Happy Birthday, Rusty Calley [View All]

[SoDesuKa]

June 8, 2005. William "Rusty" Calley, notorious for the My Lai massacre, turns 62 this coming Wednesday. He wasn't the only one guilty, but he was the officer in charge.

As to the officers of the units involved on the ground, to a man they weren't just bad. They were terrible. To be sure, Calley led the list. He was the laughing stock of Charlie Company. In the platoon, his men didn't know whether to ignore him or kill him. He was an incompetent and a pariah, under attack from both above and below, who tried to mask his insecurities with unconvincing explosions of rage. The resultant buffoonery was further packaged back into the blustering and strutting often characteristic of the little man in the military, the proverbial shortround. Nor was any of this helped by the company commander's unrelenting mockery of him in front of his men, who consistently heard him addressed as "young thing," "sweetheart," or "Lieutenant shithead."

http://www.vqronline.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/8376