My Lai: The Case Against Calley

THE trial had not been going badly for Lieut. William L. Calley Jr. During the first three weeks. Prosecutor Aubrey Daniel easily established that a massacre of unarmed, docile South Vietnamese had indeed taken place at My Lai. But Daniel complained of being "particularly handicapped" now, nearly 33 months after the fact, in proving Calley guilty of murdering anyone, let alone the 102 victims cited in the indictment. Most of the witnesses were vague and inconclusive as to who had issued the orders and squeezed the triggers. One of Daniel's most important witnesses, Paul David Meadlo, refused to testify at all.

Then Witness No. 31 at the Fort Benning court-martial altered the trial's course in a full clay of dramatic testimony last week. Dennis Conti, 21, a private first class in Calley's platoon and now a truck driver in Providence, told how he and Meadlo held a group of 30 to 40 villagers--most of them women and children--on a trail in My Lai at Calley's orders. Calley returned, Conti went on, and said: " 'I thought I told you to take care of these people.' I said 'We are. We're guarding them.' Calley said, 'No, kill them.' He said to come around to this side, get on line and fire into them. I told him I would guard a tree line, with my grenade launcher, while they fired."

Steady Stare. What happened next? asked Daniel. "Calley and Meadlo got on line and fired directly into the people." What were the people doing? "They screamed and yelled. Some tried to get up. There were lots of heads and pieces of heads shot off, and flesh flew off the sides and arms and legs." Meadlo, Conti related, was weeping. He tried to give his rifle to Conti. "I told him I couldn't," the witness continued. "Let Lieut. Calley kill them . . . Some kids were still standing and Calley finished them off with single shots."

A second and much larger group of Vietnamese died in an irrigation ditch on the east side of My Lai. Conti approached, he said, and saw "Lieut. Calley and Sergeant [David] Mitchell standing on a dike, firing . . . There were people in [the ditch] and Calley and Mitchell were firing into it ... I saw one woman try to get up. I saw Lieut. Calley fire and blow the side of her head off. So I left."

Well spoken, unemotional, direct in manner. Conti seemed to be an effective witness for the prosecution. When Calley stared at him, he stared back steadily. When one of the defense attorneys, Richard Kay, shouted at him, trying to establish that Conti had been a heavy user of marijuana while in Viet Nam, he coolly denied it. Conti did admit when pressed that at the time of the My Lai operation he was being treated for a venereal disease.

From there Kay attempted to establish that Conti had bragged to his buddies about raping women in Viet Nam; that on two occasions Calley had stopped Conti from attacking women; that, in My Lai, Conti had threatened to shoot a woman's baby if she refused to submit; that Conti hated Calley and wanted "to see Lieut. Calley hang, Kay elicited only denials on these points, but he did manage to shake Conti's calm. When Kay persisted about Conti's supposed quest for women on the day of the shootings, asking, "You found one, didn't you?" Conti replied: "This was later in the day, up by the river way beyond My Lai 4." The defense also underscored a discrepancy between Conti's testimony last week and his earlier statements at the trial of David Mitchell, who was acquitted. At the Mitchell trial, Conti was not as definite as he was last week about whether Calley and Mitchell were shooting into the ditch or merely near it.

Red and Wet. Robert Maples, 22, a machine-gunner in the platoon and now a warehouse worker in Freehold, N.J., swore that Calley had asked him to use his machine gun on the Vietnamese. Maples said that he had refused.

Interrogation by George Latimer, Calley's senior counsel, brought out two weaknesses in Maples' testimony. The witness conceded that Calley had not actually ordered him to fire on the civilians. He also acknowledged that he had not seen victims being struck by bullets. However, Maples observed, "the people that was in there did not come out." Charles Hall, an assistant gunner, remembered the victims with "blood coming out of all parts of their bodies. It was very red and very wet."

Meadlo, one man said to be close to Calley at both slaughter sites, had talked freely about his and Calley's role at My Lai when the case surfaced a year ago. But now Meadlo was claiming Fifth Amendment protection against selfincrimination. The Government has not attempted to prosecute any of the servicemen now out of the Army. The prosecution offered Meadlo a grant of immunity signed by Major General Orwin Talbott, commander of Fort Benning. Meadlo's lawyer argued that the writ was worthless, that his client might conceivably be tried by some special tribunal, U.S. or foreign, for war crimes.

Vast Confusion. Chances are that Prosecutor Daniel is no longer counting on Meadlo's testimony. Daniel plans to conclude his case this week by calling to the witness stand other members of the Calley platoon. The defense has in cross-examination tried to raise the possibility that artillery fire or helicopter strafing inflicted the casualties. Also, two witnesses said that they found a rifle near the body of one Vietnamese. Another, contradicting all the other testimony, said that he believed that some hostile fire was directed at the G.I.s. But the defense has not begun to make its real case yet.

From the give and take at the trial so far, the vista emerging is one of vast confusion. Soldiers wandered about the hamlet setting fires, shooting at people and animals, rounding up villagers. In addition to the mass killings described by Conti, individuals and small groups were also shot down. One question that the Calley trial has not grappled with yet, and may not confront at all, is why it all happened.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.