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Example research essay topic: ' Linder Meadlo Lai Courts Martial Soldiers - 1,385 words

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... warfare if a soldier believes an order to be unjust and / or illegal then they do not have to carry it out and they must report it to a higher authority. Most of the soldiers did not remember learning of this rule or basically any of the rules. In fact only two hours total was spent on training soldiers of prisoner's rights. Their training was learning to fight not how to treat the enemy justly. LT Calley claims he was simply carrying out the orders of CPT Medina by massacring a large group of civilians.

He claimed in his testimony, 'If I questioned an order, I was to carry it out and come back and make my complaint. ' (Olson and Roberts, 183) It seems as if most of the soldiers didn't understand their right to refuse unreasonable orders, but some did. Those who refrained from participating in the My Lai incident make it obvious that those who did participate could have declined as well. Some men who participated not only followed through with the orders but they did so with great brutality. There were many cases of rape, most frequently young girls, cases of young children being shot in the head at point blank range and even a case of an older man thrown down a well only to have a grenade lobbed in after him. Other soldiers refused to take part in the senseless killings. There were even accounts of men shooting unwillingly with tears in their eyes.

Many of these soldiers were riddled with guilt and confessed to their wrong doings in court. Aside from the soldiers mentioned above there were even what some consider to be My Lai heroes. One specific case, is the case of Chief Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, an army helicopter pilot assigned to fly reconnaissance for My Lai. He noticed dead civilians lying all over My Lai as he was flying overhead the action. He became shocked and furious when he saw the bodies that filled the ditches. He claims to have seen no draft-age people, which were what the soldiers were supposed to look for as the enemy.

He landed in attempt to evacuate the living, as well as the wounded civilians. He saw a bunker full of women, older men, and children. He informed the soldiers of Charlie Company he would be taking them out, a soldier responded by claiming he would take them out with a grenade. Thompson 'told Calley to hold his men there while he evacuated the civilians. ' (Linder) He even told his helicopter crew to open fire on the Americans if they showed any violent force against the civilians. He guaranteed the safety of those Vietnamese people by placing himself between them and the soldiers. Thompson was very mad, sad, and extremely frustrated that day, he came very close to giving up his wings.

He had little faith in the system, thinking that this could have been just one incident among many. He was one of the main witnesses for the hearings of My Lai. He testified again and again about the atrocities of the day. If men like Thompson existed that day, if he could see with clear eyes what was going on; why couldn't others, why didn't others? In the trials that followed the revelation of this horrible event, it was decided to prosecute twenty-five men. LT Calley was the only one convicted because the evidence of his brutality was overwhelming. 'At one point, a two-year-old child who somehow survived the gunfire began running towards the hamlet.

Calley grabbed the child, threw him back in the ditch, then shot him. ' (Linder) He had also been the one to give the orders of shooting all the civilians that had been gathered in the ditches. The soldiers were made to feel that it was okay to wipe out the entire village by their leaders, like Calley, and these leaders were the men they were to trust and to look to for guidance. Paul Meadlo was one of the soldiers who had fallen victim, if that is what it can be categorized as, to Calley's orders. After Meadlo had gathered some civilians in a ditch, Calley had said, 'You know what to do with them, Meadlo. ' (Linder) Meadlo had assumed that Calley had meant to simply guard them. When Calley returned, 'he said, how come they " re not dead? ... He backed off twenty or thirty feet and started shooting into people. ' (Linder) Meadlo did so as well, only later to be seen with his head in his hands crying.

If Meadlo had believed these were actually Vietcong as he testified in court, then why would he have cried? Calley was sentenced to hard labor for the rest of his life. Later he was removed from stockade by Richard Nixon and placed under house arrest, only then to be paroled by the Secretary of the Army. If the man that showed the most cruelty, and had caused others to be just as cruel, was virtually pardoned for his actions, then there seems to be no one to blame. Calley had blamed CPT Medina, saying he was just following Medina's orders.

It seems that everyone got out of prosecution by blaming someone else when they all seemed to be guilty of one thing or another. By trying to answer all these questions about My Lai it seems as if more questions just arise to take their place. What happened that day seems to be pretty clear, and the question of why it happened can even somewhat be answered. It is also a enormously common opinion that the incident was horrible and it shouldn't have happened. Blame is the question that repeatedly comes up over and over again. Should there be blame placed, who should take the blame, or is there to many things to blame to even begin to deal with?

Following orders, unidentified enemies, the frustration of the Vietnam War, a looming sense of revenge, and the inexperience and youth of the soldiers, seem to come up again and again. These explanations got many soldiers out of being convicted of war crimes, but should anyone get out of mass murdering a group of women, children, and old men? In Meadlo's testimony he was asked if the babies laying in the ditches, in their mother's arms, posed a threat to potentially attack. His answer of, 'I expected at any moment they were about to make a counterbalance. ' (Linder) was obviously ridiculous and gave the soldier's confusion of who the enemy was less credibility. Although it seems quite obvious that the men knew what they were doing, which wasn't killing a threatening enemy, there was just too many people involved in too confusing a situation to point the finger at any certain person or persons. It can be said that the Vietnam War was a just plain bad situation for the United States to be in, especially by 1971, which was when the trials took place.

The blame could keep going upwards, eventually landing on the president for putting the soldiers out in the jungles of an un-winnable war. In conclusion, there are just too many people and too many things to place blame easily for this disturbing event. So the easy road was taken, just do not let this happen again. The military took time out to think about their training of soldiers. 'Commanders sent troops in the Desert storm operation into battle with the words, 'No My Lai's-you hear?' (Linder) History is said to be good for one reason- to learn from past mistakes so they will not be repeated, and that is a very good lesson to learn from My Lai and one that all hope was, in fact, learned. Works Cited Chafe, William H. The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Goff, Richard, et al. The Twentieth Century: A Brief Global History. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1998. Linder, Doug. 'An Introduction to the My Lai Courts Martial. ' Famous American Trails: The My Lai Courts Martial, 1970. 15 Nov. 1999 faculty / projects /facials / lai /Myl intro. html> .

Olson, James S. , and Randy Roberts. My Lai: A Brief History With Documents. Boston: Bedford, 1998


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