William Calley, face of My Lai massacre, dies at 80

[Pelican Press 0]

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William Calley, face of My Lai massacre, ***** at 80

William Calley, who during the Vietnam War led his US Army platoon into the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai and carried out one of the worst war ******* in ********* military history, has ***** at age 80.

The Washington Post and The New York Times reported Calley’s ******, which happened in April, but neither paper mentioned a cause.

Calls to Calley’s son, William L Calley III, were not returned.

********* soldiers ******* 504 people on March 16, 1968, in Son My, a collection of hamlets between the central Vietnamese coast and a ridge of misty mountains, in an incident known in the West as the My Lai Massacre.

The killings shocked the US and galvanised the anti-war movement.

Initially charged in a court martial for 102 deaths, Calley was sentenced to life in prison in 1971 for the ******** of 22 civilians.

He was behind bars only three days before president Richard Nixon ordered him released under house arrest.

Despite being told My Lai was a hotbed of ********** guerrillas, US forces met no serious armed resistance and found few weapons, according to the Army Historical Foundation.

Still they ******* almost everyone there, and ****** women and ******.

Four soldiers were charged over the massacre but only Calley was convicted.

Calley spent three years in home detention at his apartment in Fort Benning, Georgia, and was then paroled and cashiered out of the army.

Maintaining he had merely followed orders and considering himself a scapegoat, Calley became a lightning rod for a country bitterly divided over the unpopular Vietnam War.

In later years, as a successful businessman in Columbus, Georgia, Calley refused to talk about My Lai with reporters or historians.

Friends, however, said he admitted committing the deeds he was charged with and had learned to live with it.

He made his first public apology in 2009.

“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” Calley told a Kiwanis Club in Columbus, Ohio.

“I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were *******, for their families, for the ********* soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”

William Laws Calley Jr was born June 8, 1943, the only son and fourth child of a Miami businessman.

He joined the army in 1966 and graduated from officers school one year to the day before the My Lai incident.

After his discharge, Calley married Penny Vick in 1976 and went to work for her father in the jewellery business in Georgia, becoming a certified gemologist.

They had one son and later divorced.

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