Saturday, December 17, 2016

An important obituary

Today's New York Times has this powerful obituary of Larry Colburn, who died at age 67. He was one of three men aboard a U.S. Army helicopter who helped stop the My Lai massacre. Excerpt:
Mr. Colburn was the last surviving member of a three-man helicopter crew that was assigned to hover over My Lai on Saturday morning, March 16, 1968, to identify enemy positions by drawing Vietcong fire. 
Instead, the men encountered an eerie quiet and a macabre landscape of dead, wounded and weaponless women and children as a platoon of American soldiers, ostensibly hunting elusive Vietcong guerrillas, marauded among defenseless noncombatants.
See generally United States v. Calley.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments are subject to moderation and must be submitted under your real name. Anonymous comments will not be posted (even though the form seems to permit them).