Lt. William Calley arrives for his court martial in 1971 at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Lieutenant William Calley was described as an “average officer” when he began his second tour in Vietnam in late 1967. Then on March 16, 1968, his company murdered hundreds of unarmed civilians in the village of My Lai. The incident was covered up and not made public until the next year, when Calley was charged with the premeditated murder of more than 100 villagers. At his trial, which began in 1970, witnesses testified that Calley wasn’t fit for his role and that he ordered them to shoot civilians, suggesting they were all Vietcong. Calley’s was the sole conviction: he was found guilty for the premeditated killings of 22 villagers. The decision divided Americans. He received life in prison but served roughly three years under house arrest before President Nixon reduced his sentence. In August 2009, Calley apologized for his actions: “There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” he told members of a local Kiwanis club in Georgia. “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”