The Nation: The Clamor Over Calley: Who Shares the Guilt?

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officers are bound to feel that they're carrying the terrible burden of the war, that the buck stops with them." The point has been distorted. A London Daily Express cartoon showed an Asian Communist horde charging a lone G.I., who turns to his civilian lawyer and asks: "Is it legally O.K. to shoot?" In Viet Nam, a common G.I. graffito reads: "Before you shoot you must 1) check Charlie's ID card, 2) pull down his pants to make sure he's an adult male, 3) be sure to have ten witnesses to testify at your court-martial."

Many officers in Viet Nam think that the Calley case need not damage the military. They recall the fact that even during extreme stress a good commander can keep his men pretty well under control. First Lieut. Edward Tobin Jr., a West Point graduate, stresses the much-ignored fact that other officers driven to the edge of endurance did not turn into Calleys. "My platoon has been in similarly dramatic situations and I didn't have any trouble holding them in restraint." First Lieut. Ralph Driggers is not quite so sure. "In the field, it seems like it's them or you," he says. "My people are more inclined to shoot first and ask questions later. It's my job to stop them, but things have happened a lot of times." Says Tom Schmitz, a lieutenant in the Americal Division: "Calley deserved it. I am a soldier and I was sent here to fight Communist soldiers, not kill women and children. I have felt the pressure of the My Lai incident since I got here, but I don't feel restricted, and I certainly don't feel it has endangered any of my men." At Long Binh last week, SP/4 Jimmy White, 20, of Columbia, Tenn., just back from a month in combat, told TIME: "Since word about Calley got out, everybody's been watching a lot closer what he shoots. That's one good thing about the incident. Everybody's definitely more careful now."

That the court-martial took place at all earns some credit for the Army (and the U.S.), though once news of the massacre was out, legal action would have been difficult to avoid. To John Herz, professor of political science and international law at the City University of New York, Calley's conviction is "one of the most courageous acts" in the life of the nation. Says Herz: "The case represents one of the few times in modern history that a government has seriously attempted to deal with its own national crimes." France's Le Figaro concurred: "To carry out this trial publicly and in time of war does honor to the American nation. One has not yet heard of a trial of Viet Cong who filled the wells and craters of Hue with the corpses of men, women and children."

To Harvard Psychiatrist Robert Coles, the Calley trial "may be the first time in history that a great, powerful nation has gone through this kind of self-criticism and befuddlement and introspection and turned upon itself in a way. It is remarkable that this can happen in this country in the middle of a war. I really don't feel that many democracies of the West are capable of this kind of self-criticism."

Such self-criticism is excruciating. Roy McDonald, a young Atlanta businessman, observes: "Our boys in Viet Nam have spoiled for me the feeling I've always had that Americans are nicer than other people—the