My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War

Witness to History

by William Thomas Allison

On March 16, 1968, American soldiers killed as many as five hundred Vietnamese men, women, and children in a village near the South China Sea. In My Lai William Thomas Allison explores and evaluates the significance of this horrific event. How could such a thing have happened? Who (or what) should be held accountable? How do we remember this atrocity and try to apply its lessons, if any? My Lai has fixed the attention of Americans of various political stripes for more than forty years. The breadth of writing on the massacre, from news reports to scholarly accounts, highlights the difficulty of establishing fact and motive in an incident during which confusion, prejudice, and self-preservation overwhelmed the troops. Son of a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War�and aware that the generation who lived through the incident is aging�Allison seeks to ensure that our collective memory of this shameful episode does not fade. Well written and accessible, Allison�s book provides a clear narrative of this historic moment and offers suggestions for how to come to terms with its aftermath.

Genres: History, War, Nonfiction

181 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 20, 2012

About the author

William Thomas "Bill" Allison is Professor of Military History at Georgia Southern University, joining the faculty there in 2008 and serving as Chair of the Department of History from 2008 to 2010. He earned his Ph.D. in history at Bowling Green State University in 1995, then taught at the University of Saint Francis before joining the History Department at Weber State University from 1999-2008. During the 2002-2003 academic year, he was Visiting Professor in the Department Strategy and International Security at the USAF Air War College and he was Visiting Professor of Military History at the USAF School for Advanced Air and Space Studies from 2010-2011. He is currently the General Harold K. Johnson Visiting Chair in Military History at the US Army War College.

He is author of The Gulf War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), Military Justice in Vietnam: The Rule of Law in an American War (University Press of Kansas, 2007), The Tet Offensive (Routledge, 2008), among other works. He has presented papers and lectured at numerous conferences and universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, and the Australian Defence Force Academy. He is active in the Society for Military History and has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Military History. He has also served as a member of the Department of the Army Historical Advisory Committee.

A native of Texas, he lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina, with his wife Jennifer and black lab Moose.

Reviews

[Stefania Dzhanamova · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Thomas Allison's book is one of the shortest books about My Lai that I have read so far, but it is nevertheless a decent introduction to the massacre and subsequent trial. 

Concisely and clearly, Allison recounts the story of Charlie Company's mission to Son My, the four-hour killing spree they went on in the village of My Lai, and the attempts to cover up the dark things that happened there afterwards. Although his account is too brief to be particularly insightful, from time to time I discovered information that was new and interesting for me. For instance, the author explains why many Americans volunteered to go to Vietnam. This question had puzzled me for some time because what I have read in combat memoirs of Vietnam veterans had led me to the conclusion that not every volunteer was eager to fight. As I learned from Allison, many men volunteered precisely because they did not want to fight – enlistees had a better chance than draftees of getting noncombat assignments. As strange as it sounds, the statistics demonstrate that a draftee was two times more likely to be killed in Vietnam than an enlistee. According to the author, in 1968, fifty-four percent of the enlistees, sixty percent of the officers, and eighty percent of the reservists admitted that this was their motivation for enlisting. I found this to be an interesting fact to know. 

Allison also cites Secretary of State Robert S. McNamara's obsession with numbers, which corrupted many other high-ranking military and civilian officials, as one of the reasons for American units' degrading to mass killings like My Lai. American planners had determined that the Americans and South Vietnamese would eventually prevail over the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong if they maintained a ratio of ten enemy combatants killed to every one soldier lost. General Westmoreland and the MACV embraced this faulty reasoning, which was referred to as body count by the American military, and encouraged its use as a supreme measure of success. For ambitious officers, high body counts meant promotion and new command opportunities. Units with high body counts received prizes such as extra beer rations and three-day passes. Units with low body counts were disparaged as lazy and unskilled. This pressure pushed soldiers toward a first-kill-then-ask attitude, and many of them adopted it. 

The author also addresses the disparity between the American Army's duty to educate its personnel on proper conduct in combat and the necessity, during training for Vietnam, of teaching young soldiers to kill. The American Congress had codified what defines a war crime in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but Allison is justified in his skepticism regarding how well a nineteen-year-old private could recognize an unlawful order under combat conditions. Furthermore, during their basic military training, the young men were given almost no instruction on behavior in combat. Only upon arrival in Vietnam were they provided with small pamphlets with rules on how to behave in the foreign country, how to treat captured Communist fighters, and so on, but they were easy to follow in theory and difficult to adhere to in practice.

Notably, Allison emphasizes that the twelve-month rotation policy caused significant problems with discipline in all American units and could be one of the factors that provoked outbreaks of aggression. In his book Son Thang: An American War Crime, Gary D. Solis explains that any group of people is more susceptible to socially unacceptable behavior when its members do not know each other well, do not trust each other, and have not developed a meaningful relationship – in other words, when there is no unity. As Allison elaborates, the twelve-month rotation policy caused enlisted personnel, noncommissioned officers, and officers to constantly rotate in and out of brigades as they completed their tours in Vietnam and were succeeded by those who were arriving from America. Furthermore, in order to stick to the mandated ratios of newly arrived men to veterans, troops had to be transferred between brigades. These disrupted whatever unity, structure, and relationships the men built in their brigades. It did not give them enough time to get to know each other and more importantly, their commanders well, which fostered uncertainty and mistrust and deprived soldiers of a much-needed support network in Vietnam. This, as I already mentioned, made them more susceptible to unruly behavior.

MY LAI can serve as an informative introduction to the My Lai massacre and as a history of the event for busy people, who do not have time for longer works. Although his work is not the most comprehensive account of My Lai and its aftermath, Allison presents some interesting thoughts that drew my attention to details that I have not given much thought before. This book does not address how both sides dealt with the aftermath of the massacre anywhere except for in the epilogue, so the blurb's claim that the author's main purpose was to demonstrate that the massacre is not forgotten is incorrect. However, Allison succeeds in telling the story of My Lai graspably and engagingly enough to refresh the readers' memory of it. 

[Samuel Short · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good research and investigation into a horrific event in an evil war that must be remembered. The media framing, collective response, and lastly the lack of any effective punishment for such war crimes is something that appears to be a permanent staple in western imperial war

[Jill Talley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was looking for a book that would kind of give me a lot of aspects of this tragedy - and was not as long as a giant textbook. This one pretty much fit the bill.

I was 9 in 1968, but thru the years remembered hearing news about the My Lai Massacre and recognized many of the names. I also know many Vietnam vets, and don't remember learning a whole lot about this war in school. In my older years i've been trying to read diverse books about it.

This one taught me a LOT, and i was shocked at what i learned about how our country felt about the whole thing. (My Lai) Shocked and saddened.

I highly recommend the book if you want to learn about what happened from quite a few of the records, and learn about the outcome.

[Kurt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Famous Sad Story

I remember this story since my early childhood days and still can’t believe the horror that took place in another part of the world

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hard book to read, but very informative about a terrible event in US history.

[Dachokie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Provides Unbiased Overview of a Somewhat Forgotten Tragedy ...

This book was reviewed as part of Amazon's Vine program which included a free advance copy of the book.

My Lai can be viewed as a tragic on two levels: one, the events comprising My Lai itself and two, its rather suppressed place in modern American history. Seemingly lost between the magnitude of World War II atrocities and more recent events, such as Abu Ghraib, My Lai appears to be nothing more than a nasty footnote of a war that most Americans would rather forget altogether. While the specific "who did what" aspects of My Lai will never be fully understood, William Allison provides a well-rounded educational summary of the tragedy with MY LAI: AN AMERICAN ATROCITY IN THE VIETNAM WAR.

My Lai refers to the murder of possibly 504 Vietnamese citizens/non-combatants (including women, children and the elderly) by American soldiers (specifically, Charlie Company of the Americal Division) on March 16, 1968, as well as the subsequent investigation and attempt to prosecute those involved. The incident's impact was profound as it fueled the escalating anti-war sentiment in the United States by symbolizing everything that was deemed wrong about the Vietnam War and the men fighting it ("baby-killers"). Furthermore, the Army's failure to follow-up on initial reports of the killing and its fumbling attempt to successfully prosecute anyone responsible other than a single, low-grade officer hinted a high-level cover-up. The entire situation was a clouded mess and remains such to this very day.

With MY LAI, William Allison provides a rather succinct overview (134 pages) of events leading up to the massacre, the massacre itself and its aftermath. As part of the "Witness to History" series of books, it reads as a simple, unbiased presentation of facts and I never felt it steering me to favor any particular side of the story. The first chapters provide readers with some critical background information about the state of the war in Vietnam at the time (mainly the response to the Tet Offensive), the composition of the US Army and more specifically the events Charlie Company faced prior to March 16. While this information is not presented as an attempt to excuse eventual wrong-doing, it clearly identifies plausible contributing factors (such as Charlie Company men being killed by snipers, mines and booby-traps inducing rage/revenge). Allison's detailing of the massacre itself (which comprised a series of separate incidents) is thorough, blunt and disturbing. I had seen some of the standard pictures of My Lai over the years, but never knew the details until I read Allison's book ... the details shocked me. The book somewhat grinds to a crawl describing events following the massacre, starting with the military's rather sluggish reaction to reports of the incident, despite repeated pleas from eyewitnesses. Most readers will be amazed that it took over a year before the details of My Lai became public, even though the visceral nature of the massacre was thoroughly documented by a photographer. When the wheels of military justice begin to move, enough time had passed to make prosecuting the perpetrators almost impossible. Fading memories, insufficient evidence, conflicting interpretations of orders, finger pointing and excuses all factor as issues hampering the process. In the end, only one individual (Lt. William Calley) is ultimately held accountable for his actions at My Lai. Allison's closing chapter that places My Lai into historical context and illustrates some of its long-standing impact.

I found MY LAI as a concise and well-sourced study of a seriously understated tragedy in modern American military history. I was only vaguely familiar with the subject matter prior to reading Allison's book and while 134 pages does not allow for an all-inclusive account, it does provide an effective education on the subject matter. I finished the book realizing that all the facts will likely never be known, confined only in the memories of the individuals that were involved. This book definitely stirred a desire to delve deeper into the subject matter.

[Jeff Kelleher · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the curious consequences of the My Lai massacre was that hawks of the right and peaceniks of the left agreed on the cause: it was "the war."

The sensible middle, which includes most professional military people, think this is nonsense. It was murder, pure and simple, done by murderers. The peculiar stresses of That War unquestionably were a factor, they allow, but scores of thousands of GIs faced similar stress without slaughtering civilians.

The sensible middle is closest to the truth, but there are two "systemic" failures that make us search for larger meaning. The first is that the episode did not become public until a year and a half after it happened. The second is that there was only one conviction, of 1st Lieutenant William Calley, who served just three and a half years of confinement in his apartment before walking free.

Professor Allison finds no sinister conspiracy in these failures. He attributes them to negligence, incompetence, failed and contorted memories, lack of witnesses, and politics (most Americans thought Calley was a victim, and should be freed).

This excellent book is not a work of original research, but a crisp meta-digest of the (large) existing literature. It seems to be designed as a kind of case study for college classes.

Two million Americans served in Vietnam over ten years. The bulk of the killings at My Lai were carried out by a dozen members of a single renegade platoon. Maybe it was statistically inevitable that a combination of fear, exhaustion, bad leadership, and bad intelligence would operate in a uniquely toxic way on one tiny subset of the warrior population. But that should not lead us into such idiocies as the shuddersome "Ballad of Lt. Calley" (to the tune of Battle Hymn of the Republic) or Duke Professor William Chafe's ignorant proclamation that My Lai was "the ultimate consequence" of the American venture in Vietnam.

Michael Belknap, a law professor who wrote the definitive history of the Calley trial, much cited by Allison, once told me that in his years of research the Americans angriest about the atrocity were professional soldiers. Ponder that.

[Bob H · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work has the benefit of being a recent retelling of a distant, but important, event in American history. I'm researching a possible book on the WWII Yamashita case on command responsibility -- implicated in the My Lai trials 32 years later -- so I do have some familiarity with this incident and the relevant military law. I can tell you that the author has done formidable research on the My Lai event and trials, judging by his bibliography (Suggested Further Reading) -- in which he found, intelligently, all the important and relevant sources on My Lai and related matters. Today, this My Lai research has the benefit of the archives now on the internet that previous My Lai authors might not have had, so a new 2012 work is due.

As the author noted, the books, archives and other resources on My Lai are, as Mr. Allison puts it, "overwhelming", and it is praiseworthy that he has told the story of the atrocity, the aftermath, and the trials in 134 pages, and even touches on recent events in the Iraq war, albeit briefly. This work is thus a good, concise introduction to a very large and murky event, one that affected the course of the Vietnam War. While he finds no major new revelations about this dreadful event, he does provide a concise and clearly-written account, an executive summary.

[Kathie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked that while the author did not take a stance he was able to describe how others felt and thought about what occurred at My Lai. This was a good cronology with more than 25% of the book being devoted to the bibliography. The writer acknowledges the Zeitgeist. I appreciate that even though some will not acknowledge that the horrific events occurred, (as those who are too horrified to acknowledge the holocaust) there are plenty who were there who do acknowledge and even appologize for the events of March 16, 1968 and much more!

The book was extremely technical, filled with Army gargon and loaded with acronyms. The author does a good job by writing out the words directly after using an acronym. I learned a lot and understand more why many of our men who served in Vietnam do not speak of what they did and others exaggerate where they were and what they actually did. Enough of the mystery....getting it out and telling the truth is the only way to live life fully!

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Challenging to read at times, because of both the subject matter and the necessarily-technical level of details. A disturbing look into the human psyche and the conditions that can lead ordinary people to commit atrocities.

[Betsy Boo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can't believe I spent so many years reading books about the Holocaust trying to see why Germans were so different...more swayed by the lure of evil...when the truth is, it's in all of us.

[Renee Cutchen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had little knowledge of the My Lai massacre before reading. An easy read, with coverage of the event itself and the aftermath. A sad true story in American military history.