The Consequences Of Arriving At My Lai

In the morning of March 16 1960 American Soldiers of Charlie company were on a mission to “search and destroy” any enemy found in a village north of South Vietnam which is known as My Lai and made a cowardly mistake . Arriving at My Lai there were no male Vietnamese soldiers, only people eating breakfast and and although they claim they were under orders it’s a bit absurd that they were ordered to wind up hundreds of people in a drainage ditch and shoot them, rape a bunch of innocent women and kill them and mutilate people. The only American that got hurt was a soldier that accidentally shot his foot while clearing his pistol. Although there is no confirmed number of kills, it is tragic that our soldiers would try to cover up something like
Whether it was because of their fear of disobeying Authority shown in the milgram experiment, for their fear of standing up to their peers as shown in the asch experiment or just out of pure ignorance. Another big reason was because there was a large cultural barrier between them from the language they speak to the beliefs that each side has, 80 percent of vietnamese people already hated Americans and supported Communism. Hugh Thompson compares the events to what nazi soldiers did to people and how they had no problem throwing around the blame and killing the innocent people in gas
Among them is Hugh Thompson who describes the day starting off in the village because they were told that they looking for the enemy in a mission in the village of My Lai. As he flew on and on his helicopter he realized that there were no enemies and only bodies of infants, children, women and old men. He got off of the helicopter in a ditch nearby and asked a sergeant there by the name of David Mitchell if there was any way that he could help the people get out of the ditch, and sergeant mitchell replied to him by saying that he would "help them out of their misery". Obviously, shocked and confused, then spoke with william Calley, who claimed that he was "just following orders". As his helicopter took off, he saw Sergeant Mitchell firing into the ditch. as they were flying on the helicopter he saw a group of civilians at a bunker being approached by other american soldiers. Thompson then landed and told his crew that if any of the american soldiers attempted to shoot at the Vietnamese or at him while he was trying to get them out of the bunker that they were to open friendly fire on these soldiers. Another big hero in regards to what happened at My Lai was Ronald Ridenhour because he exposed what happened at my lai. He first heard about the massacre from other soldiers a month after it happened, shortly after he investigated what happened there on his own.