Lieutenant William L. Calley, Jr., during his court-martial at Fort Benning, Ga. // Joe Holloway Jr./AP Photo
As a result of his trial, Lieutenant William Calley was found guilty on March 29, 1971, of murdering at least 22 Vietnamese civilians (down from the original charge of 109) two years earlier at My Lai. Two days later he was sentenced "to be confined at hard labor for the length of [his] life; to be dismissed from the service; to forfeit all pay and allowances." [1] Calley appealed his conviction several times, and the conviction was upheld, but he was paroled in 1974. [2] Calley, once released, married and worked in his father-in-law's jewlery store in Columbus, Georgia, never really speaking about the massacre, and never apologizing.
On that day, Calley stood before the Columbus Kiwanis Club and said, for the first time in over 40 years:
"There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai....I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry." [3] Calley still holds, as he did throughout the investigation and trial process, that he was just following orders.
Sources
1. William Thomas Allison, My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012) 110-111. 2. Ibid., 114-115. 3. Associated Press, “Calley apologizes for role in My Lai massacre,” NBCNews.com, August 21, 2009.