Lieutenant William L. Calley, Jr., pictured at his trial at Fort Benning, Georgia, on April 23, 1971. Calley, who as an Army lieutenant commanded U.S. soldiers to kill hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre, the most notorious war crime in modern U.S. military history, died on April 28 at a hospice center in Gainesville, Florida. Washington Post reported on July 29. He was 80 years old.
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GAINESVILLE, Fla. — William L. Calley Jr., an Army lieutenant who commanded U.S. soldiers who killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre, the most notorious war crime in modern U.S. military history, has died. He was 80.
Calley died April 28 at a hospice center in Gainesville, Fla., Washington Post reported Monday, citing his death certificate. The Florida Department of Health in Alachua County did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation from The Associated Press.
Calley has lived in obscurity for decades since being court-martialed and convicted in 1971, the only one of the 25 men originally charged and convicted in the Vietnam War massacre.
On March 16, 1968, Calley led American soldiers of Charlie Company on a mission to confront a group of enemy Viet Cong thugs. Instead, over several hours, the soldiers killed 504 non-resisting civilians, mostly women, children, and elderly people, in My Lai and a neighboring community.
The men were furious: Two days earlier, a trap had killed a sergeant, blinded an American soldier, and wounded several others while Charlie Company was on patrol.
Soldiers eventually testified to the U.S. Army commission of inquiry that the killings began soon after Calley led the first platoon of Charlie Company into My Lai that morning. Some were bayoneted to death. Families were herded into bomb shelters and killed with grenades. Other civilians were massacred in a drainage ditch. Women and girls were gang-raped.
It took more than a year for news of the massacre to become public. And while 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 range from 1 million to 2 million.
The US military records, archived for three decades, describe 300 other cases of what could fairly be described as war crimes. My Lai stands out for its shocking one-day death toll, horrifying photographs and gruesome details exposed by a high-level US Army investigation.
Calley was convicted in 1971 for the murders of 22 people during the massacre. He was sentenced to life in prison but served only three days because President Richard Nixon ordered his sentence commuted. He was placed under house arrest for three years.
After his release, Calley remained in Columbus and found a job at a jewelry store owned by his father-in-law before moving to Atlanta, where he avoided the spotlight and frequently declined interview requests from journalists.
Calley broke his silence in 2009.at the urging of a friend, when he spoke at the Kiwanis Club in Columbus, Georgia, near Fort Benning, where he was court-martialed.
“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” Calley said, according to a reported account of the meeting. Columbus Ledger-Enquirer“I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who died, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”
He said his mistake was following orders, which was his defense when he was tried. His superior officer was acquitted.
William George Eckhardt, the lead prosecutor in the My Lai case, said he was unaware Calley had apologized before that appearance in 2009.
“It’s hard to apologize for killing so many people,” Eckhardt said. “But at least there’s an acknowledgement of responsibility.”
