I want to extend a special thank-you to my former graduate student from Hanoi, Nhung Walsh, who is the bedrock of this book. A few years ago, Ronald Spector of George Washington University sent her my way to work on a master’s degree in history. Afterward, she focused on her interest in art while helping me on this project in more ways than I ever could have imagined. A constant source of encouragement, she located materials, including (with the assistance of her husband, Joe) making digital copies of the CID documents in the Colonel Henry Tufts My Lai Collection at the University of Michigan, arranging my interviews of three survivors of the My Lai massacre, interviewing the commanding officer of the 48th Viet Cong Battalion in Pinkville, and translating and transcribing the notes on these interviews for my use. Furthermore, she put me in touch with Lawrence Colburn, the young gunner on the helicopter piloted by Chief Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, who first reported the massacre to superiors and brought about a ceasefire. Throughout the long process, Nhung emphasized the importance of incorporating the Vietnamese side into the narrative and remaining objective in telling the story. I cannot thank her enough.
This book is the product of nearly a decade of research and writing, improved immensely by the generosity of friends and colleagues who read all or parts of the manuscript and offered many valuable suggestions. I am deeply indebted to Bill Allison, Gary Andrasko, Lawrence Colburn, William G. Eckhardt, Tony Freyer, Sharony Green, Ken Hughes, Ralph Levering, Kyle Longley, Pete Maslowski, William Hays Parks, Kevin Peraino, Don Rakestraw, Roger Spiller, Earl Tilford, and Nhung Walsh.
Sad to say, two of my favorite people passed away before the book appeared, Gary Andrasko and Larry Colburn. I am especially grateful to Gary not only for his extensive written comments on the manuscript but for the many hours we spent together, in my home, on the phone, and in email exchanges discussing every issue imaginable in the My Lai massacre and its aftermath. I am also deeply thankful to Larry for spending many hours detailing his experiences at My Lai and for exemplifying true courage and character. I can only hope they would have been pleased with the outcome.
Various institutions and archivists facilitated my research. The Earhart Foundation in Michigan once again supported my research, this time in the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, and the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California. For guiding me through the rich collections in the National Archives, I thank Richard Boylan, Marie Carpenti, Stanley Fanaras, and Martin Gedra. Stefan Papaioannou, a graduate student at the University of Maryland now teaching at Framingham State University, also assisted my research. For locating files at the Nixon Library, I wish to express my appreciation to Gregory Cumming, Pam Eisenberg, Meghan Lee-Parker, and Ryan Pettigrew. The Library of Congress in Washington, DC, provided online accessibility to the vast amount of materials amassed by the Peers Inquiry, the Hébert Subcommittee hearings in Congress, and many other documentary collections. The University of Michigan Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan, granted permission to digitize the CID records. For directing me to the huge collection on My Lai materials at the Vietnam Center and Archive at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, I want to thank its director, Stephen Maxner, and Vietnam veteran and historian Ron Milam, whose own work has profited from his association with the center. Mary Nelson in Special Collections at the Wichita State University library helped facilitate my use of the court-martial proceedings in the Ernest Medina case. And John Wilson, Vietnam archivist at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library, brought the William Westmoreland Papers on My Lai to my attention.
Others helped along the way and deserve thanks: Michael Bilton for graciously providing copies of the materials he and Kevin Sim used in writing Four Hours in My Lai; Tyra Brock and Patricia Causey at the University of Alabama Library for helping secure Interlibrary Loan materials; Lawrence Colburn for numerous phone conversations and emails that furnished eyewitness information on the events in My Lai 4 and afterward; Celina Dunlop from the Economist in the United Kingdom, who discovered the tapes of the Peers Inquiry and shared a documentary film she helped produce; William G. Eckhardt for providing insight into the legal issues involved in the Ernest Medina trial along with descriptions of his experience in courtroom battles with Medina’s defense attorney, F. Lee Bailey; Christoph Felder, a German filmmaker who shared his first-rate documentary on My Lai; Al Fleming, longtime friend of William Calley, for trying at least two times over the course of five years to convince him to grant an interview; Tony Freyer for sharing his expertise in military and civil law; Joe Glatthaar for facilitating my contact with William G. Eckhardt; Stephen McGuigan for repeatedly making emergency house calls to resuscitate my computer either by slaying a virus or providing repairs; Colonel (Retired) Ngo Duc Tan for his personal account of commanding the 48th Viet Cong Battalion in My Lai; William Hays Parks for discussing international law and land warfare over lunch in Tuscaloosa and in numerous email exchanges; Dorothy Peacock, a nurse in a medical team sent to Quang Ngai Provincial Hospital on the eve of the Tet Offensive and My Lai massacre, who invited me to sit in on her course, This Was My Vietnam, given at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Alabama; Pham Thanh Cong, a survivor of the My Lai 4 massacre, for consenting to interviews and sending his notes of a meeting at My Lai in 1998 with Kenneth Schiel, the first soldier from Charlie Company to return to the scene; Tyler Pritchard, my undergraduate research assistant at the University of Alabama, who gathered many materials on My Lai and arranged my contact with Al Fleming; Earl Tilford for sharing his military expertise and facilitating my meeting with William Hays Parks to discuss The Law of Land Warfare and the My Lai case; Tran Van Duc for relating his experience and that of his mother at My Lai; Bruce Uhler for putting me in touch with Jim Andreotta, who provided a photograph of his cousin Glenn for this book; Vo Cao Loi and his uncle Vo Cao Tai, both survivors of the My Khe 4 massacre, who provided firsthand information on that day as well as Mr. Loi’s providing a Vietnamese map of the area; the numerous other Vietnamese who described their experiences in My Lai to U.S. Army investigators; and my nephew Robert Dean Jones II, who offered to tell his Facebook friends about this book, and my own contacts on Facebook and LinkedIn who expressed encouragement and support.
I also want to express my gratitude to the great number of students I have had at the University of Alabama in courses on the Vietnam War and American foreign relations. They challenged my ideas and forced me to sharpen and substantiate them while reminding me of the importance of being objective in class and in my writings. Special thanks and admiration go to Mark Folse and Michael Stedman, both outstanding students and veterans of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mark as a marine and Michael as an officer in the army. Both young men were in combat and tried to help me understand the fear of the unknown and the unseen that ran through their minds on the night and morning before combat. I deeply respect their honesty, dedication, and bravery.
I would be remiss if I did not thank the office staff of the Department of History at the University of Alabama for their support: Christina Kircharr, Ellen Pledger, and Morta Riggs.
There is no way to adequately express my appreciation to Oxford University Press for its accepting my proposal to contribute another book to the Pivotal Moments in American History series. Timothy Bent continues to be the kind, patient, personable, and understanding editor, who is so adept in his craft of streamlining awkward passages that I consider myself fortunate to have worked with him a second time. Alyssa O’Connell, his assistant, has been extraordinarily helpful, dependable, and friendly, particularly in finding and securing photographs for the book. She also arranged for me to work again with Alice Thiede, who did a magnificent job in drawing the maps for this volume, just as she had done for my earlier work, The Bay of Pigs. Joellyn Ausanka once more has demonstrated her remarkable skills in facilitating the book’s passage through the production process. She made excellent decisions in choosing Ben Sadock as copy editor and Peter Brigaitis and his wife Marie Nuchols as indexers. They all are gifted in their crafts of putting finishing touches on a manuscript.
Special thanks goes to my three mentors who provided expert advice and continued encouragement throughout my professional career from graduate school at Indiana University to my many years at the University of Alabama: Professors Maurice G. Baxter and Robert H. Ferrell at Indiana University, and my longtime colleague at the University of Alabama, Professor Forrest McDonald.
Finally, I could not have completed this work without the continued support and love of my family: Mary Ann (and our late son Howie); our daughters Deborah Ann (and Jimmy) and Sharise Lynn; our grandson Timothy (and Kari); our granddaughters Ashley (and Mary Beth) and Lauren Ryan; and my brother Bob (and Ruth)—all have shown genuine interest in what happened in My Lai.
Mary Ann is my confidant and closest friend, a gentle and loving soulmate who hates violence and became emotionally shaken when hearing my stories of My Lai. She nonetheless stressed the importance of detailing the atrocities as a means of reducing the chances of their happening again. In the end, I agreed with her that to delete such descriptions would leave the mistaken impression that nothing extraordinary took place in My Lai on March 16, 1968.
Howard Jones
Northport, Alabama
Winter 2016