Veteran Warrior Writings

Warrior writings

The Visit to My Lai (page 2)

I stood for a long while before an almost life-sized photograph of Lt. William Calley in a suit with a silly grin on his Alfred E. Newman face, taken during his trial, I stared into what I interpreted were his hollow, vacuous eyes, trying to get some sense of who this man was. At first I was filled with revulsion, scorching condemnation, self-righteous indignation, which mirrored the rhetoric of the Vietnamese government’s official account of that black day, not much different from a typical American government official’s depiction of the horror of another notorious day in history, September 11, 2001.

Reading that Calley was a 90-day OCS wonder, I reflected upon my own inadequate preparation as an ROTC-trained junior officer to be a platoon commander in charge of a group of teenagers in the brutal insanity of guerrilla warfare in Vietnam. In truth, it was only the grace of a beneficent Higher Power that prevented me from being ensnared in a similar incident. With a command voraciously hungry for body counts, with the unwritten rules of engagement we had, especially during the reactive days following Tet, when we were trying so desperately to convince ourselves we were winning the war, if not the hearts and minds of the people, with the callow prejudice so prevalent toward the people whose freedom we were supposedly risking our lives to protect, many small unit leaders on the ground were faced with making inexorable decisions that often resulted in the death of innocent civilians among whom were seamlessly integrated our guerrilla VC enemy combatants.

I was able to extend a bit of forgiving compassion towards Calley, surely a karmic victim of the insanity of war as much as the innocent civilians who died as a result of his horrendous orders -- as well, I was able to experience a bit of forgiving compassion for myself too. In addition, I had the opportunity to do Tonglen Buddhist practice to forgive my judgmental derision that only Calley was scapegoated with a Court Martial, while his company commander, Captain Medina, as well as battalion higher ups, who were certainly aware of what had happened and actively participated in its cover-up for months after it occurred, faced no negative consequences to their careers as a result of that appalling day.

I also stood for a long while in front of the photograph of Hugh Thompson and his helicopter crew, reading of his valor, his integrity, his dedication to honor and principle, wishing that we had more true heroes of his caliber all throughout the ranks of our military might. Thompson’s heroic actions, doing what he could to deter the senseless slaughter of civilians, were the flip-side of the same coin of Calley and potentially myself.