In my dotage and with the magic of the Internet, I regularly visit newspaper sites of places I’ve lived. Born in Cleveland and raised in it’s post WWII suburbs, I recently stumbled on this front page. Pretty sure I was in Submarine School in Groton, CT. I was 19. Everything was new and an adventure. Missed this when published, due to geography. No Internet in 1969.
8 years later, I left the Navy as an E-6, yearning for self determination and not spending six months a year underwater in a big steel tube full of thousands of tons of missile propellant and nuclear warheads.
And 56 years later, I am certain of three things: It takes a long time to train a seasoned professional warrior, these were two year Draftees thrown into chaos and this was real wrong.
I can see three dead, naked babies in this photograph made by a photographer from Cleveland. The My Lai museum outside Da Nang lists the names of 504 victims. One hundred and sixty of those victims were 4 to 12 years old. Fifty were 3 years old or younger. Three!
At least one soldier refused to shoot unarmed woman and children and threw down his weapon. A US Army Officer, later convicted by a military court of 22 murders, picked it up and shot them.
The soldier who threw down his weapon honored his Oath of Enlistment and did not follow an unlawful order – in accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And to this Old Man, that is courageous and brave and the highest form of devotion to the U.S. Constitution and these, United States of America.
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