his part, Calley was said to have rounded up a group of the villagers, ordered them into a ditch, and mowed them down in a fury of machine gun fire. |
Hugh Thompson Hugh Thompson was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1943. In 1961, he volunteered for the United States Navy after dropping out of Troy State University and served with a SeaBee contraction unit from 1961 to 1964. In 1966, he joined the U.S. Army and trained to become a helicopter pilot at Forts Wolters and Rucker. Thompson had always wanted to fly, so becoming a pilot was one of his dreams.
During his enlistment into the Army, Thompson was sent to Vietnam in 1967. He arrived in late December 1967 and joined the 161st Aviation Company (Assault Helicopter), which was reorganized and expanded into the 123rd Aviation Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Division (Americal) in January 1968. On March 16, 1968, he and his crew were assisting Task Force Barker (a battalion-sized element of the Americal) in a reconnaissance capacity. They were flying on a OH-23 Raven piloted by Thompson. On that day, they found U.S. ground troops murdering Vietnamese civilians in the area of My Lai. Thompson and his crew, Lawrence Colburn and Glenn Andreotta, attempted to cease any further fire due to the civilians not fighting back. They believed it was inhumane to kill unarmed civilians without any legitimate reasons. And so, they landed their helicopter in between the troops and the non-combatant civilians and pointed their own guns at the US troops preventing them from any more killings. He later, assisted the civilians' wounds, took a few severely hurt to the hospital, and evacuated many other villagers. Their efforts led to a cease-fire order at My Lai. In 1988, the Army honored the three men with the Soldier's Medal, the highest award for bravery not involving conflict with the enemy. For Andreotta, it was given to him after his death where he got killed in battle three weeks after My Lai. |