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Everyone said eliminate them. I never met someone who didn't say it. A captain told me, "Goddamn it. I sit with my starlight scope, and I see VC at t… - William Calley
" "Everyone said eliminate them. I never met someone who didn't say it. A captain told me, "Goddamn it. I sit with my starlight scope, and I see VC at this village every night. I could go home if I could eliminate it." A colonel: he told me about a general's briefing where the general said, "By god, if you're chasing dead VC and you're chasing them to that village, do it! I'll answer for it! I'll answer for it!" The general was in a rage, saying, "Damn, and I'll lose my stars tomorrow if I tell those politicians who haven't been out of their bathtubs that." Americans would say, It's wrong, if American women fought in Vietnam, but the VC women will do it. And the VC kids: and everyone in our task force knew, We have to drop the bomb sometime. And still people ask me, "What do you have against women?" Damn, I have nothing. I think they're the greatest things since camels. And children: I've nothing against them. "Why did you kill them?" Well damn it! Why did I go to Vietnam? I didn't buy a plane ticket for it. A man in Hawaii gave it to me. "Why did you go? Why didn't you go to jail instead?" Oh, you dumb ass: if I knew it would turn out this way, I would have.
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About William Calley
William Laws Calley Jr. (June 8, 1943-April 28, 2024) is an American war criminal and a former United States Army officer convicted by court-martial for the premeditated killings of 22 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians in the Mỹ Lai massacre on March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War. Calley was released to house arrest under orders by President Richard Nixon three days after his conviction. A new trial was ordered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit but that ruling was overturned by the United States Supreme Court. Calley served three years of house arrest for the murders. Public opinion about Calley was divided at the time. Following his dismissal from the Army and release from prison, Calley avoided public attention. After living in his native Florida for more than fifty years, Calley died on April 28, 2024 at the age of 80. His death went publicly unnoticed for three months until it was discovered in public records.
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Alternative Names:
William Laws Calley, Jr.
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Additional quotes by William Calley
We thought, We will go to Vietnam and be Audie Murphies. Kick in the door, run in the hooch, give it a good burst- kill. And get a big kill ratio in Vietnam. Get a big kill count. One thing at OCS was nobody said, "Now, there will be innocent civilians there." Oh sure, there will in Saigon. In the secure areas, the Vietnamese may be clapping the way the French in the '44 newsreels do, "Yay for America!" But we would be somewhere else: be in VC country. It was drummed into us, "Be sharp! Be on guard! As soon as you think these people won't kill you, ZAP! In combat you haven't friends! You have enemies!" Over and over at OCS we heard this, and I told myself, I'll act as if I'm never secure. As if everyone in Vietnam would do me in. As if everyone's bad.
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Americans like to think that war is John Wayne. To get a grenade and a VC's throat, to shove the grenade right down it. Americans sit at television sets and say, "One hundred bodies. Boy!" And they think, Great, and they think that I'm the ugly one. I tell you, a hundred bodies still are a hundred people, and if they're dead their guts are just hanging out. And that's pretty horrible: I had once thought, Oh, war is hell. And then I saw war, and I could only sit and cry. And ask, Why did I do it? Why didn't I stand on a corner and say, "It's wrong." Why didn't I burn my draft card, and I wouldn't have had to go? I don't know.
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