Not satire. Oh, holy hell, not satire.
Read it and weep -- literally:
William Calley, the former Army lieutenant convicted on 22 counts of murder in the infamous My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, publicly apologized for the first time this week while speaking in Columbus.
“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” Calley told members of the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus on Wednesday. His voice started to break when he added, “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”
This story hits hard for me because it is the resolution, after a fashion, of my start as a diarist here.
After seeing a college professor of mine -- in a Shakespeare class -- cry when he talked about My Lai, I had to know more about the story.
And after finding out that his class of teens, 20-somethings and parents had not heard about what had happened to a tiny village most people probably wouldn't be able to place on a map, he did what he has been doing for his English 201 classes for years.
He gave us packets of information on a slaughter.
Asked about American casualties, Calley said there were two injuries, but neither was the result of enemy fire, adding, “They didn’t have time.”
Context removed from that response is the inconvenient fact that some of the slaughtered were entirely too old or young to be firing a weapon:
He fired at [the baby] with a .45. He missed. We all laughed. He got up three or four feet closer and missed again. We laughed. Then he got up right on top and plugged him.
I joined this site so I could tell people about what Calley wouldn't. I wanted, as with the Kent State shootings and so many other events, to make sure this stuff hadn't happened in vain -- to make sure that if people suffered, their suffering would be shared.
And there may yet be revelations on Kent State or the other subjects I've covered. But for now, I am reinforced in my humanity by two words the dead and their loved ones have been waiting 41 years to hear:
I am very sorry.