Four hours in My Lai - Hardcover

Bilton & Sim.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670832332 ISBN 13: 9780670832330

Publisher: Viking, 1992, 1992

Synopsis

Early in the morning of 16 March 1968, a company of around 120 US infantrymen, later to be described as a "normal cross-section of American youth", entered a village on the central coastal plain of South Vietnam and killed hundreds of unarmed and unresisting women, old men and children. Later the same day, another party of US soldiers massacred nearly 100 more defenceless citizens in another village less than two miles away. Together, these two related actions became known as the My Lai Massacre. This is an account of this war crime. Throughout the US and Vietnam, the authors have tracked down and interviewed survivors of the massacre, perpetrators and bystanders, to describe the culture of a war which turned the young men of Charlie Company, after only three months in Vietnam, into the brutal killers of My Lai.

About this title

About the Author:

Michael Bilton is a veteran British investigative journalist who has worked for the London Sunday Times and Yorkshire Television, a documentary film company. His documetary film Four Hours in My Lai garnered an International Emmy Award for Best Documentary. Bilton has also taught journalism at universities in Great Britain, the United States, and Denmark.

Kevin Sim is a British documentary filmmaker whose credits include Once Upon a Time in Iran, The Secret Life of the Berlin Wall, and Four Hours in My Lai, which won an International Emmy Award for Best Documentary.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Brilliantly realized study of the infamous Vietnam War atrocity in which US soldiers burned a Vietnamese village to the ground, shot the livestock, raped the women, and drove 400 men, women, and children into a ditch to slaughter them with machine- gun fire. Bilton and Sim (Women at War, 1982)--who co-produced an Emmy-winning TV-documentary on My Lai--begin by speaking with Varnardo Simpson, gunner with Charlie Company, 1969; for 20 years he has imprisoned himself in a tiny shack, tortured by memories. Through extraordinary research, the authors go on to discover the sad fates of several of Simpson's fellow vets; talk with Vietnamese survivors of the bloodbath; reveal facts cloaked by the Army's court-martial system; expose White House machinations to obscure ``a grave breach'' of the 1949 Geneva Convention; and document a coverup involving dozens of officers right up to the rank of major general. Only one soldier was court-martialed for the massacre: Lt. William Calley. And, as the authors explain, initial public outrage gave way, apparently as the result of manipulations by Richard Nixon, to the sentiment that Calley was a martyr: When the soldier was convicted of premeditated murder, Nixon ordered him released from Leavenworth. By the authors' account, there was only one hero at My Lai: young helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson. Seeing Charlie Company driving children to the killing ditch, Thompson landed in front of troops, trained his machine guns on them, and rescued the children. In a supreme irony, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross: his sound judgment ``had greatly enhanced Vietnamese-American relations in the operational area.'' Thompson threw the decoration away. Savagery, the authors declare, has been endemic to every American conflict: in 1902, US troops in the Philippines slaughtered ``goo-goos'' indiscriminately; in WW II, soldiers sent their girlfriends Japanese skulls. But why is it continually repeated? ``Massacre has a short shelf life,'' say Bilton and Sim. Essential for the war scholar's bookshelf; for the generalist, a profoundly moving human document. (Eight pages of b&w photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking, 1992
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0670832332
• ISBN 13: 9780670832330
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432