Nation: MY LAI: AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY

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pursued the matter for a year and talked to a dozen participants in the massacre. He finally found one, Sergeant Bernhardt, who agreed to verify the details if Ridenhour reported the affair to authorities. Discharged last December, Ridenhour asked friends what he should do about the matter, was repeatedly told "to forget about it." But last April he decided to mail his letters. "I thought that what happened in that village was so terrible nobody should get away with it," he explains. "The shocking thing is not that I wrote, but that there weren't other letters."

Now a literature student at Claremont Men's College, where he plays defensive tackle on the campus football team and takes no part in peace demonstrations, Ridenhour insists that he "has no ax to grind" with the Army. But he concedes that he did not get along well in the service. "It's very authoritarian, just not my bag. I'm one of those guys who question orders." He is also handy with a typewriter. He crammed his letter with so many graphic descriptions of the "rather dark and bloody" happenings at My Lai that it could not be ignored.

The Pentagon almost did, however. It was considered just another crank letter and drew little attention for almost a month. What got the Army moving were inquiries from two Congressmen: Mendel Rivers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee—a man the Pentagon always listens to—and Arizona's Morris Udall, who had personally checked out Ridenhour. Rivers' committee demanded an investigation on April 7. It took Army investigators four months to finally place charges against just one man—Lieut. Calley—on Sept. 5. Presidential Security Adviser Henry Kissinger was notified in November—and so, presumably, was Nixon. The fact that Calley was charged with an unspecified number of murders produced only a small Associated Press dispatch on Sept. 8. It took the enterprise of a tiny Washington news service to break the story on a major scale on Nov. 13 (see THE PRESS).

As the implications of the story grew, everyone got very busy. The Army decided that it would indeed hold a public court-martial for Calley. It seems certain that Sergeant Mitchell will face a court-martial on charges of intent to murder some 30 Vietnamese. The biggest mystery so far is why no charges have been placed against Captain Medina, who played an important role in the slaughter by the accounts of a number of his men, though exactly what orders he issued is disputed (see The Legal Dilemmas, page 32). At the same time, the Army has ordered a top-level probe of its own initial investigation, which found nothing amiss at My Lai.

The House Appropriations Committee and the Armed Services Committees of both houses plan hearings. The Saigon government issued a statement that My Lai amounted to "a normal act of war"—the pro forma response of a loyal ally and a government that does not want to add fuel to the considerable anti-Americanism of its population. But two committees of the South Vietnamese Senate have challenged the government and announced a joint investigation of their own.

Other Incidents

As the furor grows, many Americans are seeking comfort in the claim that the massacre at My Lai was an isolated incident, unexplainable, and wholly out of character with U.S.