The My Lai Massacre ( MEE LY; Vietnamese: Thảm sát Mỹ Lai [t̺ʰâm ʂǎt mǐˀ lāj] ) was a U.S. Army war crime committed on 16 March 1968, involving the mass murder of between 347 and 504 civilians, almost all women, children and elderly men, in Sơn Mỹ village, Quảng Ngãi province, South Vietnam, during the Vietnam War. Some of the female victims, including children as young as 12, were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated. The incident is the largest massacre by U.S. soldiers in the 20th century.
On the morning of the massacre, C Company, commanded by Captain Ernest Medina, entered the hamlet of Mỹ Lai 4 expecting to confront the Viet Cong's Local Force 48th Battalion, which was not there. The killings began as troops searched for guerillas and continued even after it became clear none were present. Soldiers rounded up villagers, held them in the open, and massacred them using automatic weapons, bayonets, and grenades; one large group was executed in an irrigation ditch. They also burned homes, poisoned wells, and slaughtered livestock. Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr. and his helicopter crew attempted to intervene and halt the attack. In the nearby hamlet of Mỹ Khê 4, B Company killed an additional 60 to 155 villagers.
The massacre was originally reported as a victory against Viet Cong troops, and was covered up in initial investigations by the U.S. Army. The efforts of veteran Ronald Ridenhour and journalist Seymour Hersh broke the news of the massacre to the American public in November 1969, prompting global outrage and contributing to domestic opposition to involvement in the war.
Twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., the leader of 1st Platoon in C Company, was convicted. He was found guilty of murdering 22 villagers and originally given a life sentence, but served three-and-a-half years under house arrest after his sentence was commuted. The perpetrating American units were from C Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade and B Company, 4th Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade of the 23rd (Americal) Division (organized as part of Task Force Barker).
Research has highlighted that the My Lai Massacre was not an isolated war crime. Nick Turse places it within a larger pattern of American atrocities enabled by deliberate policies from commanders, such as "free-fire zones" and "body counts," as well as widespread racism amongst American military personnel. Many other atrocities were also covered up by commanders. Following the massacre, a Pentagon task force called the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group (VWCWG) was set up which verified numerous other incidents.
Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division, arrived in South Vietnam in December 1967. Though their first three months in Vietnam passed without any direct contact with People's Army of Vietnam or Viet Cong (VC) forces, by mid-March the company had suffered 28 casualties involving mines or booby-traps.
During the Tet Offensive in January 1968, attacks were carried out in Quảng Ngãi province by the VC 48th Local Force Battalion. U.S. military intelligence assumed that the 48th Battalion, having retreated and dispersed, was taking refuge in the village of Sơn Mỹ, in Quảng Ngãi province. A number of specific hamlets within that village – designated Mỹ Lai (1) through Mỹ Lai (6) – were suspected of harboring the 48th. Sơn Mỹ was located southwest of the Batangan Peninsula, a VC stronghold throughout the war.
In February and March 1968, the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) was aggressively trying to regain the strategic initiative in South Vietnam after the Tet Offensive, and the search-and-destroy operation against the 48th Battalion thought to be located in Sơn Mỹ became a small part of the U.S. military's overall strategy. Task Force Barker (TF Barker), a battalion-sized ad hoc unit of 11th Brigade, was to be deployed for the operation. It was formed in January 1968, composed of three rifle companies of the 11th Brigade, including Charlie Company, led by Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Frank A. Barker. Sơn Mỹ village was included in the area of operations of TF Barker. The area of operations (AO) was codenamed Muscatine AO, after Muscatine County, Iowa, the home county of the 23rd Division's commander, Major General Samuel W. Koster.
In February 1968, TF Barker had already tried to secure Sơn Mỹ, with limited success. After that, the village area began to be referred to as Pinkville by TF Barker troops. The U.S. Army slang name for the hamlets and sub-hamlets in that area was Pinkville, due to the reddish-pink color used on military maps to denote a more densely populated area, and the carnage was initially referred to as the Pinkville Massacre.
On 16–18 March, TF Barker planned to engage and destroy the remnants of the 48th Battalion, allegedly hiding in the Sơn Mỹ village area. Before the engagement, Colonel Oran K. Henderson, the 11th Brigade commander, urged his officers to "go in there aggressively, close with the enemy and wipe them out for good". In turn, LTC Barker reportedly ordered the 1st Battalion commanders to burn the houses, kill the livestock, destroy food supplies, and destroy or poison the wells.
On the eve of the attack, at the Charlie Company briefing, Captain Ernest Medina told his men that nearly all the civilian residents of the hamlets in Sơn Mỹ village would have left for the market by 07:00, and that any who remained would most likely be VC or VC sympathizers. He was asked whether the order included the killing of women and children. Those present later gave differing accounts of Medina's response. Some, including platoon leaders, testified that the orders, as they understood them, were to kill all VC and North Vietnamese combatants and "suspects" (including women and children, as well as all animals), to burn the village, and pollute the wells. He was quoted as saying, "They're all VC, now go and get them", and was heard to reply to the question "Who is my enemy?", by saying, "Anybody that was running from us, hiding from us, or appeared to be the enemy. If a man was running, shoot him, sometimes even if a woman with a rifle was running, shoot her."
At Calley's trial, one defense witness testified that he remembered Medina instructing to destroy everything in the village that was "walking, crawling or growing".
Charlie Company was to enter the village of Sơn Mỹ spearheaded by 1st Platoon, engage the enemy, and flush them out. The other two companies from TF Barker were ordered to secure the area and provide support if needed. The area was designated a free-fire zone, where American forces were allowed to deploy artillery and air strikes in populated areas, without consideration of risk to civilian or non-combatant lives. Varnado Simpson, a rifleman in Charlie Company, said, "We were told to leave nothing standing. We did what we were told, regardless of whether they were civilians."
On the morning of 16 March at 07:30, around 100 soldiers from Charlie Company led by Medina, following a short artillery and helicopter gunship barrage, landed in helicopters at Sơn Mỹ, a patchwork of individual homesteads, grouped settlements, rice paddies, irrigation ditches, dikes, and dirt roads, connecting an assortment of hamlets and sub-hamlets. The largest among them were the hamlets Mỹ Lai, Cổ Lũy, Mỹ Khê, and Tu Cung.
The GIs expected to engage the VC Local Force 48th Battalion, which was one of the VC's most successful units. Although the GIs were not fired upon after landing, they still suspected there were VC hiding underground or in the huts. Confirming their suspicions, the gunships engaged several VC in the vicinity of Mỹ Lai, killing four; later, one weapon was retrieved from the site.
According to the operational plan, 1st Platoon, led by Second Lieutenant (2LT) William Calley, and 2nd Platoon, led by 2LT Stephen Brooks, entered the hamlet of Tu Cung in line formation at 08:00, while the 3rd Platoon, commanded by 2LT Jeffrey U. Lacross, and Captain Medina's command post remained outside. On approach, both platoons fired at people they saw in the rice fields and in the brush.