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Conference presentation
My Lai as a revolution in soldiers’ war crimes allegations
Eighty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the Society for Military History, Turning the Tide: Revolutionary Moments in Military History, (Norfolk, Virginia, 05/20/2021–05/23/2021)
05/22/2021
Abstract
Responses to the My Lai Massacre represent a watershed in American soldiers’ willingness to report war crimes they witnessed during the Vietnam War. Before Ron Ridenhour reported the slaughter at My Lai to Congressional Representatives, leading to Lt. William Calley’s court-martial for murder, the majority of service members who witnessed atrocities either did not report them, or made allegations through their chains of command. Soldiers’ reasons for doing so ranged from believing that atrocities were just part of war, in the case of many who remained silent, to having faith that their superiors would fully investigate their claims and that perpetrators would be punished.
This paper argues that the widespread publicity following Seymour Hersh’s exposé of My Lai and led soldiers like Stephen Rose, who reported atrocities he witnessed in Vietnam after returning home, after seeing the furor caused by My Lai reporting because only then did he see why these events deserved special attention. Similarly, SP4 George Lewis wrote to Major Generals William Enemark and Orwin C. Talbott about war crimes he claimed to have witnessed in the Mekong Delta due to coverage of Calley’s court-martial. Soldiers like Dennis Stout and William Patterson made atrocity allegations in the media because they believed that Calley served as a scapegoat for superiors. Patterson used war crimes reporting as a platform to argue that the Army was not fighting to win the war. Far from being evidence of a so-called “atrocity industry” these reports represent a dramatic change in how some soldiers understood whether they should report war crimes, why they should report them, and to whom. As a result, soldiers increasingly contacted members of Congress, ranking officials in the Department of Defense, President Richard Nixon, and journalists to describe what they had witnessed and to seek changes in war policy.
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Details
- Title
- My Lai as a revolution in soldiers’ war crimes allegations
- Resource Type
- Conference presentation
- Conference
- Eighty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the Society for Military History, Turning the Tide: Revolutionary Moments in Military History, (Norfolk, Virginia, 05/20/2021–05/23/2021)
- Copyright
- Permission granted to the University of West Florida Libraries by the author to digitize and/or display this information for non-profit research and educational purposes. Any reuse of this item in excess of fair use or other copyright exemptions requires the permission of the copyright holder.
- Identifiers
- 99380099993206600
- Academic Unit
- Education Research Library; University of West Florida Libraries
- Language
- English