Committing war crimes from a war criminal’s perspective

On March 16th 1968 between 347 and 504 civilians were killed by US soldiers with victims including men, women, children and infants. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated, as were children as young as 12.

26 soldiers were charged for this massacre, only the Platoon Leader Lieutenant William Calley Jr. was charged. He was initially sentenced to life but this was reduced to a 3.5 year sentence under house arrest by President Nixon.

PFC Vernado Simpson talks about killing civilians in Vietnam. At least he acknowledged his actions and seems to regret them, he took his life in 1997.

In 1977, Simpson's 10-year-old son was accidentally killed by a random shot fired by some neighborhood teenagers. Simpson recalled the day later by stating, "He died in my arms. And when I looked at him, his face was like the same face of the child that I had killed. And I said: This is the punishment for killing the people that I killed."

Mỹ Lai was just one of many atrocities committed. The pentagon created a secret file archive of the atrocities committed against South Vietnamese civilians by US troops:
LA times reported this on the subject:
“Among the substantiated cases in the archive:

• Seven massacres from 1967 through 1971 in which at least 137 civilians died.

• Seventy-eight other attacks on noncombatants in which at least 57 were killed, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted.

• One hundred forty-one instances in which U.S. soldiers tortured civilian detainees or prisoners of war with fists, sticks, bats, water or electric shock.

Investigators determined that evidence against 203 soldiers accused of harming Vietnamese civilians or prisoners was strong enough to warrant formal charges. These “founded” cases were referred to the soldiers’ superiors for action.

Ultimately, 57 of them were court-martialed and just 23 convicted, the records show.

Fourteen received prison sentences ranging from six months to 20 years, but most won significant reductions on appeal. The stiffest sentence went to a military intelligence interrogator convicted of committing indecent acts on a 13-year-old girl in an interrogation hut in 1967.

He served seven months of a 20-year term, the records show”

“Abuses were not confined to a few rogue units, a Times review of the files found. They were uncovered in every Army division that operated in Vietnam.”

Note that only 23/203 soldiers with evidence against them got convicted!

Perhaps it’s because of my age but I have only just become aware of this particular atrocity. Let’s spread awareness lest we forget the horrors of war and the innocent lives lost.

Some of his interviews are here:
https://youtu.be/IEW5TD9hMBs
The documentary from which this comes from is here:
https://youtu.be/1NwnnLnvQYA

Wiki page for the Mỹ Lai massacre:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mỹ_Lai_massacre

LA Times source:
https://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-vietnam6aug06-story.html