William Calley

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William Laws Calley, Jr.
Born June 8, 1943 (1943-06-08) (age 65)
Place of birth Miami, Florida, U.S.
Allegiance United States of America
Service/branch United States Army
Rank First Lieutenant
Unit Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Infantry Brigade, Americal Division
Battles/wars Vietnam War, My Lai Massacre

William Laws Calley, Jr. (born June 8, 1943, in Miami, Florida) is an American war criminal. While serving as a U.S. Army officer, he was found guilty of ordering the March 16, 1968, My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War.[1]

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[edit] Early life

By all accounts William Calley came from a normal background. Nicknamed "Rusty", he stood at five foot four inches tall and was reportedly undistinguished, other than the fact many people who knew him described him as "nice". His father was a United States Navy veteran of World War II. Calley graduated from Miami Edison High School in Miami. After high school, Calley attended Palm Beach Junior College for one school year from 1963 to 1964, but he dropped out after receiving poor grades, consisting of two C's, one D, and four F's.[2]

At the age of 22, Calley was rejected for military service for being tone deaf. He then worked at a number of jobs, including bellhop, dishwasher, salesman, insurance appraiser and train conductor.[3] He did not hold any of these for very long and was in San Francisco in 1966, when he received a letter from his draft board requesting reevaluation for his medical condition. On his return to Miami, his car broke down in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Reporting to the duty sergeant there, he enlisted in the U.S. Army in Albuquerque on July 26, 1966, at the height of the Vietnam War.[3]

[edit] Military career

Calley underwent basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia and received advanced individual training as a company clerk at Fort Lewis, Washington State. He applied for and was accepted into Officer Candidate School (OCS). Calley began 16 weeks of junior officer training in mid-March 1967. After graduating in OCS Class No. 51 on September 7, 1967,[3] he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant of Infantry.

Calley was assigned to Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Infantry Brigade, and began training at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii before the brigade's deployment to the Republic of Vietnam. In Vietnam, the brigade became part of the Americal Division.

As a combat leader, Calley was reportedly not highly regarded. His officer evaluation reports when My Lai first became public described him merely as "ordinary".[2] Later, as the investigation progressed, a more negative picture emerged. Many members of his platoon told Army investigators that he lacked common sense and couldn't even read a map or compass properly.[4] Calley's men claimed he was so disliked that some even thought of "fragging" him[5].

[edit] Murder trial

Calley was charged on September 5, 1969, with six specifications of premeditated murder for the death of 109 Vietnamese civilians near the village of My Lai, at a hamlet called Son My, more commonly called My Lai in the U.S. press. In this incident, as many as 500 villagers, mostly women, children, infants and elderly, were systematically killed by American soldiers during a bloody rampage in 1968. If convicted, Calley faced the death penalty.

Calley's trial started on November 17, 1970, and resulted in a conviction on March 29, 1971, of premeditated murder of 22 civilians. Testimony revealed that Calley had ordered the men of 1st Platoon, C Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry of the 23rd Infantry Division (Americal) to kill everyone in the village. Calley claimed that he was following the orders of his immediate superior, Captain Ernest Medina. Whether or not this order was actually given is disputed; Medina was later acquitted of all charges relating to the incident at a separate trial. On March 31, 1971, Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Of the 26 officers and soldiers initially charged for their participation in the My Lai Massacre or the subsequent cover-up, only Calley was convicted. Calley was seen by some as a scapegoat used by the U.S. Army for its failure to instill morale and discipline in its troops and commanders. Others, with lack of knowledge about his education or background, sought to excuse his actions because of his allegedly low intelligence and cultural background. Many saw My Lai as a direct result of the military's attrition strategy with its emphasis on "body counts" and "kill ratios."

[edit] House arrest

On April 1, 1971, only a day after Calley was sentenced, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon ordered him released from prison pending appeal; on August 20, 1971, the convening authority — the Commanding General of Fort Benning — reduced his sentence to 20 years. The Army Court of Military Review affirmed the conviction and sentence (46 C.M.R. 1131 (1973)). The Secretary of the Army reviewed the sentence and findings and approved both, but in a separate clemency action commuted confinement to ten years. On May 3, 1974, President Nixon notified the Secretary that he had reviewed the case and determined he would take no further action in the matter.

Ultimately, Calley served only three and a half years of house arrest in his quarters at Fort Benning. He petitioned the federal district court for habeas corpus on February 11, 1974, which was granted on September 25, 1974, along with his immediate release, by federal judge J. Robert Elliott. Judge Elliott found that Calley's trial had been prejudiced by pretrial publicity, denial of subpoenas of certain defense witnesses, refusal of the House of Representatives to release testimony taken in executive session of its My Lai investigation, and inadequate notice of the charges. (The judge had released Calley on bail on February 27, 1974, but an appeals court reversed it and returned Calley to Army custody June 13, 1974.)

The Army appealed Judge Elliott's decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and asked an appeals judge to stay Calley's immediate release, which was granted. However, the full Court upheld the release pending appeal and decided the entire court would hear the appeal (normally not done in the first instance). The Army won a reversal of Judge Elliott's habeas corpus grant and a reinstatement of the judgment of the court-martial, with 5 judges dissenting. (Calley v. Callaway, 519 F.2d 184, 9/10/1975). In a long and extremely detailed careful opinion, the reviewing court disagreed with Judge Elliott on the law and significantly on Elliott's scope of review of the court martial proceeding. The Court noted that although by now Calley had been "paroled" from confinement by the Army, that did not moot the habeas corpus proceedings.

[edit] After release

In 2007, Calley agreed to be interviewed to discuss the massacre, saying, "Meet me in the lobby of the nearest bank at opening time tomorrow, and give me a certified check for $25,000, then I'll talk to you for precisely one hour."[6] However, when confronted with journalist's questions, Calley fled the scene.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Daily Mail: The Monster of the My Lai Massacre – Oct 6, 2007. Retrieved on 2008-04-15.
  2. ^ a b "An Average American Boy?", Time, 12-05-1969. Retrieved 01-15-2007.
  3. ^ a b c Loh, Jules. "Average Guy Calley Found Niche in Army", Pacific Stars and Stripes, 12-01-1969. 25th Aviation Battalion, U.S. Army.
  4. ^ Wilson, William. “I Had Prayed to God that this Thing Was Fiction…”, American Heritage, vol. 41 #1, February 1990.
  5. ^ Daily Mail: The Monster of the My Lai Massacre – Oct 6, 2007. Retrieved on 2008-04-15.
  6. ^ UK Daily Mail article. "Found: The monster of the My Lai Massacre" (article includes recent photograph of Calley)

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[edit] External links