American Experience

ANNOUNCER: The following film includes imagery that may not be appropriate for younger or more sensitive viewers.

Viewer discretion is advised.

(engine rumbling) THOMAS PARTSCH: For the first month, it was, like, "Where's the war?"

You know, we had a lot of free time.

The lounges, you know, the bars-- it was really nice.

We said, "Hey, I could do this for a year."

We'd walk through the villages, mostly women, children, older people.

We really didn't encounter anything when we went.

It didn't seem like there was a war going on over there.

FRED WIDMER: You would go to a village, set up a perimeter.

Medics and doctors would come in, treat the civilians, and we'd sit there and play with the kids and...

There was nothing else to do.

We always had fun with the kids.

(man speaking Vietnamese) DO BA (translated): When I was young, I saw American soldiers.

Whenever they came, they would gather up everyone.

They would bring cake and candy for the children.

Everyone would have some and then they would let us go home.

(woman speaking Vietnamese) HA THI QUY (translated): I never would have imagined, never would have thought Americans would kill us.

When my children came home and asked if American soldiers were killers, I said, "No.

Americans don't kill."

(explosions) MICHAEL BILTON: Task Force Barker was set up around February.

Its real function was to try and break the infrastructure of the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong in that central plain of Quang Ngai Province.

JAMES OLSON: Quang Ngai province had a reputation for 300 years for hating foreign occupying forces, whether they were Chinese, French, Japanese or Americans.

They just did not like strangers coming in among them and then exercising military power.

JONATHAN SCHELL: Great areas of the province had been declared "free fire zones."

What that meant was you just kept up a constant round of the bombing of villages.

(explosions) The U.S. military loved to quote from Mao Zedong, especially the saying that "The guerrillas are the fish and the people are the sea."

But their solution to that problem was to drain the sea.

TIM O'BRIEN: Bullets can kill the enemy, but bullets can also make an enemy.

They can manufacture an enemy.

And I felt at times during my stay there that we were cranking out enemy soldiers or sympathizers by the way we treated the place.

OLSON: Soldiers had thought they were gonna go in there and be welcomed by the people whom they were going to save.

Some of them thought it was going to be like going into Paris after D-Day.

What they encountered instead was hostility.

Outright hostility and resentment from these people.

(man speaking Vietnamese) PHAM THANH CONG (translated): When I was eight years old, I realized the war had come.

There were many times when the American soldiers would set up operations around this area and raid and shoot.

So my mother brought me and my siblings together and taught us to flee.

Every night we had to crawl into the shelter to sleep.

We had to avoid the American bombs and shootings.

That was our misery: war from the Americans.

WIDMER: We started pulling regular patrols end of January, beginning of February.

Once we started down to the Pinkville area, we started to lose people.

They were being picked off one by one.

This is when we got our initiation into the realities of Vietnam with booby traps, mines, snipers.

MAN: Over here!

(guns firing) O'BRIEN: The Quang Ngai area was called Pinkville because on the military maps it was shaded a bright kind of shimmering pink.

The color pink took on associations for us that went way beyond anything you'll find on some color chart.

It meant, it meant the prospect of death.

WIDMER: Weber was the first member that we lost.

That had a real impact on the whole company because we actually had somebody killed now.

THOMAS TURNER: We were down by a river and walking on the rice paddies, and we were going down to this village that was kind of in a corner of the river and we started taking sniper fire.

(guns firing) Lieutenant Calley wanted us to go across the river to where that sniper fire was coming from.

(guns firing, men yelling) Well, we hadn't hardly got started, and there was a sniper round, and it, it got Bill Weber.

He pretty well died on the scene, but not without a lot of anguish.

JOE GRIMES: He was a good guy to everybody.

When he got killed, it's just like part of your family, they destroyed part of your family.

But that...

I considered Charlie Company part of my family.

GREG OLSEN: It wasn't long after that we started taking more casualties.

MAN (on radio): We're in the process of crossing, receiving sporadic sniper fire, over.

(gunfire) OLSEN: When you're dealing with snipers, it's like a roulette wheel.

You know, there's 30 or 40 of us out there walking around.

Which one of us is going to get it?

You know, you... it's-it's a roll of the dice.

And the same thing with the booby traps.

PHILIP CAPUTO: The infantryman lives on the ground.

He walks on the ground, he sleeps on the ground, he eats on the ground.

When you've got booby traps and land mines, all of a sudden the earth becomes the enemy, in a way, because you don't know what it may conceal.

Where do you sit, and where do you put your feet?

There or there?

And that choice is life or death.

MEDIC: Keith, speak to me.

SOLDIER: Yeah, I'm still alive.

MEDIC: Speak to me-- what's your name, tell me what your name is.

Where are you from?

Seattle, Washington.

Seattle, Washington?

It's a good town.

Good town, good town.

Can I go to sleep, Doc?

No, don't go to sleep.

I don't want you going to sleep at all.

WIDMER: You can't fight; there's nothing to fight.

I need a knife, I need a knife.

You can't fight a mine.

You can't fight a booby trap.

You can't fight a sniper.

You can try and find that sniper and eliminate him, but they hit and run.

Get me out of here.

GRIMES: You just wanted to get up and yell, and we did.

You know, we yelled, "Come on out," you know, but... they wouldn't, you know, they were snipers, they were probably over there laughing at us, you know.

They wouldn't come out.

They wouldn't come out.

BILTON: This went on for several weeks.

They're gradually losing more and more wounded until they came to a minefield.

(voice on walkie-talkie) KENNETH HODGES: Our second platoon was in one area and first platoon was ahead of us in another area, but we walked into minefields almost simultaneously.

(explosions) WIDMER: Once the first mine was tripped, anybody who moved was setting off booby traps.

It was like nonstop.

Somebody would go to try to help somebody that tripped a booby trap, they would hit a booby trap; they'd get blown up.

I could see 'em going off and I heard people screaming, "Medic, medic."

You lay there for a minute, then you know you gotta get up, you gotta go.

WIDMER: We were a close-knit group.

We were there for each other, and that was the problem.

Somebody got hurt, you went to help them, regardless.

You didn't care about the other mines; you went to help somebody.

And in the end it cost more individuals getting hurt.

TURNER: Bobby Wilson was in my squad.

We were in single file and there was other guys behind us, and we were walking along and this huge explosion went off and it knocked me to the ground, and Bobby Wilson had tripped a Bouncing Betty.

(explosion) Bobby was pretty well split in half, right up the middle.

And Medina was running through the minefield, barking out orders.

He seemed to be fearless.

MEDINA (on tape): He was split as if somebody had taken a cleaver right up from his crotch all the way up to his chest cavity.

I've never seen anything that looked so unreal in my entire life.

We took a poncho and we spread it out.

The medic started to pick him up by the legs.

I reached underneath his arms to place him onto the poncho and we set him on top another mine.

My company by this time had suffered approximately 25 to 28 casualties.

I was down somewhere to the vicinity of 105 men.

GRIMES: I believe that the month of February was our most devastating month for Charlie Company.

It drove us to the ground.

It's just like if you had a wound, and they would stick something in that wound and go a little bit deeper.

Every time somebody else got killed, you know, it was like that wound, and-and it would go a little deeper.

You know, and the hurt never stopped.

Down.

Get down.

Over to the left.

WIDMER: Your mindset has to change and you got to somehow figure out how to adapt.

SOLDIER: Hands down!

WIDMER: Your attitude towards the villagers-- now everybody's an enemy.

You don't know who to trust.

You don't know who is a friend, who is a foe.

You don't have a scorecard to tell you, well, this village over here is friendly to you, it's okay to go there.

Or this village over here is sympathetic to the Communists.

And you start to wonder who's who.

LAWRENCE La CROIX: They know where the mines and booby traps are.

They have to or they can't work in the fields, they can't move between villages.

So they know where everything is.

But they're not gonna tell you.

They're gonna let you blow your leg off.

You began to hate, and the hatred becomes very intense and very real.

WIDMER: Finally, you just throw the rulebook away.

The rules of the game have changed.

Instead of just going through villages-- casually going through them-- you went into villages, started ripping (no audio) apart.

That became the standard now.

We're not nice guys anymore.

OLSEN: "Dear Dad: How's everything with you?

"One of our platoons went out on a routine patrol today "and came across a 155-millimeter round that was booby-trapped."

"Killed one man, blew the legs off two others, and injured two more."

"On their way back to the LZ, "they saw a woman working in the fields.

"They shot and wounded her, then they kicked her to death "and emptied their magazines into her head.

"It was murder.

"I'm ashamed of myself for not trying to do something about it.

"This isn't the first time, Dad; I've seen it many times before.

"My faith in my fellow men is all shot to hell.

I just want the time to pass, and I just want to come home."

"Saturday, we're being dropped in by air in an MVA stronghold.

"Don't expect any letters for a while, "but please keep writing them.

I love and miss you and Mom."

BILTON: By the time it got to the 15th of March, Charlie Company were pretty well wound up.

But they were told that there was a very good opportunity in the next day that they would meet the enemy head on.

There was a lot of talk about a battalion, the 48th VC infantry battalion.

They were thought to be a pretty crack outfit, and they were said to be housed in and around the My Lai area.

The brigade commander, a man called Colonel Oran Henderson, wanted his battalions to be much more aggressive with the enemy.

And it's fair to say Henderson wound up Medina, and Medina wound up Charlie Company.

MEDINA (on tape): I told them this would give them a chance to engage the 48th VC battalion, that the 48th VC battalion is the one that we had been chasing around the Task Force Barker area of operation and that we would finally get a chance to destroy the 48th VC battalion.

WIDMER: Medina was psyched because here's our chance to confront the enemy.

We're getting our revenge on you.

We're going to tear your ass apart for what you've done to us.

La CROIX: We were to shoot literally anything that moved.

If it was growing, cut it down.

If it was a building, burn it; if it was a well, poison it; if it was alive, kill it.

OLSEN: I remember him telling us that the villagers have been warned out, there shouldn't be any innocents there.

And I think there was even questions asked, 'cause how would we know if they're innocent or not?

And he said something to the effect, "If they're there, you got to assume they're the enemy."

There were no civilians.

See, that-that is the crux of what was told to us.

There are no civilians.

You know, these are Viet Cong, Viet Cong sympathizers, it's a Viet Cong stronghold, they are all Viet Cong.

HODGES: We were instructed to pack a triple basic load of ammunition.

Whereas a rifleman would carry 180 rounds, he was to triple that number.

So we were expecting great resistance in that village.

La CROIX: I would say that probably most of us didn't eat very much.

We were all anxious, concerned about what was going to be happening.

This was going to be an all-out war.

This was going to be shades of Iwo Jima.

(helicopter blades whirring) TURNER: I was on the lead helicopter and there's probably nine helicopters and six gunships on the side of us.

And I remember making the big turn and heading back north, straight for My Lai.

(voices on military radio) MAN: Receiving fire, yellow smoke, 200 meters, automatic weapons, over.

We began hearing radio chatter that the helicopters were fired on.

The helicopter pilot turned to us and told us that we were coming into a hot LZ.

The meaning, which was quite clear, we were under fire.

As we touched down, the door gunners were firing.

There were rounds zinging kind of all around.

It was hard to tell where they were coming from at that point.

We hit the ground and almost immediately started firing into the village area.

HODGES: The squad leaders-- myself and others-- are instructing their soldiers, "Let's get up on line, "let's move it, let's move it, you gotta get in position, we're gonna move out."

(gunfire) TURNER: I remember somebody yelling, "There's people moving in the village," and then we could see people running, and so we all opened up.

(gunfire) I think we had it in our minds that we were not gonna get pinned down out there.

(voices on military radio) MAN (on radio): There's a whole lot of movement out to the southwest.

THOMAS PARTSCH: We assumed that we were going to hit VC only, that the civilians would be gone from that entire village.

When we went in further, we did start finding people.

Like they started coming out of their house.

And we're saying, "Well, wait a minute.

"What the hell is this?

They're not supposed to be in here."

At first nobody did anything.

Then a couple of crazy guys said, "Hey, they must be VC."

Some of the guys started shooting.

(gunshots) WIDMER: Once the first civilian was killed, it was too late.

Period.

Whoever killed the first civilian, that was the end of... end of the situation.

It went out of control.

It was just shoot, shoot, shoot at anything.

I don't care what moved.

The person would come out of a hut-- bang, shoot.

It was just complete carnage there that day.

La CROIX: We did see bunkers and we did start throwing grenades into the bunkers.

It was about that time that we started hearing the screaming from inside.

PHAM THANH CONG (translated): Around 8:30, three American soldiers came to my house.

They pushed six of us down into the shelter and threw a hand grenade in behind us.

And then they used their machine guns to shoot us down.

My entire family was blown into pieces.

The only person left alive was me.

TRAN NAM (translated): Suddenly, an American soldier came in carrying a gun.

I saw my father collapse, and then my mother, my grandfather and my grandmother.

They all continued to fall.

My brother, younger than me, only three years old, suddenly they blasted his head open.

One shot and his head blasted onto the floor.

SMAIL: We were a until that was full of anger, frustration.

We wanted contact, we wanted to fight the enemy, and we were told we were doing it.

HODGES: I am a soldier and I receive and obey the orders that are issued to me by my superiors.

Their order was to kill or destroy everything in the village.

The children happened to be there.

The people of that village were Viet Cong or Viet Cong sympathizers.

Maybe some see it differently.

That's the way I see it.

HAEBERLE: I was the photographer on the operation that day.

I just photographed everything that I came upon.

I was coming up to a group of people who were huddled and they had some, you know, American GIs surrounding them.

One soldier spoke up and said, "Hey!

Here's a person with a camera!"

And, sure enough, the soldiers backed off and I moved up and I took a photograph of these people.

You can see the fear in the faces on there, especially the small children, and the older woman trying to protect the daughter.

Then, all of a sudden, that next instant, automatic fire.

They were all shot and they all dropped.

I saw them drop to the ground.

(man speaking on military radio) LAWRENCE COLBURN: The morning of My Lai, Hugh Thompson and I came on station at about 7:30.

And it was crystal clear.

We came in at altitude and dropped down and started flying low level.

We thought that we were really helping the men on the ground and that was our main objective.

DAN MILLIANS: We came in and strafed the tree line on either side of the landing zone to suppress anybody that might want to jump up and shoot.

We got no fire.

We were never fired upon.

COLBURN: We started to just check the perimeter.

We saw people leaving the area, which was not unusual.

It was a Saturday morning.

People would go to market on Saturday morning.

We thought, "Wonderful, they're getting out of the way.

Let's continue our recon."

We were off... or out of that particular area for ten, 15, maybe 20 minutes.

When we came back, those same people were dead or dying on the road.

MILLIANS: At some point during the day, we started seeing bodies accumulate in the village.

Women, kids.

(voice breaking): I'd never seen anything like that.

COLBURN: We lingered by one of the bodies that we'd marked.

It was a young female with a chest wound, but she was still alive.

Mr. Thompson decided he'd move back, stay at a hover and watch.

And we saw a captain approach the woman, look down at her, kick her with his foot, step back and just blew her away right in front of us.

Later on we found that it was Captain Medina, Ernest Medina, who did this.

La CROIX: As we got deeper into the village, we were given more or less a change of orders.

We were to stop firing and to start moving people that we found over toward the center and pushing them into the center of the village, and they were being picked up by Calley's platoon more or less and moved onward.

TRUONG THAM (translated): They started to take us all away.

Everyone in the house, they took us to leave.

All of us were taken away.

(translated): I held one of my children and led the other one.

I walked with them until they told us to stop.

They made us walk from inside the village across the rice fields.

I pulled my kids to go with me.

I dragged my kids, but they still hit us, kicked us.

BILTON: By the time they'd got out to the other side, they'd gathered together about 170 old men, elderly women, mothers with small children and pushing them, herding them, across to the eastern side of the village near to where a big drainage ditch was situated.

And they were all standing around on the edge of the ditch.

Calley was there with his platoon.

And Hugh Thompson was flying around in his small scout helicopter.

MAN (on radio): There's a ditch right where the red smoke is.

COLBURN: We continued to recon; checked on some of the people we'd marked earlier with smoke.

They were gone.

At that point Mr. Thompson noticed there was an irrigation ditch that he saw people in, so he landed the aircraft.

(helicopter blades whirring) He approached the soldier that was near the ditch and said, "These are civilians.

We gotta help them out."

And the soldier said, "Yeah, we'll help them out of their misery."

Mr. Thompson went through every scenario he could to give benefit of the doubt to the men on the ground.

He did not want to believe that our people were doing this.

And he came back, got in the aircraft.

We lifted off and we were 15, 20 feet off the ground and we heard automatic weapons fire.

BILTON: Suddenly Calley gave the order to start firing, and Calley and a young man called Meadlo turned their rifles, their M16 rifles, on this group and began shooting.

Mothers started diving with their children into the ditch.

One mother described it later as like ducks going into the water.

MEADLO: Lieutenant Calley told me, "Meadlo, we got another job to do."

So, we started pushing them off and, uh... we started shooting them.

So then all together, we just pushed them all off and, uh, just started using automatics on them.

OLSEN: It didn't surprise me that Paul Meadlo was one of the participants with Calley in shooting down that group of people.

Paul did have a strong sense of duty.

He just did what he was told.

I've thought about what I would have done many times if Calley would have put me in the position he did Paul, and I would like to think I would have just said, "You got to be kidding me," and-and walked away and taken my chances that he wouldn't have shot me.

I don't think I could have done it.

I just really don't think I could have done it.

TURNER: Calley yelled at me to come help him and I just kept walking; I didn't even turn around and answer him.

And I thought at the time, "Well, you know, that's disobeying an order.

He could do anything he wants to me."

But I didn't care.

I wasn't going to help him kill people in the ditch.

To this day I always think to myself, what could I have done to stop it?

And I don't know the answer to that.

COLBURN: Mr. Thompson was just beside himself.

He got on the radio and just said, "This isn't right.

"These are civilians.

There's people killing civilians down here."

And that's when he decided to intervene.

(on radio): And you have 15 Victor Charlies... COLBURN: He said, "We've got to do something about this.

Are you with me?"

And we said yes.

TRENT ANGERS: Thompson now sees a small group of Vietnamese people running along a hedgerow, running for their lives, heading for a bunker.

And in hot pursuit of them are the men from Charlie Company.

COLBURN: Mr. Thompson calculated they had less than 30 seconds to live.

He told us, "I'm going to go over to the bunker "and get these people out myself.

"And if these American soldiers fire on these people or me when I'm getting them out of the bunker, shoot 'em."

I remember thinking, how did we get into this?

TURNER: I was probably less than 50 yards from this helicopter, and I remember the door gunners of that helicopter pointing their machine guns directly at me and thinking, "Oh, my God, what are they gonna do?"

Three people came out, six people came out, 12 people came... 11 or 12 people came out of this little bunker.

That's when he got on the radio and called a friend of his, Dan Millians, a gunship pilot.

And he said, "Danny, I need a favor."

MILLIANS: Hugh and his crew had a group of people gathered up to be taken out.

And I landed the helicopter, put them on, and we left with them.

A gunship just never landed out in the boonies like that to pick up somebody.

It was just not done.

I don't know why we did it, other than the fact that those people needed to be out of there.

COLBURN: We went back to the ditch and I saw some motion down in the ditch.

I saw this child move.

DO BA (translated): I lifted my head up and saw a helicopter landing in the rice fields.

I was really scared, wasn't sure if they would shoot again.

But when I lifted my head, I saw three American soldiers approach, so I pretended to be dead.

But the Americans, the three of them came down into the ditch.

I looked up a second time and they came and pulled me out.

I remember taking the boy in my left hand by the back of his shirt thinking, "I hope these buttons are sewn on, or I'm... if the shirt lets go, I'm going to lose the boy."

Mr. Thompson knew that Quang Ngai hospital wasn't too far away.

We left the boy with a nun at the hospital, told the nun he probably doesn't have any family.

PARTSCH: Time just seemed like to go on.

An hour could have passed, or five minutes could have passed.

After we got in so far, we did get a "Cease fire, cease fire!"

And then you'd still hear a couple of guns shoot off and then you hear the "Cease fire!"

again.

And then it was quiet.

PHAM THANH CONG (translated): They left my village in blood and fire.

Wives lost husbands, and children lost fathers and our homeland and village were destroyed.

(flies buzzing) TRAN NAM (translated): When there were no more sounds of guns, they came home to bury the dead.

I ran home and there was nothing left.

My house was burned and destroyed.

I couldn't recognize my relatives.

They were all burned.

There was nothing left.

My grandmother, I called to her, "Grandma, Grandma."

I thought she was almost dead.

She raised her hand up.

She said, "Grandma's here, dear, lying here.

They shot me right in my arm."

When I called to my sister, she was outside.

She just lay there unconscious.

But when she heard me call, she woke up and crawled over.

The three of us hugged each other and cried.

We were covered in blood.

BILTON: The cover-up of My Lai began immediately.

As soon as they got back to their base, too many people knew that something odd had gone on.

Already, Captain Medina had radioed to the headquarters, giving false figures for how many enemy killed in action there had been.

The official count was that 123 Viet Cong had been killed.

So that cover-up was constituted within hours, really, of them arriving home.

HODGES: After the My Lai operation and we returned to base camp, Captain Medina told us, "Do not answer any questions from anyone-- news reporters or anybody else-- about this last mission."

We all thought that we were going to get in big trouble.

And so we didn't talk much about it.

(jungle birds calling) OLSEN: The rest of that day, we just started moving on deeper into the peninsula.

We were told to... to take the high ground.

And Medina specifically said, "Don't go past the wire, "because there's an old Korean compound up there and it's heavily mined."

We got to the wire, and Calley said, "Okay, you, you, you and you... we're going up the top."

And Calley took Meadlo as the point man.

They just barely got out of sight, and Meadlo stepped on a mine and blew his foot off.

And, uh, when they were medevacking him out, the last thing he yelled at Calley was: "God got me.

He'll get you for what we did."

COLBURN: I don't remember if it was that day or the next day, all I remember is I was wearing the same fatigues and they were covered in blood.

Mr. Thompson wanted me to come up and meet him and report what we'd seen to Colonel Henderson.

Hugh went in first, came out, didn't say anything, just showed me the door.

I went in and told Colonel Henderson exactly that there was unnecessary killing of civilians going on that day, a lot of civilians.

He made a couple notes on a legal pad, didn't really react to it in any particular way.

Dismissed me and I left.

I met Hugh outside the command bunker.

He was having a fit.

I think he broke the flight helmet.

He threw it on the ground.

He wanted to tear his wings off his uniform, said he'd never fly again.

ANGERS: Thompson reported this to his commanding officer in hopes of getting action, and there was no action, there was no word, there was no buzz, no nothing.

COLBURN: After My Lai, they sent him out by himself in very dangerous areas.

He crashed four or five helicopters within a two-, three-month period and he was beginning to think-- and I don't think he was being irrational-- he thought that someone was trying to make him go away.

ANGERS: The higher-ups in the Army understood that something like this could get them court-martialed, could get the men under them court-martialed.

So, the picture that the military publicity machine attempted to put out was that there was no My Lai massacre-- that American soldiers were not involved in the killing and the slaughter of women and children and old people.

This is simply Communist propaganda and it's not true.

WALSH: This is 1968.

Killing civilians, by that time in Vietnam, was an issue because, of course, all the way up to Johnson, they were trying to calm people down in the United States.

So there wasn't any doubt about the reason for their wanting to cover it up.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer printed today a series of photographs it says it got from an Army combat photographer, and it says the pictures show the bodies of South Vietnamese killed by the Americans.

OLSON: Everybody saw those pictures.

The pictures appeared in LIFE magazine and on nightly news stories over and over again.

We'll now show the pictures published in the Plain Dealer and photographed from the newspaper, accounting for the poor quality.

They were taken by Ronald Haeberle while on a combat assignment for the Army.

OLSON: The pictures become almost ubiquitous and they symbolize evil.

And the more that they're shown, the more difficult it is to kind of defend what happened at My Lai or even to look at whatever extenuating circumstances might have been there at My Lai.

Survivors have claimed that an American infantry patrol sweeping through their village in March last year executed more than 500 unarmed men, women and children.

It still isn't known exactly what happened in the Vietnamese village of My Lai, the scene of multiple killings of civilians about 18 months ago.

There are numerous charges... SMAIL: I got off work and I stopped at a bar to have a beer.

And the news was on.

And they flashed a picture of Calley.

And I thought... "My God, that's my unit."

You know, and they brought up Medina's name and then I'm listening to people at the bar-- "Ah, them f-ing baby killers just this and that.

I just... kind of sipped my beer.

TURNER: I was going to junior college, and over breakfast I heard on the radio that the Army was investigating a massacre in Vietnam.

And I remember thinking, "I hope that's not the one that I was involved in."

REPORTER: Do you believe that there was a cover-up of this incident in South Vietnam, of the incident at My Lai 4?

I have no reason to believe there was... JEROME WALSH: There was a huge uproar in the country.

The top of the Army were absolutely furious that something like this could have happened two years before, nearly, and been held so that they knew nothing about it.

So they really wanted to find out what had happened and who had covered it up.

BILTON: They had to look for somebody who was a member of the team but was not necessarily going to be accused of covering up a cover-up.

And the person they fell upon was Ray Peers.

Peers had been a corps commander in Vietnam.

He'd had a very distinguished military career, and he was a deeply, deeply honorable and decent man.

REPORTER: General, is there any doubt in your mind now that a massacre did take place at My Lai on March 16, 1968?

That's one of the things we're trying to determine.

WALSH: Peers made the decision, "Look, before I can decide "what's been covered up, I got to know what happened.

"And the only way we're going to know what happened is to talk to everybody that was there that will talk to us."

There were maybe 800 people in this battalion, and we had to contact every one of them and try to arrange for them to come to Washington and testify.

MAN (on recording): The next witness is Sergeant Gregory T. Olsen.

INTERVIEWER: Good morning, Sergeant Olsen.

OLSEN: Good morning.

INTERVIEWER: I'll show you also a 1:25,000 scale map which has been introduced into evidence as Exhibit Map 4.

Would you take us through the village, step by step?

OLSEN: Well, I seen some of my friends shoot women, children, babies.

INTERVIEWER: After you'd gotten out of the helicopter here in the landing zone, could you tell us the first thing that happened?

MAN: I was in the second lift.

We landed here.

INTERVIEWER: Could you mark about the location on there of the CP and just put a figure 1 and circle it?

And which side of the village were you on?

Were you on the left or the right?

Who was on your right?

Who was on your left?

Who was in front of you?

Who was on the side of you?

What happened?

What time was this?

Trying to, I am assum... At that time, I didn't realize, you know, that they were trying to synchronize, "Are you lying?"

WALSH: Peers was distressed.

Terribly distressed.

The accumulation of all these things over the weeks of testimony really got to him, I think.

And when he then would come across someone like Hugh Thompson, the helicopter pilot, it was almost a, uh... a relief to him to realize that there are still really good Americans.

PEERS: I would like you to repeat what you told the Colonel at that particular interrogation.

THOMPSON: I told him about seeing the wounded Vietnamese.

I told him that a captain had came over and shot one of them.

Told him about seeing the bodies in the ditch.

PEERS: How many bodies did you tell him were in the ditch?

THOMPSON: I think I said about a hundred, sir.

PEERS: How did you feel at this particular time?

THOMPSON: I felt like there'd been a massacre.

WALSH: In Peers's mind, Thompson had done just what you'd want a soldier to do.

And almost nobody else ever had, and nothing happened as a result of it.

BILTON: What shocked Peers was that people who were in a position to prevent it happening had not done so, and then when they had knowledge that something had gone wrong, had actually then covered it up.

PEERS: Did Mr. Thompson mention anything to you about landing alongside of a ditch that contained a large number of bodies?

HENDERSON: No, sir.

PEERS: Did he mention to you seeing a sergeant point his weapon in the direction of a ditch which contained some dead noncombatants?

HENDERSON: No, sir, he did not report to me any incident of a U.S. soldier firing into a ditch filled with noncombatants or with anybody.

WALSH: I think General Peers was frustrated by his inability to get any kind of sensible explanations from Henderson and concluded that Henderson... well, he was both incompetent and lying.

PEERS: And I feel that the public is entitled to know that our inquiry clearly established that a tragedy of major proportions occurred there on that date.

BILTON: Peers knew that his report should be completely truthful, and it resulted in some 30 people, from up through the ranks from lieutenant, all the way up to a two-star general, being charged with offenses involved in the cover-up itself.

DANIEL (on tape): Gentlemen, the accused stands here before you today charged with four specifications of premeditated murder alleged to have taken place in the village of My Lai 4, 16 March, 1968.

DANIEL: This was going to be the first case in which the story, in its entirety, would be told.

The most serious offense outside of war is the taking of a human life.

And in war there has to be limits.

I told the jury, finally, I wanted to speak for the victims.

And I reminded them they did not receive any trial.

And I said, "What were their crimes, these victims?

"Was it the crime of an infant "simply to have been born in My Lai?

What were their crimes?"

And I said to them, "At the end of the day, you are the conscience of our country when you render this verdict."

CALLEY (on tape): If I have committed a crime, the only crime that I have committed is in judgment of my values.

Apparently, I valued my troops' lives more than I did that of the enemy.

When my troops were getting massacred and mauled by an enemy I couldn't see, I couldn't feel and I couldn't touch, that was my enemy out there, and when it became between me and that enemy, I had to value the lives of my troops, and I feel that is the only crime I have committed.

TRAN NAM (translated): I will never forget.

When I'm reminded, I suddenly remember the pain.

A chapter in the book opens.

There is no way I will ever forget.

I will never forget.

As far as living with the shame of My Lai, I have no shame.

I did what I was supposed to be doing.

The shame rests with the politicians and the military.

Not with me, the other members of Charlie Company, Lieutenant Calley or Captain Medina.

The shame lays with them.

It's a national shame.

ANNOUNCER: "American Experience: My Lai" is available with PBS Passport and on Amazon Prime Video.