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My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness
My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness
My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness
Audiobook17 hours

My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness

Written by Howard Jones

Narrated by James Patrick Cronin

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

On the early morning of March 16, 1968, American soldiers from three platoons of Charlie Company, entered a group of hamlets located in the Son Tinh district of South Vietnam, located near the Demilitarized Zone and known as "Pinkville" because of the high level of Vietcong infiltration. The soldiers, many still teenagers who had been in the country for three months, were on a "search and destroy" mission. Three hours after the GIs entered the hamlets, more than five hundred unarmed villagers lay dead, killed in cold blood. The atrocity took its name from one of the hamlets, known by the Americans as My Lai 4.

Military authorities attempted to suppress the news of My Lai, until some who had been there, in particular a helicopter pilot named Hugh Thompson and a door gunner named Lawrence Colburn, spoke up about what they had seen. The official line was that the villagers had been killed by artillery and gunship fire rather than by small arms. That line soon began to fray. Lieutenant William Calley, one of the platoon leaders, admitted to shooting the villagers but insisted that he had acted upon orders. An expose of the massacre and cover-up by journalist Seymour Hersh, followed by graphic photographs, incited international outrage, and Congressional and U.S. Army inquiries began.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 11, 2017
ISBN9781541476066
My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    War is madness. My Lai is a tragic piece in our U.S. military history. It was a mistake to think I might be interested in this accounting.