On 16 March 1968 three platoons of Company C, First Battalion, 11th Brigade, Americal Division swept through the South Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai on a search-and-destroy mission (designed to look for enemy soldiers and Kill them). Company C, which had suffered heavy losses on an earlier mission, was commanded by Capt. Ernest- L. Medina, and its First Platoon was commanded by Lt. William L. Calley, Jr., an inexperienced young officer. They found no Vietcong, but during the mission hundreds of unarmed civilians, including elderly men, women, and children; were murdered and their livestock killed. The only American casualty was a soldier who shot himself in the foot to avoid participating in the massacre. After army helicopter pilots reported seeing large numbers of dead civilians in the area, the brigade and division commanders investigated but said that they had uncovered nothing unusual. In April...