We Cannot Forget

Just after dawn on March 16, 1968, a company of U.S. Army infantrymen, led by Capt. Ernest Medina and spearheaded by Lt. William Calley, entered the small hamlet of My Lai in Quang Ngai province, South Vietnam. The villagers, mostly women and children, had no idea what was coming that day. If they had, they’d have fled.

Despite facing zero resistance and finding only a few weapons, Calley ordered his men to execute the entire population. In all, some 500 Vietnamese civilians were executed, including more than 350 women, children and babies. Other senior leaders in the chain of command had advised the soldiers of Charlie Company that all people in the village should be considered either Viet Cong or VC supporters. Medina and Calley were ordered to destroy the village. They did so with  brutal precision and savagery.--Maj. Danny

People my age and older cannot forget.

I argued that I was a pacifist and conscientious objector in front of my draft board comprised of World War II veterans whom I didn't know. I lost that argument. I went off to college with a student deferment in my pocket. I was in the first draft lottery. I won with a middling high number. Deferments were wiped away. Then Nixon abolished the draft. I'd escaped. 

Five years later, I was a community organizer watching television in Maine. Saigon was falling and helicopters were ferrying people from rooftops to aircraft carriers offshore.  It was the end of "peace with honor." The U.S had spread death and destruction in Southeast Asia for nothing.

It was the beginning of whatever it is we have become today.

TS