TRIALS: My Lai: A Question of Orders

It was murder. I wasn't happy about shooting all the people anyway. I didn't agree with all the killing, but we were doing it because we had been told.

With those stark words, Sergeant Charles Hutto told an Army investigator what he had done at My Lai. He followed orders, Hutto said; the orders, by all accounts, had been to kill every living thing in the small village. The defense at Hutto's court-martial last week never refuted the statement. The prosecution was unable to buttress it with eyewitness testimony. But the precise facts concerning Hutto's actions seemed almost academic. Rather...

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