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Show Book review 'TfiTfull story on My Lai (One Morning in the War: The tragedy at Son My by Richard Hammer. $3.95; Coward-Mc-Caim; 207 pages). BY SUZANNE KANEDA A lot of controversy was caused late last year over the disclosure (hat a village in South Vietnam aad been completely wiped out by American ground forces. The incident in-cident subsequently led to t h e charging of Capt. Ernest L. Medina Me-dina and 1st Lt. William Calley, among others, of war atrocities ranging from attempted rape and assault to the murders of at least 500 Vietnamese. Richard Hammer, in his book on the incident at Son My carefully notes the circumstances surrounding surround-ing the incident and its eventual jire consequences. In order to irite the book, he interviewed survivors sur-vivors of the massacre as well as come of the men of Charley Co., First Battalion, Twentieth Infancy Infan-cy who were present in the hamlet ham-let at the time of the incident. Some interesting facts to be noted in Hammer's book, which are not common knowledge to the majority of the American people are: According to American military mili-tary maps, there is more than one My Lai ... in fact, there are at least four hamlets named My Lai. The rationale for the U.S. ground forces attacking My Lai, or Pink-ville, Pink-ville, was because of reported heavy Viet Cong activity in the hamlet. Hammer contends that orders were given to attack the wring My Lai hamlet. His contention conten-tion is supported by interviews with villagers who survived the massacre and by the simple fact that if there had been VC in the hamlet, they were not in the area at the time the American troops entered the hamlet. There was no enemy fire in the village at that time, according to official reports, . and the only American casualty was a soldier who shot himself in the foot. All around the soldiers, however, Vietnamese villagers were being shot, and their bodies were pushed into deep trenches. The author explains in his introduction intro-duction that the book was meant to merely discover the hows and the whys of Son My (My Lai) and not meant to put the blame for the . incident on anyone. However, with all of the comments of the people he interviewed, Richard Hammer's Ham-mer's book seems only to further point out the lack of communication communica-tion in the military. According to Hammer, My Lai was a mistake, and many people in the military knew about it but refused to admit ad-mit that they had attacked the wrong village. One Morning in the War: The Tragedy at Son My is filled with, detailed accounts on what actually actual-ly happened on March 16. It is a very careful analysis on all of the factors that precipitated what will be remembered as one of America's Ameri-ca's greatest mistakes. Since the printing of this book, a special governmental committee commit-tee set up to study the incident at My Lai has heleased its findings. find-ings. Any American hawk or dove who is sincerely interested not only in the welfare of his country but the health of American Ameri-can troops in Southeast Asia, would do well to read this particular parti-cular book. Voluntary manslaughter manslaugh-ter is bad, but can killing innocent inno-cent people under orders be justified justi-fied to any rational persons's satisfaction? |
