Lt. William L. Calley Jr. poses for a photo during a court-martial at Fort Benning, Georgia, on April 23, 1971. The civilian, one of the most notorious war crimes in modern U.S. military history, died on April 28 at a hospice center in Gainesville, Florida. Washington post Reported on July 29.
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GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Army Lt. William L. Calley Jr., who led the U.S. Army in the My Lai massacre, the most notorious war crime in modern U.S. military history, has died. Soldiers killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians. He is 80 years old.
Calley died on April 28 at a hospice center in Gainesville, Florida. Washington post reported on Monday, citing his death certificate. Florida’s Alachua County Health Department did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation from The Associated Press.
Calley has lived in obscurity for decades since being tried and convicted by a military court in 1971, the only one of 25 men originally charged and found guilty in the Vietnam War massacre.
On March 16, 1968, Calley led American soldiers from Charlie Company on a mission against elite units of their Viet Cong enemy. Instead, within a few hours, soldiers killed 504 non-resisting civilians, mostly women, children and the elderly, in My Lai village and neighboring communities.
The soldiers were angry: Two days earlier, while Charlie Company was on patrol, a booby trap killed a sergeant, blinded a private, and wounded several others.
Soldiers eventually confirmed to the U.S. Army Board of Inquiry that the murders began shortly after Culley led Charlie Company’s 1st Platoon into the village of My Lai that morning. Some were bayoneted to death. Families were herded into bomb shelters and killed with grenades. Other civilians were massacred in the gutters. Women and girls were gang-raped.
News of the massacre was not made public until more than a year later. Although the My Lai massacre is the most notorious massacre in modern U.S. military history, it was not an anomaly: Estimates of the number of civilians killed in the U.S. ground war in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973 ranged from 1 million to 200 Won’t wait.
The US military’s own records, kept for thirty years, describe another 300 cases of what could be called war crimes. My Lai stands out for its shocking single-day death toll, stomach-churning photos and the gruesome details revealed by a high-level U.S. Army investigation.
In 1971, Cali was convicted of killing 22 people during a riot. He was sentenced to life in prison, but served only three days due to a commutation ordered by President Richard Nixon. He was under house arrest for three years.
After his release, Cali stayed in Columbus, finding a job in a jewelry store owned by his father-in-law, and then moved to Atlanta, where he avoided public appearances and often declined reporters’ requests for interviews.
Calley broke his silence in 2009, at the urging of a friend, when he spoke to the Kiwanis Club in Columbus, Georgia, near Fort Benning, where he had been court-martialed.
“I regret what happened that day at My Lai,” Cali said, according to minutes of the meeting reported by the Daily Mail. columbus chronicle enquirer. “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I’m very sorry.”
He said his mistake was following orders, which was his defense at trial. His superior officer was found not guilty.
William George Eckhardt, the lead prosecutor in the My Lai case, said he was unaware Cali had apologized before his 2009 court appearance.
“It’s hard to apologize for murdering so many people,” Eckhart said. “But at least responsibility was admitted.”
