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104-777: The My Lai massacre ( / m iː l aɪ / mee ly ; Vietnamese : Thảm sát Mỹ Lai [tʰâːm ʂǎːt mǐˀ lāːj] ) was a war crime committed by the United States Army on 16 March 1968, involving the mass murder of unarmed civilians in Sơn Mỹ village, Quảng Ngãi province , South Vietnam , during the Vietnam War . At least 347 and up to 504 civilians, almost all women, children, and elderly men, were murdered by U.S. soldiers from C Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment , 11th Brigade and B Company, 4th Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment , 11th Brigade of

208-600: A Purple Heart for other services in Vietnam. In March 1998, the helicopter crew's medals were replaced by the Soldier's Medal , the highest the U.S. Army can award for bravery not involving direct conflict with the enemy. The medal citations state they were "for heroism above and beyond the call of duty while saving the lives of at least 10 Vietnamese civilians during the unlawful massacre of non-combatants by American forces at My Lai". Thompson initially refused to accept

312-437: A logographic script using Chinese characters ( chữ Hán ) to represent Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and some native Vietnamese words, together with many locally invented characters representing other words. Early linguistic work in the late 19th and early 20th centuries ( Logan 1852, Forbes 1881, Müller 1888, Kuhn 1889, Schmidt 1905, Przyluski 1924, and Benedict 1942) classified Vietnamese as belonging to

416-636: A minor syllable occurred). These fricatives were not present in Proto-Viet–Muong, as indicated by their absence in Mường , but were evidently present in the later Proto-Vietnamese stage. Subsequent loss of the minor-syllable prefixes phonemicized the fricatives. Ferlus 1992 proposes that originally there were both voiced and voiceless fricatives, corresponding to original voiced or voiceless stops, but Ferlus 2009 appears to have abandoned that hypothesis, suggesting that stops were softened and voiced at approximately

520-458: A Letter of Commendation to Medina on 27 March 1968. The following day, 28 March, the commander of Task Force Barker submitted a combat action report for the 16 March operation, in which he stated that the operation in Mỹ Lai was a success, with 128 VC combatants killed. The Americal Division commander, General Koster, sent a congratulatory message to Charlie Company. General William C. Westmoreland ,

624-456: A bloody day-long battle." On 16 March 1968, in the official press briefing known as the "Five O'Clock Follies" , a mimeographed release included this passage: "In an action today, Americal Division forces killed 128 enemy near Quang Ngai City. Helicopter gunships and artillery missions supported the ground elements throughout the day." Initial investigations of the Mỹ Lai operation were undertaken by Colonel Henderson, under orders from

728-469: A cold-blooded break for lunch". Owing to the chaotic circumstances of the war and the U.S. Army's decision not to undertake a definitive body count of noncombatants in Vietnam, the number of civilians killed at Mỹ Lai cannot be stated with certainty. Estimates vary from source to source, with 347 and 504 being the most commonly cited figures. The memorial at the site of the massacre lists 504 names, with ages ranging from one to 82. A later investigation by

832-500: A further 30,000 homeless in an attempt to disrupt South Vietnamese pacification efforts. Among the villages destroyed were two housing survivors of the Mỹ Lai massacre. The Ba Làng An Peninsula is a rich and productive agricultural region encompassing approximately 48 square km of flat, fertile farmland and rolling hills. Today the beaches of the cape are a centre for tourism and diving. [REDACTED]  This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of

936-443: A group of people who were still alive. But it was mostly done with a machine gun. They were shooting women and children just like anybody else. We met no resistance and I only saw three captured weapons. We had no casualties. It was just like any other Vietnamese village – old papa-sans, women and kids. As a matter of fact, I don't remember seeing one military-age male in the entire place, dead or alive. One group of 20–50 villagers

1040-429: A hand grenade. Thompson then saw a group of civilians at a bunker being approached by ground personnel. Thompson landed, and told his crew that if the soldiers shot at the villagers while he was trying to get them out of the bunker, then they were to open fire on the soldiers. Thompson later testified that he spoke with a lieutenant (identified as Stephen Brooks of 2nd Platoon) and told him there were women and children in

1144-447: A main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide /j/ or /w/ . There are restrictions on the high offglides: /j/ cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and /w/ cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus. The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide /j/ is usually written as i ; however, it may also be represented with y . In addition, in

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1248-448: A paper published in 1856. Later, in 1920, French-Polish linguist Jean Przyluski found that Mường is more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon–Khmer languages, and a Viet–Muong subgrouping was established, also including Thavung , Chut , Cuoi , etc. The term "Vietic" was proposed by Hayes (1992), who proposed to redefine Viet–Muong as referring to a subbranch of Vietic containing only Vietnamese and Mường . The term " Vietic "

1352-546: A process of tonogenesis , in which distinctions formerly expressed by final consonants became phonemic tonal distinctions when those consonants disappeared. These characteristics have become part of many of the genetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian ), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature. After

1456-642: A representative on the Government Council for Nationalities, an advisory body of the Czech Government for matters of policy towards national minorities and their members. It also grants the community the right to use Vietnamese with public authorities and in courts anywhere in the country. Vietnamese is taught in schools and institutions outside of Vietnam, a large part contributed by its diaspora . In countries with Vietnamese-speaking communities Vietnamese language education largely serves as

1560-597: A rifleman in Charlie Company, said, "We were told to leave nothing standing. We did what we were told, regardless of whether they were civilians." On the morning of 16 March at 07:30, around 100 soldiers from Charlie Company led by Medina, following a short artillery and helicopter gunship barrage, landed in helicopters at Sơn Mỹ, a patchwork of individual homesteads, grouped settlements, rice paddies, irrigation ditches, dikes, and dirt roads, connecting an assortment of hamlets and sub-hamlets. The largest among them were

1664-540: A role to link descendants of Vietnamese immigrants to their ancestral culture. In neighboring countries and vicinities near Vietnam such as Southern China, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand, Vietnamese as a foreign language is largely due to trade, as well as recovery and growth of the Vietnamese economy. Since the 1980s, Vietnamese language schools ( trường Việt ngữ/ trường ngôn ngữ Tiếng Việt ) have been established for youth in many Vietnamese-speaking communities around

1768-519: A stage commonly termed Middle Vietnamese ( tiếng Việt trung đại ). The pronunciation of the "rime" of the syllable, i.e. all parts other than the initial consonant (optional /w/ glide, vowel nucleus, tone and final consonant), appears nearly identical between Middle Vietnamese and modern Hanoi pronunciation. On the other hand, the Middle Vietnamese pronunciation of the initial consonant differs greatly from all modern dialects, and in fact

1872-552: A third of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms, and may account for as much as 60% of the vocabulary used in formal texts. Vietic languages were confined to the northern third of modern Vietnam until the "southward advance" ( Nam tiến ) from the late 15th century. The conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the conquest of the Mekong Delta led to an expansion of the Vietnamese people and language, with distinctive local variations emerging. After France invaded Vietnam in

1976-518: Is a peninsula in Quảng Ngãi Province , Vietnam, northeast of Quảng Ngãi and 32 kilometres (20 mi) south of Chu Lai . The name was often mispronounced as "Ba Tang An" and known as Batangan during the Vietnam War , although Far Eastern Economic Review and other sources continue to refer to the "Ba Lang An peninsula". The "Three Villages called An" which give the name to the peninsula are Vân An, An Chuẩn, and An Hải. The term "ba làng"

2080-527: Is also spoken by the Jing people traditionally residing on three islands (now joined to the mainland) off Dongxing in southern Guangxi Province , China . A large number of Vietnamese speakers also reside in neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos . In the United States, Vietnamese is the sixth most spoken language , with over 1.5 million speakers, who are concentrated in a handful of states. It

2184-460: Is highly analytic and is tonal . It has head-initial directionality, with subject–verb–object order and modifiers following the words they modify. It also uses noun classifiers . Its vocabulary has had significant influence from Middle Chinese and loanwords from French . Although it is often mistakenly thought as being an monosyllabic language, Vietnamese words typically consist of from one to many as eight individual morphemes or syllables;

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2288-428: Is native Vietnamese language for "three villages", while the three villages themselves have the usual Sino-Vietnamese names used by Confucian tax-collectors. The Sino-Vietnamese character "An" 安 means "peace", so the villages are sometimes called "Three Villages of Peace". During the colonial period the waters off the peninsular were recognised as rich fishing grounds. In Nos richesses coloniales 1900–1905 (1906)

2392-415: Is notated i or y (with the difference between the two often indicating differences in the quality or length of the preceding vowel), and after /ð/ and /β/ , where it is notated ĕ . This ĕ , and the /j/ it notated, have disappeared from the modern language. Note that b [ɓ] and p [p] never contrast in any position, suggesting that they are allophones. The language also has three clusters at

2496-479: Is often mistaken for a tilde in modern reproductions of early Vietnamese writing. As a result of emigration , Vietnamese speakers are also found in other parts of Southeast Asia , East Asia , North America , Europe , and Australia . Vietnamese has also been officially recognized as a minority language in the Czech Republic . As the national language, Vietnamese is the lingua franca in Vietnam. It

2600-563: Is pronounced with one of six inherent tones , centered on the main vowel or group of vowels. Tones differ in: Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; except the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi), with their self-referential Vietnamese names, are: Batangan Peninsula The Ba Làng An Peninsula ( Vietnamese : mũi Ba Làng An , lit.   'land nose of Three Villages called An')

2704-410: Is significantly closer to the modern Saigon dialect than the modern Hanoi dialect. The following diagram shows the orthography and pronunciation of Middle Vietnamese: ^1 [p] occurs only at the end of a syllable. ^2 This letter, ⟨ ꞗ ⟩ , is no longer used. ^3 [j] does not occur at the beginning of a syllable, but can occur at the end of a syllable, where it

2808-466: Is the first language of the majority of the Vietnamese population, as well as a first or second language for the country's ethnic minority groups . In the Czech Republic , Vietnamese has been recognized as one of 14 minority languages, on the basis of communities that have resided in the country either traditionally or on a long-term basis. This status grants the Vietnamese community in the country

2912-653: Is the third-most spoken language in Texas and Washington; fourth-most in Georgia, Louisiana, and Virginia; and fifth-most in Arkansas and California. Vietnamese is the third most spoken language in Australia other than English, after Mandarin and Arabic. In France, it is the most spoken Asian language and the eighth most spoken immigrant language at home. Vietnamese is the sole official and national language of Vietnam. It

3016-413: Is used, among others, by Gérard Diffloth , with a slightly different proposal on subclassification, within which the term "Viet–Muong" refers to a lower subgrouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, Mường dialects, and Nguồn (of Quảng Bình Province ). Austroasiatic is believed to have dispersed around 2000 BC. The arrival of the agricultural Phùng Nguyên culture in

3120-446: Is written with two Chinese characters or in a composite character made of two different characters. This conveys the transformation of the Vietnamese lexicon from sesquisyllabic to fully monosyllabic under the pressure of Chinese linguistic influence, characterized by linguistic phenomena such as the reduction of minor syllables; loss of affixal morphology drifting towards analytical grammar; simplification of major syllable segments, and

3224-525: The 23rd (Americal) Division (organized as part of Task Force Barker ). Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated, and some soldiers mutilated and raped children as young as 12. The incident was the largest massacre of civilians by U.S. forces in the 20th century. On the morning of the massacre, C Company, commanded by Captain Ernest Medina , was sent into one of the village's hamlets (marked on maps as My Lai 4) expecting to engage

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3328-529: The Americal Division 's Task Force Cooksey, composed of elements of the 46th Infantry Regiment and 1st Cavalry Regiment and the ARVN 2nd Division to seal off the southern boundary. Due to constant US bombardment, civilians had lived primarily in bunkers and caves in the region. The Marines evacuated numerous civilians for screening, eventually totaling some 11,900 people. Following the conclusion of

3432-988: The Mon–Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (which also includes the Khmer language spoken in Cambodia , as well as various smaller and/or regional languages , such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in Laos , southern China and parts of Thailand). In 1850, British lawyer James Richardson Logan detected striking similarities between the Korku language in Central India and Vietnamese. He suggested that Korku , Mon , and Vietnamese were part of what he termed "Mon–Annam languages" in

3536-605: The Red River Delta at that time may correspond to the Vietic branch. This ancestral Vietic was typologically very different from later Vietnamese. It was polysyllabic, or rather sesquisyllabic , with roots consisting of a reduced syllable followed by a full syllable, and featured many consonant clusters. Both of these features are found elsewhere in Austroasiatic and in modern conservative Vietic languages south of

3640-700: The Tactical Area of Responsibility of the Korean 2nd Marine Brigade in 1966 and then the Americal Division , however despite periodic operations the area remained a VC stronghold. The village of My Lai, scene of the My Lai Massacre , is situated 5 km southwest of the Peninsula. The Marines conducted Operation Bold Mariner on the peninsula from 13 January to 7 February 1969. The Marine assault linked up with Operation Russell Beach conducted by

3744-607: The Viet Cong 's Local Force 48th Battalion, which was not present. The killing began while the troops were searching the village for guerillas, and continued after they realized that no guerillas seemed to be present. Villagers were gathered together, held in the open, then murdered with automatic weapons, bayonets, and hand grenades; one large group of villagers was shot in an irrigation ditch. Soldiers also burned down homes and killed livestock. Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr. and his helicopter crew are credited with attempting to stop

3848-489: The Vietcong (VC) converted the Peninsula into a fortified stronghold. Following the conclusion of Operation Starlite , on 24 August 1965, Marine intelligence concluded that the 1st VC Regiment had withdrawn into the Peninsula. Reconnaissance photos of the Peninsula showed a V of older field fortifications pointing inland with the open end to the sea and a new second V further inland under construction. The Marines, Army of

3952-597: The Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right. Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q"). In some cases, they are based on their Middle Vietnamese pronunciation; since that period, ph and kh (but not th ) have evolved from aspirated stops into fricatives (like Greek phi and chi ), while d and gi have collapsed and converged together (into /z/ in

4056-606: The 48th. Sơn Mỹ was located southwest of the Batangan Peninsula , a VC stronghold throughout the war. In February and March 1968, the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) was aggressively trying to regain the strategic initiative in South Vietnam after the Tet Offensive, and the search-and-destroy operation against the 48th Battalion thought to be located in Sơn Mỹ became a small part of

4160-494: The Americal Division's executive officer, Brigadier General George H. Young. Henderson interviewed several soldiers involved in the incident, then issued a written report in late-April claiming that some 20 civilians were inadvertently killed during the operation. According to Henderson's report, the civilian casualties that occurred were accidental and mainly attributed to long-range artillery fire. The Army at this time

4264-565: The French colonial era. The following diagram shows the phonology of Proto–Viet–Muong (the nearest ancestor of Vietnamese and the closely related Mường language ), along with the outcomes in the modern language: ^1 According to Ferlus, * /tʃ/ and * /ʄ/ are not accepted by all researchers. Ferlus 1992 also had additional phonemes * /dʒ/ and * /ɕ/ . ^2 The fricatives indicated above in parentheses developed as allophones of stop consonants occurring between vowels (i.e. when

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4368-504: The Mỹ Lai massacre. Since there had been little research over the case other than that of the Peers Commission, which solely accounts the cases with explicit rape signs like torn cloth and nudity, the actual number of rapes is not easy to estimate. According to the reports, the rape victims ranged between the ages of 10 and 45, with nine being under 18. The sexual assaults included gang rapes and sexual torture. No U.S. serviceman

4472-727: The Red River Delta and into the adjacent uplands, possibly to escape Chinese encroachment. The oldest layer of loans from Chinese into northern Vietic (which would become the Viet–Muong subbranch) date from this period. The northern Vietic varieties thus became part of the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area , in which languages from genetically unrelated families converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and similar syllable structure. Many languages in this area, including Viet–Muong, underwent

4576-527: The Red River area. The language was non-tonal, but featured glottal stop and voiceless fricative codas. Borrowed vocabulary indicates early contact with speakers of Tai languages in the last millennium BC, which is consistent with genetic evidence from Dong Son culture sites. Extensive contact with Chinese began from the Han dynasty (2nd century BC). At this time, Vietic groups began to expand south from

4680-518: The Republic of Vietnam and Vietnamese Marines conducted Operation Piranha on the peninsula on 7–10 September 1965. The operation resulted in US claims of 178 VC killed and 360 VC and suspected VC had been captured. Allied losses were two Marines and five South Vietnamese killed. An unknown number may have been civilians, due to the declaration of a free-fire zone . The Peninsula later became part of

4784-470: The U.S. military's overall strategy. Task Force Barker (TF Barker), a battalion-sized ad hoc unit of 11th Brigade, was to be deployed for the operation. It was formed in January 1968, composed of three rifle companies of the 11th Brigade, including Charlie Company, led by Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Frank A. Barker. Sơn Mỹ village was included in the area of operations of TF Barker. The area of operations (AO)

4888-448: The U.S. Army arrived at a lower figure of 347 deaths, the official U.S. estimate. The official estimate by the local government remains 504. Initial reports claimed "128 Viet Cong and 22 civilians" had been killed in the village during a "fierce fire fight". Westmoreland congratulated the unit on the "outstanding job". As relayed at the time by Stars and Stripes magazine, "U.S. infantrymen had killed 128 Communists in

4992-795: The Vietnam War . Twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr. , the leader of 1st Platoon in C Company, was convicted. He was found guilty of murdering 22 villagers and originally given a life sentence , but served three-and-a-half years under house arrest after U.S. president Richard Nixon commuted his sentence. Charlie Company , 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade , 23rd Infantry Division , arrived in South Vietnam in December ;1967. Though their first three months in Vietnam passed without any direct contact with People's Army of Vietnam or Viet Cong (VC) forces, by mid-March

5096-459: The assault phase, Operation Russell Beach continued with Marine combined action teams, the 46th Infantry Regiment and the ARVN 6th Regiment operating to cleanse the peninsula of VC and People's Army of Vietnam forces. The population was largely removed from the peninsula during the assault phase and a clear and search operation was followed by the construction of new roads and hamlets. The population

5200-475: The beginning of syllables, which have since disappeared: Most of the unusual correspondences between spelling and modern pronunciation are explained by Middle Vietnamese. Note in particular: De Rhodes's orthography also made use of an apex diacritic, as in o᷄ and u᷄ , to indicate a final labial-velar nasal /ŋ͡m/ , an allophone of /ŋ/ that is peculiar to the Hanoi dialect to the present day. This diacritic

5304-480: The brush. Instead of the expected enemy, the GIs found women, children and old men, many of whom were cooking breakfast over outdoor fires. The villagers were getting ready for a market day and at first did not panic or run away as they were herded into the hamlet's common spaces and homestead yards. Harry Stanley, a machine gunner from Charlie Company, said during the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division inquiry that

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5408-561: The bunker, and asked if the lieutenant would help get them out. According to Thompson, "he [the lieutenant] said the only way to get them out was with a hand grenade". Thompson testified that he then told Brooks to "just hold your men right where they are, and I'll get the kids out." He found 12–16 people in the bunker, coaxed them out and led them to the helicopter, standing with them while they were flown out in two groups. Returning to Mỹ Lai, Thompson and other air crew members noticed several large groups of bodies. Spotting some survivors in

5512-572: The cape was called Cap Batangan in French. A French agricultural review (1935) commented that the land of the peninsula was relatively fertile. The French Navy used Cape Batangan as the starting point for its ships assigned to supply the Paracel islands , sailing straight East to West from the Cape to Pattle Island and 'Boisée' ('Wooded') islands where there were Vietnamese and French settlers, as well as weather observation stations. Since 1963

5616-498: The change of suprasegment instruments. For example, the modern Vietnamese word "trời" (heaven) was read as *plời in Old/Ancient Vietnamese and as blời in Middle Vietnamese. The writing system used for Vietnamese is based closely on the system developed by Alexandre de Rhodes for his 1651 Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum . It reflects the pronunciation of the Vietnamese of Hanoi at that time,

5720-422: The children were alive at first. Then, the children who were old enough to walk got up and Calley began to shoot the children". Other 1st Platoon members testified that many of the deaths of individual Vietnamese men, women and children occurred inside Mỹ Lai during the security sweep. To ensure the hamlets could no longer offer support to the enemy, the livestock was shot as well. When PFC Michael Bernhardt entered

5824-645: The company had suffered 28 casualties involving mines or booby-traps . During the Tet Offensive in January 1968, attacks were carried out in Quảng Ngãi by the VC 48th Local Force Battalion. U.S. military intelligence assumed that the 48th Battalion, having retreated and dispersed, was taking refuge in the village of Sơn Mỹ, in Quảng Ngãi province . A number of specific hamlets within that village – designated Mỹ Lai (1) through Mỹ Lai (6) – were suspected of harboring

5928-466: The daughter languages from distinctions in the initial and final consonants. Vietnamese tones developed as follows: Glottal-ending syllables ended with a glottal stop /ʔ/ , while fricative-ending syllables ended with /s/ or /h/ . Both types of syllables could co-occur with a resonant (e.g. /m/ or /n/ ). At some point, a tone split occurred, as in many other mainland Southeast Asian languages . Essentially, an allophonic distinction developed in

6032-442: The diphthongs [āj] and [āːj] the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = ă + /j/ , ai = a + /j/ . Thus, tay "hand" is [tāj] while tai "ear" is [tāːj] . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = ă + /w/ , ao = a + /w/ . Thus, thau "brass" is [tʰāw] while thao "raw silk" is [tʰāːw] . The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in

6136-421: The ditch and shot dead by soldiers after repeated orders issued by Calley, who was also shooting. PFC Paul Meadlo testified that he expended several M16 rifle magazines. He recollected that women were saying "No VC" and were trying to shield their children. He remembered that he was shooting old men and women, ranging in ages from grandmothers to teenagers, many with babies or small children in their arms, since he

6240-417: The ditch and the pilot asked Calley if they could provide any medical assistance to the wounded civilians in Mỹ Lai; Calley admitted replying that "a hand grenade was the only available means he had for their evacuation". At 11:00 Medina radioed an order to cease fire, and 1st Platoon took a break, during which they ate lunch. Members of 2nd Platoon killed at least 60–70 Vietnamese, as they swept through

6344-989: The ditch, Thompson landed again. A crew member, Specialist 4 Glenn Andreotta , entered the ditch and returned with a bloodied but apparently unharmed four-year-old girl, who was then flown to safety. Upon returning to the LZ Dottie base in his OH-23, Thompson reported to his section leader, Captain Barry Lloyd, that the American infantry were no different from Nazis in their slaughter of innocent civilians: It's mass murder out there. They're rounding them up and herding them in ditches and then just shooting them. Thompson then reported what he had seen to his company commander, Major Frederic W. Watke, using terms such as "murder" and "needless and unnecessary killings". Thompson's statements were confirmed by other helicopter pilots and air crew members. For his actions at Mỹ Lai, Thompson

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6448-405: The ditch; the sergeant replied that he would "help them out of their misery". Thompson, shocked and confused, then spoke with 2LT Calley, who claimed to be "just following orders" . As the helicopter took off, Thompson saw Mitchell firing into the ditch. Thompson and his crew witnessed an unarmed woman being kicked and shot at point-blank range by Medina, who later claimed that he thought she had

6552-492: The enemy and wipe them out for good". In turn, LTC Barker reportedly ordered the 1st Battalion commanders to burn the houses, kill the livestock, destroy food supplies, and destroy and/or poison the wells. On the eve of the attack, at the Charlie Company briefing, Captain Ernest Medina told his men that nearly all the civilian residents of the hamlets in Sơn Mỹ village would have left for the market by 07:00, and that any who remained would most likely be VC or VC sympathizers. He

6656-496: The ground. Medina then gave the cease-fire order to Charlie Company to "cut [the killing] out – knock it off". Since Thompson made an official report of the civilian killings, he was interviewed by Colonel Oran Henderson, the commander of the 11th Infantry Brigade. Concerned, senior American officers canceled similar planned operations by Task Force Barker against other villages (My Lai 5, My Lai 1, etc.) in Quảng Ngãi Province . Despite Thompson's revealing information, Henderson issued

6760-615: The hamlets Mỹ Lai, Cổ Lũy, Mỹ Khê, and Tu Cung. The GIs expected to engage the Vietcong Local Force 48th Battalion, which was one of the Vietcong's most successful units. Although the GIs were not fired upon after landing, they still suspected there were VC guerrillas hiding underground or in the huts. Confirming their suspicions, the gunships engaged several armed enemies in the vicinity of Mỹ Lai, killing four; later, one weapon

6864-401: The head of MACV, also congratulated Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry for "outstanding action", saying that they had "dealt [the] enemy [a] heavy blow". Later, he changed his stance, writing in his memoir that it was "the conscious massacre of defenseless babies, children, mothers, and old men in a kind of diabolical slow-motion nightmare that went on for the better part of a day, with

6968-458: The killings occurred in the southern part of Tu Cung, a sub-hamlet of Xom Lang, which was a home to 700 residents. Xom Lang was erroneously marked on the U.S. military operational maps of Quảng Ngãi Province as Mỹ Lai. A large group of approximately 70–80 villagers was rounded up by 1st Platoon in Xom Lang and led to an irrigation ditch east of the settlement. They were then pushed into

7072-410: The killings started without warning. He first observed a member of 1st Platoon strike a Vietnamese man with a bayonet . Then the same trooper pushed another villager into a well and threw a grenade in the well. Next, he saw fifteen or twenty people, mainly women and children, kneeling around a temple with burning incense . They were praying and crying. They were all killed by shots to the head. Most of

7176-446: The late 19th century, French gradually replaced Literary Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as đầm ('dame', from madame ), ga ('train station', from gare ), sơ mi ('shirt', from chemise ), and búp bê ('doll', from poupée ), resulting in a language that was Austroasiatic but with major Sino-influences and some minor French influences from

7280-427: The main syllable). When a minor syllable occurred, the main syllable's initial consonant was intervocalic and as a result suffered lenition , becoming a voiced fricative. The minor syllables were eventually lost, but not until the tone split had occurred. As a result, words in modern Vietnamese with voiced fricatives occur in all six tones, and the tonal register reflects the voicing of the minor-syllable prefix and not

7384-465: The majority of Vietnamese vocabulary are disyllabic and trisyllabic words. Vietnamese is written using the Vietnamese alphabet ( chữ Quốc ngữ ). The alphabet is based on the Latin script and was officially adopted in the early 20th century during French rule of Vietnam . It uses digraphs and diacritics to mark tones and some phonemes . Vietnamese was historically written using chữ Nôm ,

7488-545: The massacre. On the same day, B Company massacred an additional 60 to 155 people in the nearby hamlet of My Khe 4. The massacre was originally reported as a battle against Viet Cong troops, and was covered up in initial investigations by the U.S. Army. The efforts of veteran Ronald Ridenhour and journalist Seymour Hersh broke the news of the massacre to the American public in November 1969, prompting global outrage and contributing to domestic opposition to U.S. involvement in

7592-408: The medal when the U.S. Army wanted to award it quietly. He demanded it be done publicly and that his crew be honored in the same way. After returning to base at about 11:00, Thompson reported the massacre to his superiors. His allegations of civilian killings quickly reached LTC Barker, the operation's overall commander. Barker radioed his executive officer to find out from Medina what was happening on

7696-599: The minefield to rescue a wounded soldier. North Vietnamese sources (1969) made allegations of American use of gas against civilians during mopping up operations. These were discussed in the French Senate in 1969. During the Easter Offensive of 1972 in late April the VC 48th Battalion was reported to have destroyed 23 villages around the Batangan Peninsula, killing 23 civilians and making

7800-497: The north and /j/ in the south). Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration. Syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch , nh as being phonemes /c/, /ɲ/ contrasting with syllable-final t , c /t/, /k/ and n , ng /n/, /ŋ/ and identifies final ch with

7904-527: The northern half of Mỹ Lai and through Binh Tay, a small sub-hamlet about 400 metres (1,300 ft) north of Mỹ Lai. After the initial sweeps by 1st and 2nd Platoons, 3rd Platoon was dispatched to deal with any "remaining resistance". 3rd Platoon, which stayed in reserve, reportedly rounded up and killed a group of seven to twelve women and children. Since Charlie Company had not met any enemy opposition at Mỹ Lai and did not request back-up, Bravo Company, 4th Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment of TF Barker

8008-403: The people with M79 grenade launchers ... I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Calley testified that he heard the shooting and arrived on the scene. He observed his men firing into a ditch with Vietnamese people inside, then began to take part in the shooting himself, using an M16 from a distance of no more than 5 feet (1.5 m). During the massacre, a helicopter landed on the other side of

8112-405: The plain-voiced stops became voiceless and the allotones became new phonemic tones. The implosive stops were unaffected, and in fact developed tonally as if they were unvoiced. (This behavior is common to all East Asian languages with implosive stops.) As noted above, Proto-Viet–Muong had sesquisyllabic words with an initial minor syllable (in addition to, and independent of, initial clusters in

8216-503: The reddish-pink color used on military maps to denote a more densely populated area, and the carnage was initially referred to as the Pinkville Massacre . On 16–18 March, TF Barker planned to engage and destroy the remnants of the 48th Battalion, allegedly hiding in the Sơn Mỹ village area. Before the engagement, Colonel Oran K. Henderson , the 11th Brigade commander, urged his officers to "go in there aggressively, close with

8320-546: The same except that ơ [əː] is of normal length while â [ə] is short – the same applies to the vowels long a [aː] and short ă [a] . The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u). They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs ) and centering diphthongs, Vietnamese has closing diphthongs and triphthongs . The closing diphthongs and triphthongs consist of

8424-473: The same time, according to the following pattern: ^3 In Middle Vietnamese , the outcome of these sounds was written with a hooked b (ꞗ), representing a /β/ that was still distinct from v (then pronounced /w/ ). See below. ^4 It is unclear what this sound was. According to Ferlus 1992, in the Archaic Vietnamese period (c. 10th century AD, when Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary

8528-542: The split from Muong around the end of the first millennium AD, the following stages of Vietnamese are commonly identified: After expelling the Chinese at the beginning of the 10th century, the Ngô dynasty adopted Classical Chinese as the formal medium of government, scholarship and literature. With the dominance of Chinese came wholesale importation of Chinese vocabulary. The resulting Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary makes up about

8632-508: The subhamlet of Xom Lang, the massacre was underway: I walked up and saw these guys doing strange things ... Setting fire to the hootches and huts and waiting for people to come out and then shooting them ... going into the hootches and shooting them up ... gathering people in groups and shooting them ... As I walked in you could see piles of people all through the village ... all over. They were gathered up into large groups. I saw them shoot an M79 grenade launcher into

8736-505: The syllable-initial ch /c/ . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes /k/ and /ŋ/ that occur after the upper front vowels i /i/ and ê /e/ ; although they also occur after a , but in such cases are believed to have resulted from an earlier e /ɛ/ which diphthongized to ai (cf. ach from aic , anh from aing ). (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch , nh for further details.) Each Vietnamese syllable

8840-524: The time the killings stopped, Charlie Company had suffered one casualty – a soldier who had intentionally shot himself in the foot to avoid participating in the massacre – and just three enemy weapons were confiscated. According to the Peers Commission Investigation, the U.S. government allocated commission for inquiry into the incident, concluded at least 20 Vietnamese women and girls were raped during

8944-579: The tones, whereby the tones in syllables with voiced initials were pronounced differently from those with voiceless initials. (Approximately speaking, the voiced allotones were pronounced with additional breathy voice or creaky voice and with lowered pitch. The quality difference predominates in today's northern varieties, e.g. in Hanoi , while in the southern varieties the pitch difference predominates, as in Ho Chi Minh City .) Subsequent to this,

9048-422: The voicing of the main-syllable stop in Proto-Viet–Muong that produced the fricative. For similar reasons, words beginning with /l/ and /ŋ/ occur in both registers. (Thompson 1976 reconstructed voiceless resonants to account for outcomes where resonants occur with a first-register tone, but this is no longer considered necessary, at least by Ferlus.) Old Vietnamese/Ancient Vietnamese was a Vietic language which

9152-452: The world such as in the United States , Germany and France . Vietnamese has a large number of vowels . Below is a vowel diagram of Vietnamese from Hanoi (including centering diphthongs ): Front and central vowels (i, ê, e, ư, â, ơ, ă, a) are unrounded , whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â [ə] and ă [a] are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, ơ and â are basically pronounced

9256-631: Was allowed to return in April 1969 together with South Vietnamese government institutions VC losses in Operation Russell Beach were 158 killed and 116 suspects detained and 55 individual and six crew-served weapons captured. U.S. losses were 56 killed. In March 1970, a patrol from the 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment walked into a minefield on the Peninsula. By his own account, the battalion commander, Lt Col Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. , flew there in his command helicopter and walked into

9360-457: Was asked whether the order included the killing of women and children. Those present later gave differing accounts of Medina's response. Some, including platoon leaders, testified that the orders, as they understood them, were to kill all VC and North Vietnamese combatants and "suspects" (including women and children, as well as all animals), to burn the village, and pollute the wells. He was quoted as saying, "They're all VC, now go and get them", and

9464-588: Was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross , while his crew members Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn were awarded the Bronze Star . Glenn Andreotta was awarded his medal posthumously, as he was killed in Vietnam on April 8, 1968. As the DFC citation included a fabricated account of rescuing a young girl from Mỹ Lai from "intense crossfire", Thompson threw his medal away. He later received

9568-494: Was borrowed) it was * r̝ , distinct at that time from * r . The following initial clusters occurred, with outcomes indicated: A large number of words were borrowed from Middle Chinese , forming part of the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary . These caused the original introduction of the retroflex sounds /ʂ/ and /ʈ/ (modern s , tr ) into the language. Proto-Viet–Muong did not have tones. Tones developed later in some of

9672-428: Was charged with rape. According to an eyewitness, as reported by Seymour Hersh in his book on the massacre, a woman was raped after her children were killed by the U.S. soldiers. Another Vietnamese villager also noticed soldiers rape a 13-year-old girl. Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr. , a helicopter pilot from Company B (Aero-Scouts), 123rd Aviation Battalion, Americal Division, saw dead and wounded civilians as he

9776-416: Was codenamed Muscatine AO , after Muscatine County, Iowa , the home county of the 23rd Division's commander, Major General Samuel W. Koster . In February 1968, TF Barker had already tried to secure Sơn Mỹ, with limited success. After that, the village area began to be referred to as Pinkville by TF Barker troops. The U.S. Army slang name for the hamlets and sub-hamlets in that area was Pinkville , due to

9880-417: Was convinced at that time that they were all booby-trapped with grenades and poised to attack. On another occasion during the security sweep of My Lai, Meadlo again fired into civilians side by side with Lieutenant Calley. PFC Dennis Konti, a witness for the prosecution, told of one especially gruesome episode during the shooting, "A lot of women had thrown themselves on top of the children to protect them, and

9984-401: Was flying over the village of Sơn Mỹ, providing close-air support for ground forces. The crew made several attempts to radio for help for the wounded. They landed their helicopter by a ditch, which they noted was full of bodies and in which they could discern movement by survivors. Thompson asked a sergeant he encountered there (David Mitchell of 1st Platoon) if he could help get the people out of

10088-428: Was heard to reply to the question "Who is my enemy?", by saying, "Anybody that was running from us, hiding from us, or appeared to be the enemy. If a man was running, shoot him, sometimes even if a woman with a rifle was running, shoot her." At Calley's trial, one defense witness testified that he remembered Medina instructing to destroy everything in the village that was "walking, crawling or growling". Charlie Company

10192-463: Was herded south of Xom Lang and killed on a dirt road. According to U.S. Army photographer Sgt. Ronald Haeberle 's eyewitness account of the massacre, in one instance, There were some South Vietnamese people, maybe fifteen of them, women and children included, walking on a dirt road maybe 100 yards [90 m] away. All of a sudden the GIs just opened up with M16s. Beside the M16 fire, they were shooting at

10296-643: Was noted in the Courts Martial proceedings that some soldiers of Charlie Company did not participate in any killings, it was noted they neither openly protested against them nor filed complaints later to their superiors. William Thomas Allison, a professor of Military History at Georgia Southern University, wrote, "By midmorning, members of Charlie Company had killed hundreds of civilians and raped or assaulted countless women and young girls. They encountered no enemy fire and found no weapons in My Lai itself". By

10400-472: Was retrieved from the site. According to the operational plan, 1st Platoon, led by Second Lieutenant (2LT) William Calley , and 2nd Platoon, led by 2LT Stephen Brooks, entered the hamlet of Tu Cung in line formation at 08:00, while the 3rd Platoon, commanded by 2LT Jeffrey U. Lacross, and Captain Medina's command post remained outside. On approach, both platoons fired at people they saw in the rice fields and in

10504-837: Was separated from Viet–Muong around the 9th century, and evolved into Middle Vietnamese by 16th century. The sources for the reconstruction of Old Vietnamese are Nom texts, such as the 12th-century/1486 Buddhist scripture Phật thuyết Đại báo phụ mẫu ân trọng kinh ("Sūtra explained by the Buddha on the Great Repayment of the Heavy Debt to Parents"), old inscriptions, and a late 13th-century (possibly 1293) Annan Jishi glossary by Chinese diplomat Chen Fu (c. 1259 – 1309). Old Vietnamese used Chinese characters phonetically where each word, monosyllabic in Modern Vietnamese,

10608-601: Was still describing the event as a military victory that had resulted in the deaths of 128 enemy combatants. Six months later, Tom Glen, a 21-year-old soldier of the 11th Light Infantry Brigade, wrote a letter to General Creighton Abrams , the new MACV commander. He described an ongoing and routine brutality against Vietnamese civilians on the part of American forces in Vietnam that he had personally witnessed, and then concluded, Vietnamese language Like many languages in Southeast Asia and East Asia , Vietnamese

10712-426: Was to enter the village of Sơn Mỹ spearheaded by 1st Platoon , engage the enemy, and flush them out. The other two companies from TF Barker were ordered to secure the area and provide support if needed. The area was designated a free fire zone , where American forces were allowed to deploy artillery and air strikes in populated areas, without consideration of risk to civilian or non-combatant lives. Varnado Simpson ,

10816-498: Was transported by air between 08:15 and 08:30 3 km (2 mi) away. It attacked the subhamlet My Hoi of the hamlet known as Cổ Lũy, which was mapped by the Army as Mỹ Khê. During this operation, between 60 and 155 people, including women and children, were killed. Over the remaining day, both companies were involved in the further burning and destruction of dwellings, as well as continued mistreatment of Vietnamese detainees. While it

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