The Ballads Of My Lai (MP3s)

     

The records featured in today's post all deal with Lt. William Calley Jr., the U.S. Army officer who ordered, and was one of the many soldiers who took part in, the horrible event that has become known as the My Lai Massacre.  The massacre took place in March 1968 in the South Vietnamese village of My Lai and resulted in the deaths of  300 - 500 unarmed civilians, many of them women, children and the elderly.   

The widespread atrocities were initially covered-up, but news about the savage events that took place that day eventually leaked out and Calley was formally court-martialed and charged with murder. 

His primary defense rested on his belief that he was following the orders of his superiors, but that's always seemed like something of a non sequitir to me.  While it's not unimagineable that Calley was in fact ordered to make sure the entire village was wiped out, the slaughter of unarmed and defenseless people has pretty much always been illegal and indefensible, at least for as long as warfare laws have been around.

Calley was the only soldier convicted of war crimes for the incidents that took place in My Lai.   On March 29, 1971, he was sentenced to life imprisonment and hard labor at Fort Leavenworth.

Upon announcement of the verdict many Americans were appalled, including most of those whose records are included below.  President Nixon immediately ordered Calley transferred from prison to house arrest arrest at Fort Benning while his appeal was heard.  State legislatures in New Jersey, Arkansas, Kansas, Texas, and South Carolina passed motions officially requesting clemency for Calley.  Alabama Governor George Wallace quickly named Calley an honorary Lieutenant Colonel in the Alabama National Guard.  Here in Georgia, Governor Jimmy Carter proclaimed an "American Fighting Man's Day" and asked the state's residents to drive with their headlights on during daylight hours in a week-long protest.

Matt McKinnley  -  The Ballad Of My Lai  (3:41)

C Company featuring Terry Nelson  -  Battle Hymn Of Lt. Calley  (3:27)

Rick Riddle  -  Hang On Bill  (2:07)

Lucky Clark  -  My Lai  (2:48)

Big Bill Johnson  -  Set Lt. Calley Free  (2:45)

Mutt Cottingham  -  Free Calley  (2:59)

Merritt Jordan  -  Pardon This Soldier (And Set Him Free)  (3:35)

Nelson Truehart  -  Morning In My Lai  (3:08)

Smokey Harless  -  Hang Lt. Calley  (3:03)

Incidentally, the Smokey Harless record (Hang Lt. Calley) is not actually a condemnation of Calley's acts, as its title seems to indicate.   Rather, it's a stinging rebuke to those who wanted to see Calley punished.

         

Despite being sentenced to life in prison, Calley was ulitmately paroled after serving less than four years under house arrest at Fort Benning.  These days Calley, 69, stays out of the headlines and seems to live a quiet life in Atlanta. 

In 2009, while publicly speaking about the events for the first time, he apologized for his role in murders at My Lai.  Addressing the Kiwanis Club in Columbus, Georgia near Fort Benning, Calley said, "There is not a day that goes by when I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai.  I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, and for the American soldiers involved and their familes.  I am very sorry."

Comments

[Mondo]

What a great piece this is all new to me, thanks for posting

[Doug Schulkind]

An opposing viewpoint:    Thanks for these (and all your) gems, Greg.

[charles ford]

Is there any way you can post the b-side of big bill Johnson, Set
Lt. Calley Free so I can download it?
Charles
[email protected]

c

[Chris]

Scottish / Dutch band Dog Faced Hermans had a song called Calley on their sixth album Those Deep Buds, released on Alternative Tentacle. The song recounts a dream of going to Calley's hardware store many years after his release to confront him about the massacre. You might be able to hear the song from the out of print album here - http://new.music.yahoo.com/dog-faced-hermans/tracks/calley--944129

[Nat]

Holy Crap!!!! This is so heavy! Wow....blown away.

[Gyro1966]

Thanks Greg for this great slice of history. The records are very cool too.

[Mehdi]

Thank you. great history lesson.

[QuizmasterChris]

Worth mentioning is that My Lai gave maybe the first serious opportunity for a young Colin Powell to base his career in lies and cover-ups: http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/colin3.html

[Murray Van Creme]

At "Pinkville", a unit of the US Army acted precisely like the SS in Russia. It methodically lined up and executed an entire village. One account mentions a child, only wounded on the hand, looking dazed and unbelieving...the orders were given to finish him off.

I'll also add that this is the sort of thing that all the pro-war propaganda accused the Viet Cong or NVA of doing, not to mention the Evil Soviet Empire.

I go to the local supermarket and see kids walking around with their parents. I try to imagine aiming an assault rifle at them and ripping into their bodies with round after round. Will they fall immediately, or will they writhe? Will the corpses twitch?

It so disgusts me that I cannot imagine any, ANY defense of Calley's wanton depravity. A constant thread in the most morally deficient recordings in this bunch is that Calley was just following orders. "I vass just follovink orders!!" That didn't cut it in the aftermath of World War II. Why should it in Vietnam?

[Jim Thompson]

I remember when this was played locally when it was new. As I recall, not played often. It's pretty miserable, really. A local Detroit group had an analogous record called "I'd Rather Fight Than Pay," a side reference to then then-contemporary Tareyton cigarette TV ads ("I'd rather fight than switch" was their tagline). I have a copy of the 45 (by Chuck Dockery and His Four Buddies) which apparently is pretty rare; a specialist in MI garage band material told me neither he nor his garage-punk allies have ever heard it, let alone seen a copy.

[endwar]

I'll mention that C Company of "Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley" fame put out an entire LP with that song as the hit single. The rest of the songs were themed to all the other great wars we fought -- from the American Revolution to the Korean War, which as i recall was a mixture of covers and original songs. The B-side of the single ("Routine Patrol") was not put on the album. I also have another version of the "Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley" by another artist that i'll have to look up when i get home.

[Kip W]

I have the sheet music to "Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley." How nice of other people to write self-pitying self-justification for him! He apparently felt remorse about it, while these brave armchair warriors probably still have fantasies about going over there and being 'heroes.'