What unfolded in Mỹ Lai became one of the most horrifying atrocities of the Vietnam War. Instead of encountering armed Viet Cong fighters, the soldiers of Charlie Company were met by unarmed civilians: women, children, and elderly men. Many of them were preparing food or carrying out morning routines. These villagers did not resist or attempt to flee. Some stood passively, confused by the sudden presence of the Americans. The killings began abruptly. One machine gunner later recalled seeing a fellow soldier stab a villager with a bayonet. Then the same soldier shoved an elderly man into a well and dropped a grenade in after him. Nearby, a group of about fifteen to twenty people, mostly women and children, were seen kneeling around a small temple. They were praying, crying, and holding incense sticks, and without any warning, they were all executed with shots to the head.Elsewhere in the village, large groups of civilians were rounded up. Under the orders of Lieutenant William Calley, who was in charge of one of the three platoons that Charlie Company consisted of, around seventy to eighty villagers were herded to the edge of an irrigation ditch. Calley, shouting instructions, ordered his men to open fire. He personally joined in the shooting, and the civilians, many of them women holding children, were mowed down in cold blood. One of the most chilling moments came when Calley approached a woman who was clutching an infant. He seized her by the hair and shot her in the head with his 45-caliber pistol. Then, standing over the crying baby she had been holding, he coldly aimed and murdered the child as well.
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