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disciplined them. But shared in what measure? Only months and years of accumulated judgment might tell. Above all, the event weighed on the individual soldiers, most of them back in their peaceful home towns, living with the knowledge of what they did. When Private Meadlo stepped on a land mine shortly after the massacre and it ripped away his foot, he screamed: "God has punished me for what I did in the village." Other men of the company have recurrent nightmares about My Lai. The scene itself is quiet now. All that remains today is a low pile of red-brick rubble, scorched black by fire and surrounded by fields filled with graves.
* Taken by former Army Photographer Ronald Haeberle. Some are published in the current LIFE. Others appear on the following page.
