William Calley, who led the My Lai massacre that shamed US military in Vietnam, has died

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William Calley, who led the My Lai massacre that shamed US military in Vietnam, has died

2024-07-31 02:38 Last Updated At：02:40

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — William Laws Calley Jr., who as an Army lieutenant led the U.S. soldiers who killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre, the most notorious war crime in modern American military history, has died. He was 80.

Calley died on April 28, according to his Florida death record, which said he had been living in an apartment in Gainesville. His death was first reported by The Washington Post on Monday, citing his death certificate.

Calley had lived in obscurity in the decades since he was court-martialed and convicted in 1971, the only one of 25 men originally charged to be found guilty in the massacre that helped turn American opinion against the war in Vietnam.

On March 16, 1968, Calley led American soldiers of the Charlie Company on a mission to confront a crack outfit of Vietcong enemies. Instead, over several hours, the soldiers killed 504 unresisting civilians, mostly women, children and elderly men, in My Lai and a neighboring community.

The men were angry: Two days earlier, a booby trap had killed a sergeant, blinded a GI and wounded several others while Charlie Company was on patrol.

Soldiers eventually testified to the U.S. Army investigating commission that the murders began soon after Calley led Charlie Company’s first platoon into My Lai that morning. Some were bayoneted to death. Families were herded into bomb shelters and killed with hand grenades. Other civilians slaughtered in a drainage ditch. Women and girls were gang-raped.

It wasn’t until more than a year later that news of the massacre became public. And while My Lai was the most notorious massacre in modern U.S. military history, it was not an aberration: Estimates of civilians killed during the U.S. ground war in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973 range from 1 million to 2 million.

The U.S. military’s own records, filed away for three decades, described 300 other cases of what could fairly be described as war crimes. My Lai stood out because of the shocking one-day death toll, stomach-churning photographs and gruesome details exposed by a high-level U.S. Army inquiry.

Investigations into the massacre and allegations of a Pentagon coverup were launched after a complaint by a helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson Jr., who saved 16 Vietnamese children in the village and later testified against Calley.

Multiple other soldiers at the scene also spoke out after the scandal broke. Some said civilian deaths were inevitable in a war where the enemy could be anywhere. Others said Calley, who was charged with killing 109 civilians, shouldn’t have been singled out.

“Calley, he didn’t kill the 109 all by himself. There was a company there,” said Herbert Carter, a soldier from Houston. “We went through the village. We didn’t see any VC (Viet Cong). People came out of their hootches (huts) and the guys shot them down and then burned the hootches, or burned the hootches and then shot the people when they came out. ... It went on like this all day. Some of the guys seemed to be having a lot of fun doing it.”

Calley was convicted in 1971 for the murders of 22 people during the rampage. He was sentenced to life in prison but served only three days because President Richard Nixon ordered his sentence reduced. He served three years of house arrest.

Without apologizing, much less admitting guilt, Calley mused about the massacre's legacy in an exclusive Associated Press interview as he waited for the verdict.

“I can’t say I’m proud of ever being in My Lai or ever participating in war. But I would be extremely proud if My Lai shows the world what war is and that the world needs to do something about stopping wars,” he said. “I hope My Lai isn’t a tragedy but an eye opener ... My Lai has happened in every war. It’s not an isolated incident, even in Vietnam.”

After his release, Calley got married, settled into a job at his father-in-law's jewelry store in Columbus and had a son. He later got divorced and moved to Atlanta, where he avoided publicity and routinely turned down journalists’ requests for interviews.

Calley broke his silence in 2009, at the urging of a friend, when he spoke to the Kiwanis Club in Columbus, Georgia, near Fort Benning, where he had been court-martialed.

“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” Calley said, according to the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”

He said his mistake was following orders, which had been his defense when he was tried. His superior officer was acquitted.

John Partin, the assistant prosecutor at the court-martial, learned of Calley's death in a phone call from an AP reporter Tuesday. He recalled being disappointed in Nixon’s response to Calley's conviction, and rejected the notion that Calley was simply a scapegoat for command decisions or U.S. policy failures.

“He was acting essentially on his own, although he, like the others, said it was following orders,” Partin said. “His responsibility as an officer was to not obey unlawful orders, and the order he says they got was illegal.”

Partin said one of most important outcomes of the My Lai massacre was the recognition that U.S. troops needed to be better trained in the rules of engagement and the legal implications of combat actions.

“It became the standard to have better education for our troops,” he said.

In a 1976 AP interview, the former Army colonel who presided over Calley's court-martial said he believed that Calley thought he was doing the right thing at My Lai, but he was still guilty, and others who knew of and participated in the killings should have been convicted as well.

Calley was born in June 8, 1943 in South Florida, where friends called him “Rusty” growing up. He eventually dropped out of Palm Beach Junior College, and worked as a dishwasher, bellhop, railroad switchman, salesman and insurance appraiser before joining the Army in 1966.

At about 5-foot, 3-inches tall and 120 pounds when he was in the Army, Calley didn't stand out. Fellow officer candidates told the AP in 1969 that there was nothing unusual about him. But his military career was advancing until the scandal. Months after the massacre, he returned home, then re-upped for another tour. Eventually, he was wounded, awarded the Purple Heart, and won two Bronze Star medals.

His sister Dawn was living with their father in a mobile home in Hialeah when she told reporters during the trial that her brother was a “sweet, sensitive guy.”

Messages left for his son and ex-wife on Tuesday were not immediately returned.

In a calendar rarity, Hanukkah starts this year on Christmas Day

2024-12-22 00:17 Last Updated At：00:20

Hanukkah, Judaism’s eight-day Festival of Lights, begins this year on Christmas Day, which has only happened four times since 1900.

For some rabbis, the intersection of the two religious holidays provides an auspicious occasion for interfaith engagement.

“This can be a profound opportunity for learning and collaboration and togetherness,” said Rabbi Josh Stanton, a vice president of the Jewish Federations of North America. He oversees interfaith initiatives involving the 146 local and regional Jewish federations that his organization represents.

“The goal is not proselytizing; it's learning deeply from each other,” he said. “It’s others seeing you as you see yourself.”

One example of togetherness: a Chicanukah party hosted Thursday evening by several Jewish organizations in Houston, bringing together members of the city’s Latino and Jewish communities for a “cross cultural holiday celebration." The venue: Houston’s Holocaust museum.

The food on offer was a blend of the two cultures — for example a latke bar featuring guacamole, chili con queso and pico de gallo, as well as applesauce and sour cream. The doughnut-like pastries were sufganiyot — a Hanukkah specialty — and buñuelos, And the mariachi band took a crack at playing the Jewish folk song “Hava Nagila.”

“What really brings us together is our shared values — our faith, our families, our heritage,” said Erica Winsor, public affairs officer for the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston.

Rabbi Peter Tarlow, executive director of the Houston-based Center for Latino-Jewish Relations, said the first Chicanukah event 12 years ago drew 20 people, while this year the crowd numbered about 300, and could have been larger had not attendance been capped. He said the party-goers were a roughly even mix of Latinos — some of them Jews with Latin American origins — and “Anglo” Jews.

“There’s too much hate, too much separation against both Jews and Latinos,” Tarlow said. “This is a way we can come together and show we support each other.”

While Hanukkah is intended as an upbeat, celebratory holiday, rabbis note that it’s taking place this year amid continuing conflicts involving Israeli forces in the Middle East, and apprehension over widespread incidents of antisemitism.

Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, acknowledged that many Jews may be feeling anxious heading into Hanukkah this year. But he voiced confidence that most would maintain the key tradition: the lighting of candles on menorah candelabras and displaying where they’re visible through household windows and in public spaces.

“The posture of our community — without stridency, just with determination — is that the menorah should be in our windows, in a place where the public sees it,” Hauer said.

“It is less for us, the Jewish community, than for the world,” he added. “We have to share that light. Putting the menorah in the window is our expression of working to be a light among the nations.”

Hauer concurred with Stanton that this year’s overlap of Hanukkah and Christmas is “an exceptional opportunity to see and experience the diversity of America and the diversity of its communities of faith.”

Rabbi Motti Seligson, public relations director for the Hasidic movement Chabad-Lubavitch, noted that this year marks the 50th anniversary of a milestone in the public lightings of menorahs. It was on Dec. 8, 1974 — as part of an initiative launched by the Lubavitcher leader, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson — that a menorah was lit outside Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, where the Liberty Bell was housed at the time.

"Hanukkah is a celebration of religious liberty, so that it’s not taken for granted,” Seligson said. “One of the ways of doing that is by celebrating it publicly.”

He said Chabad was organizing about 15,000 public menorah lightings this year through its numerous branches around the world.

“There certainly is some apprehension,” Seligson said, referring to concerns about antisemitism and political friction. “Some people question whether Jews will be celebrating as openly as in the past.”

“What I’m hearing is there’s no way that we can’t,” he added. “The only way through these difficult times is by standing stronger and prouder and shining brighter than ever.”

Stanton concurred.

“Through our history, we’ve been through moments that are easy and moments that are hard,” he said. “Safety for us does not come from hiding. It comes from reaching out.”

Why is Hanukkah so late this year? The simple answer is that the Jewish calendar is based on lunar cycles, and is not in sync with the Gregorian calendar which sets Christmas on Dec. 25. Hanukkah always begins on the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev, a date which occurs between late November and late December on the Gregorian calendar.

The last time Hanukkah began on Christmas Day was in 2005. But the term “Chrismukkah” — signifying the overlap of the two holidays — had become a popular term before then. The term gained extra currency in 2003, when the character Seth Cohen on the TV drama “The O.C.” embraced the fusion holiday as a tribute to his Jewish father and Protestant mother.

This season, the Hallmark Channel introduced a new Christmas movie called “Leah’s Perfect Gift,” depicting a young Jewish woman who had admired Christmas from a distance, and gets a chance to experience it up close when her boyfriend invites her to spend the holidays with his family. Spoiler alert: All does not go smoothly.

Despite such storylines suggesting a fascination with Christmas among some Jews, Stanton says research by the Jewish Federations reveals a surge in Jews seeking deeper connections to their own traditions and community, as well as a surge in Jews volunteering for charitable activities during the holidays.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.