Episode 678: My Lai Massacre Part III - Murder Dressed Up as Victory

On the left. [laughs]

What the hell is going on?

That's one of the cannibalism started. [screaming] [music playing] [music playing] [music playing]

[music playing] [music playing] [music playing] [music playing]

“Ha ha ha, I mean, I don't know when you're at here.”

My history is throughout the afternoon, too. Are we ready, pal? Henry, what's your new favorite song? Well, the promises that I can't pronounce it?

And I wish the audience could be with me in my car only just because, yes, I have learned I've grown as a performer. Oh, I do understand sort of the incentives that I portrayed in a lot of my characterial kind of presentation. It's characterial.

Characterial. Characterial presentations back in the day. But I do wish you all could meet Hanoi Henry's a Browsky man. Because I have been listening to nothing but 1960s,

night to all of the music that we inspire.

All of that Vietnamese soul and funk. [music playing] Oh, yeah, I'm not even saying that's not even racist. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, I'm not even-- I'm just trying.

My best because I've heard now a couple of the same songs over and over again. I don't know what they mean, but I love them so much. So now I can sort of semi-sing along to some of them. But I do know that what I'm doing is a hate crime.

And I know that if I were-- But I just need genuinely-- I know, it's a love crime. Yeah, it's a love crime.

“That's a great way of putting that crime with us.”

Welcome to Las Buccas and Love Plays in Gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with Love Creminal, Henry's a Browsky. Yes, everything I do is on the edge of legality. But don't worry, I save my Hanoi Henry's

a Browsky for my family. Yes, as do we all. And I'm really going to do it, hardcore. I'm just trying to hit the words. Of course.

Yeah, and they're great words. It's a beautiful language. And a very difficult, incredibly difficult language. It's weird because it seems so simple when you look at it because all of the words are like three or four letters tops.

No, but it's a tonal language. So like one word can be spelled one way and there are five different ways to pronounce it. And all five ways have wildly different meanings. You can make a full little himself making a speech over there.

He did. Yeah, he did. He was like, being done go, being done go. And it meant something like, my kitty is sleeping with a duckling tie. That's my favorite.

That's my favorite. It's been on Belena. He did. It was a very safe thing. And we have Master Languist at Larson.

That's right. That's right. Give me a language. I got it. Indonesian.

Yet the tweet. Oh, that was not me. That's not bad. That's not bad at all. I know how to speak.

I don't want to listen. I know how to act.

“You have to speak with the eyes and the hands.”

If you're in a different country. There you go. Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Hands. Loud. Need. Bathroom. I know what it is.

I don't know. International sign for Sandwich. Yeah. Oh. Oh.

Sometimes it's eating a lady boy's butt hole. Yeah. That's pretty good. Between two months. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Let's get back up. We need like Master. Let's do it.

Now I'm going to go ahead and say something right up top. Uh-oh. While the Meal Eye Master is the entree to this series, I realize now that we're three parts in and they're still not gotten to the Meal Eye Master. It's good to think of these episodes as something like a 10 course meal.

Yeah. Meal Eye is the culmination of everything we're discussing here. And there's a lot of everything to get to before things pop off into the massacre itself during the last episode. Admittedly, this did turn into an overall history of the Vietnam War up until Meal Eye.

You have no idea how much cutting I had to do. But I assure you everything we mentioned here has bearing on what happened in March of 1968. While I understand, this is a lot to take in. I personally think that the road to Meal Eye is just as fascinating as the massacre itself. I'll put it this way, you don't get to Meal Eye in Ken Burns Vietnam until like episode

like six. Yeah. Like, there's a, I just got through episode like four and a half. I'm in the middle of five now and you're just by the time you get, you're, I'm just at the Ted offensive.

Yeah. We're not even there yet. And you're just like, wow, there's a lot left to go. Yeah. No, no.

And that was my least favorite Bob Hope movie. The road to Meal Eye. Yeah. Wow.

And he can't do some amazing Vietnamese access, he's good, he really, you know, they said

there was no reason to dance. But he found me. Yeah. I love it. It always does.

That happy sequence when he's just on top of all the guys with the hats on and dancing on top of the hats. The socks was surprisingly nimble. Yeah. But then they blew his legs off with that bouncing beddy and he'd had to go home and

Oh, Danny K. R.I.P. Oh, T.A.P. I'm sorry. Thank you.

[LAUGHTER]

What's bond effort and a treat?

Good work, Danny. So when we last left the chain of events that would lead to the Meal Eye massacre, the year was 1968. And even the men in government who had pushed for escalating involvement in Vietnam since the early part of the decade, men like Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense.

Robert McNamara was already recognizing in 1968 that the Vietnam War had been a massive mistake, in fact, he recognized it in 1967. Oh, yeah.

“Do you remember when he said that we said last week, where he went like, "Just”

see, no, it's going to be a bit of a problem there." Okay, just wanted to kind of just lay that out there and piece by piece. Yeah, I got it. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

It's disgustingly rich. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

I didn't know if you were to this day, but I was fired or whether I quit.

And everyone was like, "You were fired." In Ken Burns Vietnam, I just got to the point where they said they had put together, they got all the computers together. And they decided to figure out, "Okay, like this is like about this time period. What do we do here?

Where are we at?" No War.

“They took every single quantifiable number.”

They took all the vehicles and armories and soldier numbers and ammo numbers, and they put it in the computer and they started, they let it go on Friday and they came back on Monday and they said there was one car that shot out of it. They looked at it and they said, "You already won the war, 1965." Because there's no, they didn't figure the entire Vietnamese rebellion, all of them by the

Vietnam, the rather people in South Vietnam, and everybody else, they didn't actually include any of that. No, they did not include the will of the North Vietnamese people in their calculations. No, despite what LBJ had been telling the American people, the United States had not actually achieved anything substantial during its occupation of South Vietnam since it had sent

in ground troops in 1965. We did do that. Operation Rolling Thunder, that's LBJ's bombing campaign in the North, that had done nothing to stop the incong troops from taking the Ho Chi Minh Trail to infiltrate the South, although the bombings had killed and estimated 60,000 Vietnamese soldiers and civilians by this point.

This was good news to Americans who would come to see this war totally in terms of body counts. And just so to make clear for everyone, the Viet Cong, there I was talking with Carolina about it and she was a little confused as like, you know, as the Viet Cong and the North or the South, where the Viet Cong is fucking everywhere.

Yes, they're from the North, but they are all over Vietnam, top to bottom. Yeah, they used the Ho Chi Minh Trail to get everywhere. Yes. But while the Americans were seeing this war in terms of people killed, the North Vietnamese were engaged in a struggle of wills and Operation Rolling Thunder's bombing campaign had

failed to break the will of the North Vietnamese people in any way whatsoever. In fact, it had done quite the opposite. The North Vietnamese were now convinced that they had to push out the Americans completely if they had any chance of survival, much less independence. The American military was therefore under extreme and increased pressure to give the American

people some sign that this war was going to end any day now. So at the start of 1968, the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam at the time, General West Morlin, he made an announcement. Speaking in terms of eventual victory, West Morlin said that communist North Vietnamese forces had reached what he called the crossover point.

The American was indeed measuring victory by the amount of vehicles soldiers killed, then surely there would come a point where we had killed enough.

“Basically, West Morlin was treating this war like a video game where you have to defeat”

wave after wave of enemies, and if you survive to the end of the wave, then you've won. According to West Morlin, by the start of 1968, America had indeed survived enough waves. We had therefore made it to the crossover point, in which North Vietnam did not have enough people physically to replace the Viet Cong soldiers we had already killed. Problem was, the crossover point was an imaginary metric that West Morlin had created himself,

and it had no basis in reality. It was all guesswork, and it was extremely optimistic guesswork at that. See at the same time that West Morlin was bragging about the crossover point, the CIA, who had been in Vietnam longer than anyone, they were reporting that the number of Viet Cong

troops in the South had actually increased to 1.3 million.

That's almost everybody. It had doubled since 1965, and this was while General West Morlin was on TV all but declaring victory. Well you see, we're at Marcus, this is where ignorance really shows.

You see, Americans, you see, we just come up with the concepts, and like everybody snaps

to, right? It's just the Viet de Mese who didn't understand that they had crossed the crossover point. That is true. Right, and that to me is a lack of communication between us and them. And I feel like if we've just got explained to them, this is what we're trying to do.

Yeah. Then they would just be like, oh, we'll stop them. Yeah. Or we'll just all die. We'll just get to that crossover, actually, right?

“Could we all just tell us where we should all be and then you just nuke that place?”

That is the problem with the rest of the world. They just don't fucking listen to America, we got a lot of answers. Why, like, a idea of just creating a, this is the more I research this topic, Marcus, the existential sadness of the current state of the world continues to pour over me. It is interesting how we are so consistently the bad guys while pretending we're the good

guys. Yeah. That's the story of America. Well, it's because we got great movies. We got great movies, we got great music and the food's pretty good too.

It foods great. Yeah. And air conditioning rocks. Yeah.

No, our greatest victory has always been culture and the stories like Americans are the best.

We can't say we are the best storytellers in the world because we told you, we told you. Because the stories that we told were believed, and those stories that we were told were believed by nobody harder than ourselves. That's right. Yeah.

The Greeks like to claim they are, but they only got two stories. Yeah. Yeah.

“Now, as to why there was such a build-up of Viet Kong troops in the South, remember”

there's 1.3 million down there, operatives were starting to hear rumors of a massive North Vietnamese operation that was going to be launched around the Vietnamese Lunar New Year at the end of January 1968. This was a holiday known as TET. See, the North Vietnamese had decided that it was time to strike a decisive blow against

American and South Vietnamese forces. TET was traditionally a time of truce, which meant that a lot of Vietnamese people were going to be traveling throughout the country to spend the holiday with friends and family. And this was something that was, this is very much embedded in the Vietnamese culture. Like, when they talked to North Vietnamese soldiers, they said that nobody was ever charged

with desertion because sometimes you'd get a guy who's the Viet Kong down in South Vietnam. He'd get homesick and he just disappear to walk a thousand miles north to see his mother and then he'd come right back and that was accepted because it was just a part of the culture. It's good for morale, probably true. Amazing for morale.

But since there were so many Vietnamese people moving throughout the country around the TET holiday, TET provided cover for the movement of Viet Kong forces to various strategic locations throughout South Vietnam. But don't think I understand again, Marcus, this is where a lot of cultural ignorance is showing.

Don't think I understand, we don't fight on holidays. That is the thing. It's, come on man. Yeah, Americans don't fight on holidays. We have PTO sometimes.

And we're in your country, we're trying to buy by your role. Come on, sir. Come on. Hey. We want to celebrate, too.

I'm gonna take TET off this year. Wow.

“Actually, Eddie, I think you can only take TET off if you can accurately”

sing one Vietnamese song. I already can't get to it, we need to, we need to, we need to, we need to, we need to be a Vietnamese woman in here. Sorry, sorry, it's LPLGMull.com. So at the beginning of 1968, 84,000 Viet Kong troops positioned themselves to attack hundreds

of South Vietnamese cities and American outposts all over the South in preparation for what came to be known as the TET Offensive. Now, the best outcome for the TET Offensive, as far as North Vietnam was concerned, was that a concentrated attack against literally every place that mattered in the South would shock America into leaving a Vietnam all together.

That's the pie in the sky, hope. Yeah. At the very least, Ho Chi Minh hoped that the attack might lead to negotiations that would end Operation Rolling Thunder. In other words, LBJ's deadly and indiscriminate bombing campaign had only made

the North Vietnamese more aggressive.

And this aggression would continue to ping-pong between the two forces until it ultimately

culminated in the Mi Lai massacre, the opening moves of the final act, however, began with TET. Because was it this, like, as the TET Offensive was beginning, it was, like, right before we almost were considering pulling out, right?

For so many of those moments, where we're thinking, like, okay, I think at this point,

we can maybe get things over to the South Vietnam, because that was, us, essentially, the whole point. That was the whole idea is that there was going to become a point where we could hand everything over to the South Vietnamese, the Republic of South Vietnam. Yeah, the thing moving in the right direction, where a little successful, here you go.

Yeah, you do. You're a problem. Now, you do it. Yeah. And we had no idea that the TET Offensive was coming.

They're very good. Yeah, they're quite good. Yeah, they're quite good. But people are going to hand it all over to our deeply corrupt. Oh, yeah.

Incredibly corrupt.

Beyond the point of being able to battle off some of the best fighters to have

ever existed in history. And the South Vietnamese government was also extremely corrupt. And everybody else was corrupt. Every single person involved in the story was completely corrupt. Yes.

Now, we're not going to get into the nitty gritty of the TET Offensive, because parkour military history is not our forte, and this was, indeed, a massive military operation. It temporarily plunged the entirety of South Vietnam into chaos. TET came as a massive surprise to American and South Vietnamese forces. And when the North Vietnamese attack on the night of January 30th, the entire South exploded

into fighting in the streets on every major city in the South. And this happened literally overnight. Additionally, every major American outpost also came under heavy fire.

“Remember that scene in full metal jacket where they hang out in the camp, they're joking”

around, and then all of a sudden the bombs just start falling? Yeah. That's the TET Offensive. Yes. Yeah.

But TET was not just an overnight attack, speaking of full metal jacket. The last act of that movie, where the squad is patrolling the ruins, that's actually a portrayal of the battle of way. The Battle of Way marked the most sustained fighting of the TET Offensive. Both Vietnamese forces occupied the old Imperial Vietnamese capital of Way for 26 days.

And while the Viet Cong did have intense battles with American and South Vietnamese forces throughout that occupation, the North Vietnamese also took the opportunity to engage in war crimes all of their own. They slaughtered nearly 8,000 civilians during their occupation of the city of Way. Anyone who worked for the South Vietnamese government in Way or anybody who helped like any

kind of view that could be even seen as anti-communists. Those people were murdered and buried in mass graves. Sometimes the Viet Cong threw people who were still breathing into the body pits, thereby burying South Vietnamese civilians alive under a mountain of corpses. And this is just part of the TET Offensive.

This is just one city in the entire south. They did it. The TET Offensive was just on no warning whatsoever. No, no warning whatsoever. There were rumors.

People were hearing rumblings. They knew that some attack was coming somewhere, but that's how good the North Vietnamese were. They even the South Vietnamese had no idea that an attack. I mean, yeah.

Imagine that. Imagine here in America if somebody were to be with in Texas, just say Texas, or even Florida, let's just compare it to Florida. Somebody secretly plants enough troops outside of every city, every major, not even every major city.

Like fucking O'Kala has troops outside of it, every outpost, every prison, everything. And nobody knows that those people are there until they fucking attack. Can we do this? Just something that we can work out, I actually really think that we can do this. We can get the woke army together.

We'll get the furry brigade. Sure. Yeah. Can we get the Soviet Union army? Yeah.

Absolutely. You know why. Yeah.

“Because honestly, that's the only way that it works.”

Well, they were to, I was just, you know, in that world in every single one of them.

He's constantly highly complementary of the BC, uh, funnily enough, just always is being

like, unkillable, un-nothing to do during the Ted offensive. One of the worst things about it was the number one, was hearing the guys from the BC being like, Americans are so easy to kill. Yeah. Yeah.

They smoked too much. You could follow their cigarettes everywhere and they fall like they literally fall for every trap. It's a weird cigarette smokes, but it has like a little cherry you're like connected to your head.

He was just easy to do. And they talked about, the one guy was just saying, in battle away, they got to a point where they were specifically, because it's the term "fishing a barrel," where they were, he was like, we were a little fish. Way was the fucking barrel, the BC sucked their fucking shotguns in and just blew this all

the fucking hell. Yeah. And so the worst part of the whole thing, number one, it's one of the worst part, truly one of the worst parts of the whole thing, is just, um, how you did it. You can see them, and also they're right next to you.

Yeah.

“And they fucking used, it's just always like, Tony Allen's, I always remember that name.”

I watched Tony hold his own face in his hands, you know, and you're like, I don't think

I don't think there's any good reason for this war.

“I don't think there's any good reason for this war.”

I don't think there's any good reason for this war. I don't think there's any good reason for this war. Yeah. But they don't sound like that in the WWE two documentaries I watch. No, they sound proud.

Yeah. It was a little easier to kill someone when they, they're a Nazi. It is. Yeah.

Well, ultimately, though, the Ted offensive was a massive gamble for the North that did

not pay off in a military sense. South Vietnamese and American forces retook all the towns and cities that the Vietcong had conquered during the Ted offensive over the coming weeks and months. It was at a high cost, but they took all of them back. Military terms, the goals of the Ted offensive failed, although the Vietcong did come close

to taking the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon, and they very well might have had it not been for the gut feeling of one American commander. So just before the Vietcong launched their attack on the Ted holiday, an American military commander ordered a buildup of troops to protect Saigon based on the rumors that he'd been hearing.

“See, most military leaders believe that the Ted offensive would be focused on the American”

outpost at K-Son. And there was a massive fucking attack on K-Son, but this commander had a feeling that the Ted offensive was going to be far larger than one attack on one position. Now, as it turned out, this commander was entirely correct. The extra troops he called in to protect Saigon were what ultimately saved the capital from

falling to North Vietnamese forces during the Ted offensive in January of 1968.

Of course, it still fell in 1975, but it could have fallen far earlier. That would probably win a bit of good. As you're watching, I feel like I'm watching a horror movie where you're like, "Get out of the house. Don't go in that fucking house.

You fucking moron. Upstairs. Get the fuck out of here. Help the addict. Wind out there.

Get out of there white boy. Get the fuck out of there. Go home. Go to Springfield. And even with the extra troops, Vietnam forces still managed to breach the walls of the

US Embassy in Saigon. That means that technically, the North Vietnamese made it to American soil. Saigon was full of reporters, so the intense battle for the embassy. A battle we barely won, that was broadcast across the world to the massive embarrassment of the United States.

“I'll remember what I said on the first episode about, or maybe it was in Gary Ridgeway,”

what a man does when he gets embarrassed. Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, I got him bring up right here. We're sitting here live from Saigon on the invasion of the VCE.

I have a one for VCE assassin here with me. I'm reporting here from US News. Let me ask the questions on everybody's lips. What do you think of trans people in sports? Trans-Fed if we're sports.

That's going to hurt in questions. Are you going to ask you a question? How do we feel about the rise of Kim Kardashian? I should ask Queen or no Queen? It's amazing to watch reporters in Saigon during the Ted offense because reporters in Vietnam

have this permanent hunched overlook where they're always, their shoulders are almost above

their fucking ears and they're just to constantly tell you, "We are so good. Go ahead. Go ahead. He's just used to bombs going off behind them." Yeah.

One was the worst was they were showing the footage of them talking about how they took over some hill 815 on Thanksgiving Day and they were doing this thought-think piece where the reporter was there. As you can see, fresh, hot turkey, and managed potatoes and they ain't flown in fresh from the American front lines and you just see these soldiers covered in blood just like sitting

looking. Afterwards, all the guys were like, "We're like sitting here like, "Are we on fucking threes company?" Yeah. Look at the fuck is this?

Look at the fuck is this? So we were the new story of the fucking night, we were just like, we're walking away from this hill where we're not gonna ever see it again. Yeah. Also, don't give them all a trip to fam.

You gotta say it. That's how you're gonna ha ha ha. That's where the cocaine comes in my hand. Now while the Ted offense was a failure in military terms, it was a massive success psychologically. So the anti-war movement in America was reaching massive numbers by 1968 and in the months

leading up to Ted, LBJ had launched a huge PR campaign to restore faith in the war by promising the American people that victory was imminent. But after Ted, America had but one of two conclusions to draw. Either LBJ had no fucking clue what was going on Vietnam or he'd been lying to them about how well the war was going this entire time.

It's both. It's both. Yeah. It's absolutely both. There was some Ted talks, but we can't understand a lot of it.

Most of it is explicit.

I have your legs right here.

Put him over there, okay? I'm busy with not having arms.

“Furthermore, pictures from the Ted offensive were showing America that South Vietnam was”

a far more chaotic and brutal place than they'd been led to believe. They'd seen pictures of soldiers, American soldiers, dying in the jungles every day on the evening news, but Ted had brought the war to the streets of Vietnam. The infamous picture of a South Vietnamese police officer shooting a Viet Kong soldier in the head.

The one that captures the bullet at the very moment, it exits the officer's skull, a fucking punk band's love to use it for seven inches. That came from the streets of Saigon, daring Ted. That picture showed America that we had absolutely no control over what was happening in the fucking capital.

Ed, that's not even a count, the rest of the fucking country.

Finally, though, in February, Walter Cronkite, the most respected newsman of his generation,

he went on TV after the Ted offensive and gave the opinion that the Vietnam war was utterly unwinnable. That, therefore, put pressure on America to win the war faster.

“And for America, the only way to win the war was to drive that body count even higher.”

Man, they really explained a lot more in the old days. I was watching that coverage of Walter Cronkite with the maps and the pointer sticks and the explaining of everything, we have no fucking clue what's going on in the neuron right now. It's still unclear as to why we attacked them in the first place, because they bed.

Yeah. They bed. They should mean things. Oh, yeah. It's bed.

You got stuff over there. We got to go, got that stuff. You're right. It is simple. It is very simple now.

That's simple. I'm on your side. I've been working with the government. Now, the pressure to increase body counts certainly had a ripple effect that contributed heavily to the massacre in the U.S., but the Ted offensive had another consequence when

it came to the events of March 16, 1968. The army had received intelligence that the Vietcongs 48th Battalion, one of the Vietcongs deadliest, had suffered heavy losses during Tet. The 48th were supposedly on the run, and wiping out the 48th Vietcong Battalion would provide a much-needed victory for American forces.

Supposedly, the survivors of the 48th had escaped to a mountain range in the Kwong Nai Province after they had their battle in Kwong Nai City. This was located just 200 miles south of the DMZ that split north and south of Vietnam. Now, Kwong Nai Province was densely populated with farmers, and its people lived at the foothills of this mountain range.

These people worked rice patties in farmlands, stretched from the mountains to the sea. Look in gorgeous, beautiful, beautiful place to strafe.

I thought I would always think about that, I thought we went to fucking, we were in Sorrento

and Italy. First thing I thought was, let's just fucking name bomb this old fucking thing. Yeah, I got mad because our lemons were too big. Kwong Nai Province also contained one of the most dreaded areas in all of Vietnam if you were an American soldier.

They called this area Pinkville because the area that marked it on the map was colored red to signify that this area had one of the densest populations of Vietnamese villagers in the whole country. Now, just to be clear, Pinkville was not just one village. It was a slang term for an entire area, and multiple villages and hamlets were contained

within the area that Americans called Pinkville. Look more of a pink tin than a pink fill, sure, to draw a parallel, you could look at the area of northwest Texas where I'm from, which is also made up of a lot of small farming communities, and you could collectively call the entire area, "Hickville," which many people do.

Is it a derogatory way or just fun? Sound nice. Yeah, well, it depends on who's saying it. Yeah, it don't sound good, but yeah, go off. But, no matter what.

Man, man, a proud.

“It's fun when someone with the Texas access is, oh, you're from Hickville, huh?”

Oh, yeah, yes, I am. Yeah, or you're from the Big Empty, like, yep, well, you're in. But this same principle, applied in Vietnam to Pinkville. It's just an area with a lot of small villages contained there and it was remember the guy that was talking about how he said that the color Pink became so bad for him after

Vietnam, that he literally can't see Pink things, that pink things send him into PTSD, like, like, literally can't look at a peeps. Yeah, Easter must be fucking a nightmare, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, my fucking God, he's just an aerosmith. He's bouncing. Fucking be a bullet. Fucking boy, be a fucking boy.

“It's an aerosmith song, the album was nine lives, which is how many of his friends”

were killed in front of him. Oh, we laughed. The people had already seen its fair share of death and destruction by 1968. This province had actually been where the ground war had technically started back in 1965.

It had been the very first target for American Marines during the first operation, Operation

Starlight. And its villagers had suffered through two and a half years of constant patrols from American forces ever since. But just about every American soldier who entered Pinkville's province saw every Vietnamese villager contained therein as the enemy, because dense populations outside of cities were

automatically assumed to be full of hidden Viet Kong soldiers, or Viet Kong sympathizers. Viet Kong sympathizers, of course, built the booby traps that killed American soldiers. And that has to be a thing, right? Like, like, like, you're watching us, this is one of these issues of like, we're being told to the soldiers, anybody who hasn't left any of these areas is an enemy, but essentially

“like, and then if they're there, they have to be conspiring when it's really just a lot”

of people that were like, no, I've just been here and my grandparents were here and their

grandparents were here and now you're here.

Yeah, we just take care of the goats. Yes. The goats got to live here. The goats can't live at your shelter. Yes.

American troops had also been told by 1968 by their superior officers that there was no chance of winning the so-called hearts and minds of the people in Pinkville. And partly, this was because this area had long been declared a permanent free fire zone. And a free fire zone, any soldier could shoot and kill any Viet Amiz person for any reason, regardless of age or gender, and they would not even be reprimanded, much less punished.

Well, yeah, they were supposed to do it. Yeah.

It's a wonder why they didn't like us.

Yeah, it's weird. Right? Yeah.

“So the running joke among soldiers sent to march through this area is that anything that”

was dead and was not white was by default, be it Kong. To be fair, American soldiers were not just going to go into this area to kill villagers. The aforementioned 48th Viet Kong Battalion had returned to Pinkville's province after Tet because that was where they had been based from the beginning. The Tet offensive had merely drawn the 48th Viet Kong Battalion out from their hiding

places in the jungles and the tunnels of this province. The 48th had actually been fighting and killing Americans in hit and run attacks and ambushes ever since American forces had invaded the area two and a half years earlier. So the 48th Battalion had a formidable reputation as accomplished killers. These were guys that American soldiers were fucking terrified of.

Therefore, American soldiers were quite excited when they got intelligence that there was a chance to wipe out the 48th Battalion while the 48th was still regaling from their losses incurred during the offensive. Yeah, like while they were literally in mourning, troops were told these guys were in Pinkville.

And eventually they were told that the 48th Battalion was in a village called me lie. Oh, that's how we got here. And with that, after hours and hours of context, buccockeys, wow. We have the set up for me lie on a global scale. That's the full top down view of the big events that contributed to the massacre.

So let us now move on to what was happening on the ground while we also get to know the actual man who were behind the massacre itself. And unfortunately, you can't just point to one policy or one man and lay all the blame for me lie at their feet. There was an architecture to the mass slaughter of civilians in Vietnam.

So we're going to do our best to explain all the moving pieces one at a time. Now, the me lie massacre came about when the military and psychological consequences of the tetatophensive smashed into an operation called Task Force Barker. See in Vietnam, task forces like Task Force Barker were routinely put together to carry out both small missions and larger operations.

And it be said that once they're out there, and teams from one thing I keep picking up from all, you know, hearing guys talk, is that like, once you got out there, there was like, like, the mic Tyson quote, everybody's got to plan until they get punched in the face. And it seems that once they got out there, it was all these big plans and a lot of these task force and all this kind of stuff were just kind of like slap dash put together.

Very much so. And it's all just kind of, everybody's just kind of making shit up as they go. Uh-huh. Absolutely. Yeah.

Everybody's making shit up as they go along.

There's people that we're going to get into it in a second.

“Most of these people were had no experience.”

They a lot of them were made commanders when they had never commanded before.

And so once people went out into the bush and to the shed, they were like, okay, figured out once you get there. Every Vietnam vet video I see is now because they have the clickbait title, but it's all the same. It's all like, what they didn't tell you before we got to Vietnam.

Yep. And guess what the running lot through line is. Nothing. The task force barker was a product of the army. And task force barker had been formed just before the tent offensive.

Their job was to go out on constant search and destroy missions within the province that contained Pinkville. And their job was to wipe out as many Viet Kong as possible in service of racking up high body counts in impressive kill ratios. And even just being in Pinkville meant that this was going, this was going to end

escalate in a way that was extremely fucking bad. Indeed. Yes.

Because you're inevitably going to kill the people on your side.

Well, you're just with civilly. Well, that's the thing.

“That's what made task force barker different from all these other missions.”

All these other search and destroy missions. Because all other search and destroy missions, you're going out into the jungle to take Hill 842 and all your get, you're just going to, you're going to find Viet Kong. Yes. But that's all you're going to find.

Yes. Barker was focused on wiping out the Viet Kong in an area that was heavily populated by Vietnamese civilians that made it an entirely different game. Because gold now it's just they're now it's like a punish. They're just trying to punish them and try to break it down.

Not just that, but it's also just, you know, it's desperation. Yeah. You know, it's like killing who you're going to kill, yeah, killing who you can get, getting those bodies.

And I think it's important to remind everyone one more time that Pinkville is in the

south. Yes. Yeah. It's close-ish to the, it's only 200 miles from the northern border, but yeah, it's in the south.

It's in the area of the country that is supposedly under our control. Yes. It is not.

“If you're a commander, there were two types of guys.”

You could choose to undertake something like Task Force Barker. You could choose a guy who understood the population and would do everything he could to limit civilian casualties. That's good. Yeah.

That's a good idea. Yeah. Perhaps Luke's psychopath who saw the Vietnamese as animals. Problem was, the commander in charge of choosing who was going to leave this mission, he was himself an absolute psychopath who saw the Vietnamese as animals.

And this commander was absolutely dedicated to the body count metric of victory in Vietnam. The commander's name was Colonel Oran Hinderson, and it was his leadership that led to the massacre at me lie. Now, to give you a bit of a background on how big of a piece of shit Colonel Hinderson really was, he was the man behind a program that was informally known as Operation Body

Snatch. Well, let's hear it out. Thank you. He's just telling me what a judge you're going to buy a cup of beer, you know. I want to just make sure we give it.

Give it. I'm open. Yeah. Well, Hinterson, a personally ordered a program where helicopter pilots could earn three day leave passes for bringing in military aged Vietnamese males from the countryside for

question. You kill five Vc. You get your own personal pan pizza. Now, that is not part of you know, we only got a pepperoni cheese. Yes, of course.

Wait a minute. Now, if you kill 10, we'll give you this case of bullets. Yeah, that's good. Now, you're going to want to hold on to bullets because I don't allow you to get the next ham.

Well, if you're dealing with throwing a two liter bottle of Pepsi, oh, my god, I'm a coke drink. Get out of here, Texas. He's Pepsi, okay. Well, quite quickly, this program turned into a wide-scale human hunt using military helicopters.

Oh, some pilots. That's a bad thing. That's a bad thing. That's a bad thing. Yeah, I was open, but some pilots actually used lassoes to stop fleeing peasants.

Like fucking cowboys. And if the helicopter crew was feeling cruel that day, they would sometimes strip the victim naked after they roped him. They would then move the lasso up to the peasant snack to form a news. Then they would take off and the helicopter again at low speed with the peasant running

behind. After a few minutes, the peasant would inevitably trip with the news around his neck and he would break, said neck. Eventually, Operation Body Snatch was called off because it produced so much cruelty and no intelligence at all.

But helicopter crews continued hunting human civilians with guns and grenades from the air throughout the war. Some of the guys, some of these helicopter crews even had reputations for it. Okay. They've killed hundreds of villagers, like they're really fucking good at it.

They talked about that. You don't have to look at them. Yeah. It's more like a video game.

“Again, it's more metal jackets, that joke is like, you know, I lead him so much.”

Yeah. Yeah. That helicopter being just fucking killing off. And also the racism. Like, you know, we gotta forget, we can't forget that the racist ways they talked about

the Vietnamese in training, the idea that you only say the G word.

You only say the various terms for them, so you never once talk about them as Vietnamese

people. Yeah. Even Vietnam is something we made up. Yes. No, well, yeah.

So the South made it up. Yeah. It's a contraction. I mean, communist traitorous to the Vietnamese nation. Yeah.

But yes, that is also. Yeah. They call themselves the people's liberation army. Now, regarding the task force that was created to clear out Pinkville, Colonel Henderson created it to find and kill the Vietcong amongst civilians.

But he did not give any guidelines or any structure on how GIs should go about piling up the bodies. And just to everyone knows, when I say, G.I., I'm talking about a soldier who is a part of the army.

We could get into why they're called GIs.

But honestly, there's no good answer for it. There's like five different answers for why they're called GIs. And we're at the point where we're like, but why they call GIs? I'm just going to be like, you're paying attention to the wrong parts of the fucking story. Yeah.

And the focus is not about acronyms. Generalized infantry galvanized iron. So many different acronyms. So many different ways. It's just it's a slank term.

GIs a guy in an army. I can't do you. I guess. Shural infection.

“Well, because that's what I got from having to the less.”

Yeah. Well, because Colonel Henderson gave no guidelines, there was no such thing as an innocent civilian in Pinkville as far as the army was concerned. To make matters worse, Colonel Henderson also personally incentivized the killing of civilians in Pinkville, just as he had with the helicopter crews.

Once things got gone, Henderson would radio his officers every day to ask how many vehicles they'd killed. And individuals and units, with the highest body counts, will reward it again with three day leave passes. And your own personal pay and pizza.

Now, what's nice about your own little pizzas, you don't have to share it. That's just not to get it all to yourself. Okay. He's having that beat and he's brought off of it. There we go.

Yeah, there we go. Well, let me tell you why these three day leave passes were so fucking important. Why was such a big deal? It's not just three days off, you know, like think about this, besides the presence of the 48th Battalion in Pinkville, this area was known for its mines and booby traps.

They were fucking everywhere. GIs were also told that the entire area was entirely dominated by the Viet Kong. So when a G.I. went in a Pinkville, they were fucking terrified out of their mind every time. Yeah.

But based on Henderson's incentives, they could leave Pinkville's terror factory for three days if they reported a higher body count than everyone else. Which, of course, turned the whole thing into a competition on top of everything else going on. Well, no one happens when you give Americans a chance to compete.

We win. We try to win. We really go for it. Yeah. We may not win every time.

But we try really fucking hard to win. I know it blow up the stadium, so you can't play the sport again. And then we're going to go do it. We're going to kill the team to try to play us. So before long Pinkville and the surrounding areas, it became places where the murder of

Vietnamese civilians was agonizingly common. Because according to the rules of a free fire zone, anyone that was dead in Vietnamese could be counted as dead Viet Cong. Now, the three-day passes, where they would basically do just, you go to Psychon. Psychon.

Yeah. So Psychon or not. Psychon, way, once it was, you know, put back together again.

Way, you never really recovered, but you visit the, the old mamasans, make it some heroin,

and you get ready to get relaxed, fucking clear your head, do your laundry, I guess. Oh, yeah, that's super huge, because Viet nom loves laundry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

They were super big on it.

“Honestly, one of the worst things I was reading about was about how the M16 was such a bad”

gun. Oh, and M16. That's, that's the worst, that's one of the worst parts of it for American soldiers. They legitimately like a barely work, as soon as they got dirty, they'd stop working. They had to constantly be cleaned, and they, in the Soviet AK-47s, that all of the

Vietnamese had were amazing. Yeah. They had worked no matter what, and they said that one of the worst parts about going on leave was losing a rifle, and that they had to, guys would talk about, like, the defensiveness that they would get over, if they had a good M16, and they would fight over

it, and then they would literally like, if you left, they'd steal your shit, they'd steal your good M16, and then leave you with shitty one.

M16 was them in charge?

Isn't that, like, I think I, that's something I've heard, but I don't know for, that

I don't know. I know you're a guy, so like, when you start to realize that the guy's animal mother came in charge in full metal jacket. Mm. No, the M16 was, that was the standard issue rifle that everyone had.

Yeah, the shitty rifle. So, that's the thing. Well, that was why, that was part of why our, uh, casualties were also so high, because that we had made this, the American military had made this deal to make this new kind of rifle specifically for Vietnam, and it was awful, it was shitty, it was, it, it jammed

“constantly, uh, you, like Henry said, yeah, you have to clean it constantly, and you're”

fucking jungle. Yeah, it's not going to stay clean, so a lot of times, you know, a guy might be walking along, you know, an ambush happens, he goes to fire as gone, he had, may not have fired it in weeks, and he pulls the trigger, nothing fucking happens, and that guy gets fucking head blown off.

Basically, he said, the majority of guys, like, especially in ambushes, the guys that you found dead were the ones whose M16s were jammed.

Yeah, that's why you always see them, like, wrapped in trash bags with rubber bands and stuff.

Yeah, they were extremely sensitive, and this was also, you gotta remember, four scum brain was happening. Yeah, I had four scum, like, before the 10 offense, it's a swamp, that's real, like that whole story about him being like, okay, Monday, no game from the ground, like, that's where they said, like, it was raining for like three months, one day, it's called monsoon season.

Yeah. Now, to run the task force, to clean up Pinkville, Colonel Henderson chose a lieutenant Colonel named Frank Barker.

“The task force, therefore, was known quite simply as task force Barker.”

To accomplish his mission, Barker was given a battalion of 500 men organized into three companies, and he had orders to find and destroy Vietcong soldiers in the province containing Pinkville in January of 1968. Task force Barker, therefore, began just before the tent offensive. The Frank Barker was an administrator who had no command experience at all when he was given

this task force. He'd only gotten the job because he'd been the driver for a well-connected, high-ranking officer in Barker had a reputation for shutting his mouth and following orders. But since Barker had no experience, he was considered a weak commander, a major, serving under Barker, so the Barker had no idea what to do with this task force, or how he wanted

to do it. After therefore, rarely talked to his company commanders about how to carry out operations within this densely populated area. So before long, the commanders and task force Barker, who actually went out on the missions, they were doing whatever the fuck they wanted.

“Now Barker's inexperience was not in any way out of the ordinary in Vietnam.”

Men were given extremely difficult tasks with a little idea of how to actually succeed all the time, because on the surface level, every man had a very simple goal. That simple goal was go out and get confirmed kills of the outcome. That's all you had to do. So, men like Barker sent soldiers into the rice paddies and villages of Pinkville with

the express purpose of making bodies. It was, however, quite obvious to anyone paying attention that the men in task force Barker were simply murdering civilians and calling them Vietcong after the fact. So the vast majority of the deaths and injuries suffered by men in task force Barker, who were from booby traps and mines, but their overall casualties were suspiciously low.

They were suspiciously low, because these men were reporting a high number of Vietcong KIA, a suspiciously high number of Vietcong KIA. In February of 1968, for example, task force Barker reported that they had killed 155 Vietcong. Okay.

But they had only captured six weapons. They had also suffered very low casualties. This quickly became a pattern. High VC kills, but few weapons recovered and low to no casualties. This didn't make any sense, because the VC were well-armed and extremely deadly.

Very violent. Supergressive. So, Barker's men were killing villagers and calling it a day. But as long as Barker kept receiving reports of impressively high kill ratios from the men out in the field who were killing villagers and counting them as VC, then he was still contributing

to the so-called success of the Vietnam War. He could therefore report to his superiors that his operations were well-planned, well-executed,

and ultimately successful.

But in the end, Barker's methods were just murder dressed up as victory. This whole thing is just murder dressed up as victory. Yeah. And these people, they're killing the supposed VC. Are they all men?

Not they're counting. They're killing women and children and counting them as the enemy.

It does not matter if it's a man, if it's a woman, if it's a child, if it is dead, and

not white, it is a VC. That is the order of the day from the top down, especially in Pinkville. Well, because they also had a egalitarian army, so there was women serving in the army literally, as VC, but not the ones in the villages. Did they have to prove that they had actually killed the people that the numbers, like, did

they have to take pictures or something like that? You know what? I actually don't know.

“I think it was kind of an honor system, but it was like an honor system, the honor system”

worked to the point where they had to say, okay, we're going to count that as a body. I've seen a body, and so I'm not lying because if you don't see that, if you don't see anybody, you say, like, I killed 10 VC, then they are now lying, but if you're going by the rules and doing all the mental gymnastics, then you can kill someone, say that's a VC, and you were there for not lying.

The body count thing, even got to the point where there was one battle, where a bunch of dudes, a bunch of VC were killed, and I think, like, Nae palm raids, and, you know,

their compatriots had buried them, and American soldiers actually went and dug up the corpses

so they could count every person. That's how important body count was. And then it also became VC sort of hiding their own bodies in order to fuck with the body counts. Yes, exactly.

Yeah. Now Task Force Barker was made up of three companies of men who would go out into Pinkville to carry out Barker's orders. These companies were made up of about 130 soldiers each, and the company that was eventually sent to the village of Milai was known as Charlie Company.

Now Charlie Company is not to be confused with the slang term Charlie, which some soldiers used to refer to their enemies in Vietnam, you know, Charlie and the trees. We've all heard that joke. Yeah. See, via Kong was often shortened to the initials VC in conversation, and the military

phonetic alphabet code for VC was Victor Charlie.

So Victor Charlie, people got tired of saying Victor Charlie over and over again, so that

was eventually shortened to just Charlie.

“So that's how that is how the Viet Cong came to be known for being a fucking trees.”

Charlie. Yeah, Charlie don't serve. Yeah, Charlie don't serve. Yeah. Now Army companies followed the same naming convention.

So Task Force Barkers, three companies were Alpha Company, Bravo Company, and Charlie Company. And coincidentally, the company that shared a name with the enemy was also the one that would commit the massacre at Milai. I would give it a little beta company.

Yeah, you would have been, yeah, you would have been all beta company would have been so much fun. I was hanging out just fucking God book talk. It was just like, you know, talking to the villagers and like, oh, how do I make a basket? Oh, that's amazing.

I've never heard of. Do you guys have too long here? Is it? Do you use this too long country? No, despite what you might think, the men of Charlie Company were not Battle Harden

Soldiers who had spent years in the shit and had come out the other and more animal than man. The Milai massacre occurred in March of 1968. Charlie Company had arrived in Vietnam in December of 1967 for months earlier. Oh, it was true.

China. Like mid in like mid December. Yes, you can't even be like they were like heavily disgruntled. No, no, no, no, they had been there for months, month and I like there are so so many people went through so many companies went through worship and Charlie Company went

through, but Charlie Company was the one that did it. And that's one of the reasons why we're going through all this is to explain, like, why? Why? What's Charlie Company specifically? Why were they capable of large mass scale murder in such a short amount of time?

What was it about these guys? This company at this point in time.

“That's why all this explanation is here because it's the only way it makes any fucking”

sense. It's just a straight fear, right, at a basic level, it's part of everything. It's all of it. We're now seeing the symptoms of every bit of the flaws that are coming together that are about the this war roll coming together because I actually think they're inexperience

is part of why they did this. Yeah, no, it inexperience fear, all of it. It all comes together and it's also fucking, and it's idiosy and it's cruelty, it's humanity, it's everything. And also there was many new lies leading all.

It was many, me lies happening all over the place. So it's also just kind of a part for the courts for these people. Very much so. So let's get into the stories of the men who made up Charlie Company itself. So we can kind of try to figure out how me lie happened.

Now most of the men in Charlie Company had volunteered for the draft. These were grunts. They were foot soldiers. These were men who understood that they were there to take orders. Not question them.

So I don't understand that. How do you volunteer for the draft? You say, hey, send me like I did. Oh, okay. You say, I, I'm not going to wait for my number to come up, just fucking send me.

Just do it. Do it now.

You're enlisting.

Yeah, my dad volunteered.

Yeah. But it's also important to note out of the 130 men in Charlie Company, 10% of them were well below average intelligence. But I only point this out because this was a direct result of the policies instituted by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and it has a bearing on the Mi-lai massacre.

It definitely does. Do this 10% have been brought into the army as a part of an initiative spearheaded by McNamara called Project 100,000. This program's goal was to widen the pool of possible draftes after it became obvious that the military standards for the draft were too high, at least too high if they

wanted an army that was big enough to overwhelm North Vietnam. Because that was believed that was the overwhelming them with men and military amite.

“That was the only way we were ever going to win.”

So we need more men, more, more, more. And since Project 100,000, let in so many young men who were not smart enough to be effective

soldiers turns out their standards were at just the right place the first time.

Those who joined the military as a result of this program came to be known as McNamara's morons. You know, being drunk and stupid is no way to go through this. And it really is sad what we do to the stupid because you guys just like it's hard because it's just a bunch of stupid guys been like, "Ah, but it'll be fine."

No, you know, I mean, as long as you're not killing a bunch of people, drunk and stupid is a fine way to go through this. It'll do over there. Yeah. You can sit over there in that chair and just work at the parking garage.

Yeah. I do love that joke at the end of Animal House during the epilogue that the guy who headed the dickhead house was killed by his own men and be it now. Yeah. Yeah.

“Because honestly, I see Cali all over that guy.”

Oh, yeah. The impetus behind Project 100,000 was that a lot of young men who could have been used to fight and die in Vietnam, they were either too smart, too crazy or too dumb to be drafted. Those who were too smart were getting deferments by going to college. While those who were too dumb could not pass the armed forces qualification tests.

Those are the guys who couldn't read. So to get a hundred thousand more recruits for the war in Vietnam, McNamara lowered the standards to allow the entry of young men who were previously considered mentally, physically or psychologically underqualified for military service. So you got people, you got guys that, you know, might have like a bomb leg.

Guys that are fucking idiots or guys that are out of their fucking mind. They are now allowed into the, yeah, now allowed into the military and it didn't stop at a hundred thousand, actually 300,000 guys were brought into the military eventually under this program.

“The test is really interesting because the test to find out, if you were dumb enough,”

they just painted a door on the wall and they tried to see if you tried to use it. Yeah, how long have you tried to use it? Yeah, and actually if you knock down the hole in the wall, they're like, great. He's going to be great dead over there. He'll wait for him to die over there.

I always think of like Alice's restaurant where he talks about trying to go to the draft board

and he's just like acted like you just wanted to really kill people really hard and then they wouldn't set them to Vietnam. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it'd be like, I can't wait to kill. Stop the cow. Look at that. Oh, cow. Oh, cow. Oh, this is on your old too crazy. Oh, sorry, man. Not after Project 1 or 1000. Yeah. Well, as far as the mentally underqualified went, many of these guys had IQs between 72 and 91.

Yeah. 30,000 drafties brought under this program had an IQ below 71. That's your forest gumps, right there. Okay. Well, as far as how those who couldn't read got in and there were many recruiters, just took the test for them. Oh, great. Yeah. Now, Project 100,000 was passed off as a part of President Johnson's great society program.

How many names did you come up with the front? Just do the thing. Yeah, we don't want you to be giving it a name. It sounds like a thing that's going to work, Eddie. Yeah. Like, you know, it sounds like a plan. It sounds like no. You know, we're in charge. We don't exactly what's going on. Yeah. You got to give it a name and give it a designation. Everything has to have a reason and everything has to be done for a reason.

I hate what people like name the group chat. Oh, so much time. Well, it was claimed that this project was going to teach under-privileged kids how to read. Well, it also trained them how to kill. Oh, wow. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. It was said that these young men would be learning skills that would be useful in the American labor force. After they served. One of the nicest things that happened right before me lie is that they did a group bed time story.

Like, they got all of these together. That was one of the part of the pacification. Yeah. And they read them all, the three little bears. Right? And then they understood, oh, those, the Goldilocks is a fucking occupier. Yeah, they're like, kill Goldilocks. You go to locks in the fucking head, right? I mean, I want to just let's fucking disembowel Goldilocks, right? And then that's kind of what the whole thing's sour.

But besides the danger, these guys posted themselves, McNamara's morons were also a danger to others. No way. I feel like Richard Ramirez's cousin is like one of these. Yeah, fucking crazy. From what standard soldier said,

you could always spot when a McNamara's morons, because those are the guys who were bumbling across the country side,

making a lot of noise talking very loud about dumb bullshit. Why get home? I'm going to get me a golden retriever.

“I'm going to get me a Mustang. It's going to have a reverse pop. It's going to be nice, man. I remember a buck chewing gum.”

Oh, I'm going to see when I get home. I'm going to get a dot cent. Nice. Yeah. Then what I'm going to do is I'm enjoying the local farmers' market and make vagina-cented candles. Yeah, I'm thinking about this thing. Yeah, we won't go round. We're covered in this doop. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about making a store called this. Oh, yeah, right. Oh, wait. What's going to do? Yeah, no, these are the guys. There's like, "Hey, what do you think going happen if I lift up this basket?" Yeah. You got a lot. You've got a lot.

They're right over there. These guys fired too much ammunition. They couldn't understand orders.

And as a result, well over 5,000 men brought in through this program were killed, 1500 of which were killed by triggering mines or booby traps. Another 20,000 were wounded. But even if these guys did make it home, most were not welcome back as heroes. Because they were idiots who made bad decisions or they were fucking out of their mind and couldn't make good decisions, a lot of these guys was discharged other than honorably. And being dishonorably

discharged removed their financial benefits and limited their access to veteran services. That was why we had the homeless veteran epidemic. We had led to the homeless to the veteran suicide epidemic. I mean, that was just part of it. And that was just part of it. And that was just a small part of that entire fucking milieu that you're talking about there. And in fact, there actually was an investigation into this. Like RFK was investigating this because he was like,

this is really fucked up. Like we sent these, we sent guys who were not meant to be in the military to the front lines specifically to die. And then we punished them when they came home. And when we punished them when they came home, but that investigation died when RFK was killed in 1968. The same year as me lying. Well, I'm just glad you waiters. I'll tell you what,

“I'm just glad it's unlived. Oh, yeah. But out of him, where would be my shit would be so messy?”

RFK, let me out. RFK Jr. Excuse me. Let me ask you. Yeah. Yeah. How's your, how's your fecal matter these days? Smooth, isn't it? Totally one of an all nicest things about having a smooth and child-quiet kind of, and I make soft circles. And I mean, it's what keeps Cheryl, I can apply. I don't think that kind of stuff. What did he fucking go? Yeah. Man, he believed we'll

cause he still believes to this day, that's her answer and didn't kill his father. Yeah. You might be right about that one. We'll get that. Well, I'm still arguing on that one of those story. No, I actually had written like an entire thing about how insane of your 1968 was. And then me lie was only a part of it. Yeah. Uh, but yeah, just needless to say, like 1968 was the most insane year in America's existence.

“We almost ate ourselves that year. I think I brought out of that mess.”

Yep. Thank god things are calm. Well, actually, they're far calmer over the war. Yeah. I mean, that was, that was when, you know, we were having riots that were lasting for an entire week. And they sent a military into Detroit to shut them down. It was dozens of people were dying. Like at the end of the riots after MLK assassination, 42 people died in those fucking riots. Yeah. 42. Yeah. We don't get angry enough anymore. Yeah.

Now, it bears repeating that 10% of the company that was responsible for me lie at Charlie Company. I was made up of McNamara so called morons. And that includes the officers in Charlie Company. See, it wasn't just the standards for mental acuity that were lowered as a result of McNamara's project 100,000. Men who had previously been rejected from the military for physical problems were also allowed in. And out of everyone sent to Vietnam as a result of project 100,000,

none were more consequential than the man who would become the face of the Me lie massacre. Lieutenant William Callie Jr. Now, to put Callie straight in your head as far as competency

and respect goes, Lieutenant Callie was basically private pile from full metal jacket. If pile was an

officer, Callie also was far smaller than Vincent de Nafrio. Callie was just five foot three and just

enemy. Why up this size? They might think I'm one of them. Yeah. Well, probably he was interested you say private pile because like by the end of boot camp, he was doing a really good job. And if I go fucking crazy, he probably would have become an officer. He might have. Well, yeah.

I never thought of how good private pile could have been. He could have been, yeah, he might have been an

NCO. Yeah, maybe. Now, William Callie had been born and raised in Miami to a perfectly normal set of parents who had raised him in a perfectly normal 1950 suburban environment, which made William Callie almost aggressively average. His reddish hair caused people to call him Resty. And while he was mischievous, he had no criminal record nor any history of violence. Really, what defined William Callie was that he was a chronic buck up throughout his entire life. Callie was also extremely

entitled because when he funked out of Palm Beach, junior college in 1963, would you actually have to try to do? Yeah, I have no idea. How long count of Palm Beach, junior college? Yeah. I don't

“remember one book I wrote. You at least got like an A, A. You mean like you just quit school? Yeah,”

I didn't get an A, but that's fine. Well, after he, after that, after that happened with Callie,

he became emotionally cold toward everyone around him. He blamed the world for flunking out of Palm Beach, junior college. He had to stay at speed. No, but those, how hard it was to be a junior college. They make me take a class on beach balls. I didn't identify the beach balls and it was hard. I didn't know it had stripes. You also began chain smoking four packs a day. That got him an ulcer by the age of 19. That's cool. Yeah, it's cool. A bereft of direction, Callie tried joining the army in

1964, but because he had hearing problems, he was rejected from service. He worked on a number of low-skilled jobs instead. He worked as a bellhop, a dishwasher. He would have been a great bellhop.

Yeah, well he, he switched from job to job. Finally, he was made a switch man for a railroad

in Fort Lauderdale. I love that any job that could be done by a lever. Yes, it's done by a whole human. He absolutely could have done it. You got to know when to fucking pull the lever. It's when the trains coming Marcus. Yeah. Callie soon lost the switch man job. Oh God, I can't believe I didn't know. You lost that job in his first massively public fuck up. He was arrested. He was criminally negligent. He was arrested for allowing a freight train to block rush hour traffic

“which brought the entire city of Fort Lauderdale to a standstill. What to do with this train?”

Oh no, what do we do about the train? It's good because people for a lot of they're already famously doing nothing. Yeah, exactly. They're nothing. They're nothing. They're nothing. They're just beach and stand in the wrong position and get out. Oh great. The Cowley's fuck up made the papers. Yes. So Cowley left Florida for the West Coast and what I assume was a cloud of shame. You want to have Cowley to kick around anymore? A Cowley's friends and family had assumed that he had actually

died after leaving Florida. It was a car at a call. It's probably dead. I don't fucking care. It tells you a lot about Cowley. His relations ships to other people but specifically how other people think of him. It's like where's the, was that William Cowley your son? What? I haven't heard from

“three years. I think he's dead. It's like my only care. Oh yeah, my son. He's been around for like”

many Christmas his right? I imagine he walked in the traffic. Yeah. Traffic one avoid him like that. Instead, William Cowley was working a job taking photos for an insurance company in San Francisco. But in 1966, project 100,000 made the army a possible career for William Cowley once more. Oh, good. He comes drops that low with the IQ. But now I can go die if you know. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He made it so worse. People can get in there. I can't wait to die

over there. I heard that if you die in Vietnam when they bury you. It's free. Oh, that's nice. David, it's me. For Cali, it wasn't IQ. For Cali, the reason why everything else. No, it was hearing. That was specific. That was the only reason why Cali didn't get in because his hearing wasn't good enough to meet army standards at the time. I just feel like that's like one of those things that could very much stay in. You know what you mean? I understand. I actually kind of understand

lowering the IQ for just killing everybody. But the idea if they are, then taking away the hearing and all the other kind of things that feel like he could hear you just didn't have great hearing.

go feels like, uh, that'd be important. Yeah. Oh, yeah, you're hearing good good souls. Hearing does seem pretty important when you're, uh, yeah, out in the tellings of the room. You're going to

“get five senses. Yeah. And I feel like if you lose 20% of your senses, you should be in war.”

Maybe, maybe not. I just gift you get. Yeah. They're not being able to hear very well. Sure enough. Yeah. My dad got out for flat feet. Yep. And now look at it. And then he died. He fired his feet. Yeah, they're even flatter. Yeah. So after receiving a letter that telling him that he was indeed eligible to return to the army,

Callie started basic training as soon as possible. But while Callie had never held a

position of authority, nor shown any leadership qualities prior to enlistment, his demeanor changed drastically during basic training. He took to it after doing eight weeks of boot camp Fort Bliss in Texas. He was accepted into officer candidate school. But only because the army had an urgent need for trained officers in Vietnam just as they had had an urgent need for grunts. I don't know if you're detecting a pattern here. Yes. But it's basically America had with the

Vietnam had bitten off far more that it can chew. Very much so. And we did not have the people to put into positions of competence. And we had a lot of people that were incompetent in

“places of power. Yeah, if you have to force your citizens to go to war, and then you have to threaten”

them with going to prison. If they don't do that, then that's probably not going to lead to the best soldiers. I don't think so. Yeah, it's really not going to lead to the best soldiers. But it's but even then like this is going like beyond that. Because there were a lot of guys in World War II that you know, were drafted and did like a fantastic job, you know, thought, you know, gownally. But with this is like we have this strategy in Vietnam of like overwhelming the enemy.

And we need a lot of guys to do it far more than are willing to go. Or not even far more than are willing to go far more than are competent than what we need. Like we need a lot of competent guys for this strategy. And we don't have them. So instead we're putting guys like William Cali in those places where competent men should be. And people are a lot of people are going to die really horrible deaths as a result. Well, the reason why that they're putting people like Cali in these

positions is because the Citadel and West Point, that was usually those schools, that's usually where the Army went for commissioned officers. Guys who were trained to be officers before, they even get to the battlefield. The smart loyal guys. Yes, but those places were unable to fulfill the growing demand for CEOs in Vietnam. That's commissioned officers. Because we were also churning through. They were getting killed a lot because Vietnamese snipers really loved shooting

guys with stripes on their sleeves and fucking hands down. Get your hand down. You know, I have

a salute to me when we're sitting here. You never salute to me. It could look better than

fucking shooting. They got to him. There you go. Before the more the ROTC programs on college campuses that had previously been a steady source of commissioned officers, those had all but run dry because of the growing antiwar movement amongst the youth, wasn't cool to be an ROTC anymore. No, so since the Army immediately needed more commissioned officers, guys like William Cali who otherwise wouldn't have even been considered as a recruit at the private level.

Guys like Cali were now eligible and wanted for officer training. So after Cali was put into an accelerated program for infantry, he certainly learned how to kill, but he was having a hard time

“mastering the most important part of officer training. Namely, Cali had no idea how to convince”

his infantrymen how to follow his orders. Put your pet pin you step. Come on. Come on. Let's go. Good scope. I know it's hot. I know it's hot. I'm hot too. You don't think I'm not hot. That was easy. Everyone would do it. Everyone would love to kill the Viet Kong. That would love the kill, but they don't have they won't go. All right. It was one of the Cali's commanding officers put it. Cali had neither the command presence nor the command voice to get grunts to

follow his orders. Cali has to be kill them. Cali killed Cali and that hell go over that hell. No risk. Yeah, no risk. And just so we're clear here, this had absolutely nothing to do with William Cali being five foot three. I grew up with his dude named John Mark. He was about the same hideous Cali. He joined the Marines in the year 2000 right after high school. And he ended up

coming to fucking drill sergeant after fighting in some of the deadliest battles in the second

Iraq war. He was also the one who accidentally injured me during football practice junior year by pulling up and reaching down and he felt reaching out my fucking shoulder pads. He snapped my leg with just one hand. Cool. He tough fucking guy. I think he was about five four or five five.

the shoulder pads. He couldn't even get in. I can't get to the water. I can't get to the little

cops. You know what it is to is that the idea of like I find that guys that are super tiny often go the extra step can be. It's stuff like this. Like a lot of times like I'd sadly on any other arena of war. Unlike other ones being small, it's great for Vietnam.

“Oh, it's the only way you survive in Vietnam. Yeah, ox gets shot in the fucking head.”

Yeah, I shot heads survived. I watched house the very bad horror movie that has a whole Vietnam through lying in it. And one of the best is having what's his name from night court bull. Yeah, bull for night court plays like the crazy like I'm crawling the G words. And as he gets in there, it's like, but he's too tall. Yeah, he would have been really easy to shoot. Yeah, yeah, he would have been dead immediately. Loved or shot fucking bull if I was in the Vs. He knows what to take a couple though.

Oh, yeah. I heard Cali's favorite catchphrase was "Is anyone else hot?" Excuse me. Is there something we could do about the box? Do you have any citrinalic handle? Yeah, I'm a serialic handle. Freight! Freight! Yeah, I think I brought my candles. Yep, he smuggled them all the way. He loves his candles, dip-tique.

I love my dip-tique. After Cali graduated from Officer Canada at school, raked 120 out of a class of 156. He was confident that he had learned the essentials of command, even though he absolutely had not. Then in September of 1967, just six months before me lie.

Cali was assigned to Charlie Company as a second lieutenant where he was going to be expected

to command a platoon of around 30 men. Cali was then sent to Hawaii in preparation for his first deployment into Vietnam in December of 1968. And it was in Hawaii that Cali met his commanding officer, the guy who ran Charlie Company. That was Captain Ernest Medina, but Ernest Medina was known to his men as Mad Dog Medina. Mad Dog Medina had earned his nickname because he was rapidly aggressive towards communist. And this was even when he was fighting mock battles during training.

Medina could not wait to get to Vietnam to kill as many via Kong as he could. And he would indeed prove himself to be an utter psychopath once he got out into the field. Medina was 33 years old by the time of the Mi Lai massacre, but he'd actually lied his way into the National Guard at the age of 16. He'd joined the army in 1956 after a couple years in the National Guard. And he'd served eight years as mostly an instructor by the time he was promoted to Captain and sent to Vietnam.

Now, it was said that Medina had a tremendous grip on his menus, very charismatic. But while Lieutenant Cali had respect for Mad Dog Medina, and thought of him as a real leader, Medina absolutely despised Lieutenant Cali. Medina routinely referred to Cali as Lieutenant Chetet, and he did so in front of the men that Cali was supposed to be commanding himself. Could I give you one, no, I just would say Lieutenant Medina said, I do think you call me

like Lieutenant Sally. I would give you just a pitch to terms of because Lieutenant Chetet doesn't even like rhyme with my name. How about fuckface? I'll go away.

“I'll leave you alone, eat lunch. So what fuck him? So what fuck him in the air?”

Why don't we just, let's just make love to me. I'll take a hug. So now we've got two men, two men that were commanders that were very much in responsible for some of the horrible shit that happened during my life. Captain Ernest Medina and Lieutenant William Cali. And once Mad Dog Medina, Lieutenant Cali and the rest of Charlie Company got to Vietnam in December of 1967, Cali immediately proved himself to be a

woefully inept officer. Although they were not immediately assigned to Task Force Barker

upon their arrival in country. At first, they're just being sent out on simple search and

destroy mission. So they're not yet a part of the larger operation in Pinkville just yet. Yeah. They're just out collected tennis balls. But Cali, he got to Vietnam. He didn't know how to read a map. He didn't know how to use a compass. These are both fairly important aspects when it comes to the whole search function

“of a search and destroy mission. Excuse me, is that information Kiosk?”

Yeah. Oh, what do I do? I know that does it more scroll on shells on the north?

Yeah. So which way do we go? Oh, I can't go south. I don't have a shovel.

“Besides his inability to read a map, Cali was also forgetful. When Charlie Company went out”

into the Vietnamese countryside, for the first time ever, Cali forgot to bring the hand grenades.

What's in life for getting me? Oh, well, they're hand grenades. Oh, the mumbling corn. So the entire mission had to be delayed until Cali could run back to the ammo center to get what you supposed to bring in the first place. So what's got to go back and get a shitload of dying? I volunteer. I volunteer. Once they were out in the countryside, Cali also proved himself to be a bad decision maker. And he was also far too jumpy.

When they rested for the night, Cali set up his platoon in the middle of a corn field without cover.

“And when he heard rustling in the corn stalks, he freaked out and fired a bunch of yellow flares”

into the air, which only drew the enemy's attention directly to his platoon's location. I saw mouse. That's a mouse out here. Luckily, there were no vehicles around that night, but Medina still laid into Cali. He called Cali a fucking nitwip and said, quote,

"You're without a doubt the most stupid second lieutenant on the face of the earth." I'm sure

there was a little rudder than that. I was trying to do a tone-lox time. Yeah, you're the stupidest lieutenant around. Yeah, I'd say that. I just imagine everyone like coach Taylor and Friday night lies like, "Why do you do it? Why do you do it?! I was scared! I had a dream that I fell off a curve and I, my leg twitched!" Well, Charlie Company was divided into four platoons of about 30 men each. And as I said, Cali was in charge of one of those platoons. His men, however, had just

about as much respect for Cali as Medina did. Cali's men saw him as one of those guys who was

always trying to be a big man, like a kid trying to play at war. But since the men did not

respect Cali, he was the butt of many a joke. For example, there was a popular detective show on TV at the time called Surfside Six. So, Cali's platoon, joked that Cali was Surfside five and a half. I guess referred to a size. It's even being generous. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're looking at his driver's side, this photo, you can see his feet. That's a good one. That's really good, yeah. Now, if Cali had not entered Vietnam as a commissioned officer, he would have been just

another little guy who was trying to be a big boy. Someone who everyone could mock and ignore. Let's be. That's my job. But Cali had 30 men under his command. And those men were expected to follow Cali's orders. Now, soldiers often put up resistance when it came to Cali's orders, but all Cali had to do to get those men to fall in line was say quote, I'm the boss. I'm the boss. I'm not you. Me, number one. Oh, Cali. The tension head. Yeah, I'm taking it. I'm taking the tension head. I'm owning it. But before

long, Cali had to say, I'm the boss so often that it more or less became his catchphrase. You're constantly have to do that. You're not really the boss. No. No. Also, anyone with a catchphrase does not belong in Vietnam. No. No, no. No, no. Again, Mr. Kong Tane. You don't like that? That's a week. That's a funny tiger. I barely know her. I'm fucking good. This guy damn catchphrase is getting boys killed left and right. I can't even get them to hold for this. It's super came clear that Cali was

a coward in every way because it became very clear that Cali was particularly terrified of Vietnamese children. Yeah, I get it. I get it. Yeah. But as it went in Vietnam, those whom you feared

“were those that you hated. And as one vet put it, I think of what the hell was his name. It was the”

guy in the Ken Burns thing. The guy in the Ken Burns thing scared her. God. The more I was filled with hatred. Yeah, and he said that his hatred for them was pure. Yeah, my hate was pure. Yeah, I was pure. Oh, yeah, I watched it this morning. Yeah. My hate was pure. Yeah. He's first

guys. Yeah. No, I was fucking. But there were however men and Charlie Company who saw the Vietnamese

“kids as kids none the left. Of course, at least when they first arrived. A lot of G.I.s gave out”

gum cookies and candy to these kids. They just did, they'd run up to the soldiers and the soldiers would be nice. Stop doing that. They leave it everywhere. Stop doing it. They leave the rappers and they leave the gum everywhere. So you're going to get a call. They don't cover the mouth when they call. They gross. But Charlie on it. But Kelly soon put a stop to any sort of

friendliness towards the kids. One day when a private first class was being nice to some Vietnamese

kids while Kelly's platoon was guarding a bridge. Kelly bald out the private and threatened to take his stripes. The private, however, just laughed at Kelly because he thought it was ridiculous that an officer would be so afraid of children. Kelly complained about this G.I.s in subordination to Captain Mad Dog Medina. Mad Dog also laughed at and mocked Kelly. But Medina was mocking Kelly mostly

“for failing to control his men. So, Kelly took a different tack when it came to dealing with the”

kids. The next time one of his soldiers interacted with the Vietnamese child, Kelly told him that someday one of those little sons of bitches is going to grenade you. And the more Kelly said this, the more likely it seemed to all of the men in Charlie company that something like that might happen and that goes from might happen to could happen to will happen. Yeah, because they're all terrified. Yeah, I see that. I also see him targeting the children because it's easier and that it feels like

somebody like I genuinely just believe because he's so immature and he was so bad at what he did and he was so be was such a bad person that I genuinely believe it's like, uh, I can bully the kids. Yeah, because a lot of afraid is the kids as much as I'm afraid of the adults. Yeah, it's easy for the kids to get grenades when you forget them all like that's the thing. And then kids, there's a little super tip. Kids love grenades. I mean, basically, my grandfather let me hold

one. Actually, I did have a grenade when I was a kid, uh, by a body, I bought like a family friend bought it for me at an army surplus store and family friend. It was, uh, my most cherished possession. I carried that grenade with me everywhere. Dude, it was a real grenade. It had already had all the checking out. It had taken out. Yeah, the hole in the bottom. I love that. Yeah, I love my grenade so much. Seriously, if you give a grenade, most of the time he's not even going to throw away.

He's going to keep it. Yeah. So honestly, the safest people will lies on it. Give it a tail.

“They keep it as pets. They're not even really trying. That's what kids. It's okay for them.”

Never grenades. Oh, yeah, the water balloons that looked like grenades.

Cool. The buzzers are pissed off. Now, since Cali was unable to control his platoon, morale plummeted and the low morale and Cali's platoon began to spread to the rest of Charlie Company. One G.I. said that around this time, they could sense that something was wrong. They could feel it. He said they could smell it. Something smells wrong. It was no sense of community in Charlie Company. No sense of discipline. No sense of responsibility.

No sense of pride. And the stress of low morale was only added to the already psychologically and physically demanding situation that these troops had been thrown into. The thing was, all this shit was going down before Charlie Company or Lieutenant Cali or Captain Maddug Medina, all this was what was going through their heads and what was happening to them before they saw a one fucking Vietcong soldier. And this is like one of those big cruxes

in this story. It's because of the building up tension of wanting to have some kind of traditional one versus one contact. A battle like a daddy used to talk about. Yeah, your daddy, your daddy, you know, but he fought in the battle of the bulge and he's got all these stories.

These amazing stuff. The Germans are there. We are here at the night. We hear them singing.

We sing back at them and then we kill each other in the morning again. So then we take a break for lunch. You know, we have Easter. No, these guys are just wandering around the country. And since arriving in Vietnam in December 1967, Charlie Company had conducted search and destroy missions without making any enemy contact at all. But that would certainly change in January of 1968. When Callie Medina in the rest of Charlie Company were assigned to task force

Barker. Charlie Company was moved to the province that contained Pinkville, which, as I said, was a permanent free fire zone. And then at the end of January 1968, the Tet offensive came, which only added to the pressure that had been put on task force Barker to kill more Vietcong so General West Morlin could report good news to Lyndon Baines Johnson.

mission since it's beginning, the focus was starting to narrow more and more on the villages within Pinkville. And that included Mealai. The captain Medina said that he had received intel that Pinkville had been under the control of Communists for decades. So Medina told his men that if they shot a villager in the Pinkville area and found ID indicating that the person wasn't Vietcong, it was perfectly acceptable

to plant a grenade on them after the fact and make them Vietcong. And these guys say, "Oh, what on the be cops, right?" But while Charlie Company had only been in-country for about

“a month by the time they were sent to Pinkville, it's important to understand that these young men”

were walking into an absolutely hellish environment where cruelty and barbarism was the normed. I don't think that I really want the audience to understand that they were literally walking into hell itself. This was like the den of every single crime against humanity that could happen across all sides. There is no right now, they're about to walk into an area that no one will ever see in a war fair zone ever again in America. Not us. Maybe. Maybe. I'm going to go ahead and say

never say never. I'm sorry. I'm definitely going to say never say never. I did get several messages

from people talking about it. Now they teach Mealai. That is like a center piece that they teach people in office or school and all this kind of stuff. They put it forward saying like, yeah, basically being like this, this is an example of a thing that can't happen again. Yeah, well,

“I mean, which is so far really worked. Yeah. But when these guys walk in, like Charlie Company”

walked in to Pinkville and one soldier remembered seeing a troop carrier drive by and hanging off the troop carriers antenna. He estimated about 20 human ears. And that's first thing he sees. Why was it with the ears? They're collectibles. They were tabs. They were easy to cut off. Yeah, they're collectibles. And it was a part of the thing that we're looking for a proof of bodies. Proof of bodies. Yeah. So when they would do that, that was a part of what it was. And then they

got into be honest. It's just guys going fucking literally going jungle. Like, they're really just becoming at the most because they have to motivate themselves, unfortunately. You're fucked out there. You're fucked. Now we're past the point of politics. Now you're just one guy in the jungle. You're got to go and fight. If you don't kill somebody, you're probably going to die. And so they have to kind of come up with this fucking validation system.

Fuck politics. They're beyond civilization at that point. Yeah. I mean, like they get there treating Vietnamese civilians with number brutality. That was a well-established doctrine in Pinkville by the time Charlie Company showed up. It wasn't just accepted. It was expected of them. Captain Medina, of course, doubled down on this idea. He had convinced Charlie Company that most of the people on this area were via Kong. And since Medina led the entire company,

he set the tone for all the officers and the grunts below him. That included Lieutenant Callie.

So when Medina or one of his officers entered a village in Pinkville, they would grab the first

Vietnamese man they found and immediately accuse him of being via Kong by beating him for information. If the only male in the village was a child or an old man, that didn't matter. They were still beaten and treated as if they were via Kong. Once Medina surprised an old man by jumping out from behind a rock and grabbing an old man in a bare hug. The old man already scared out of his mind, shit himself. Then in there, Medina just laughed. Then pulled out his survival knife and cut a

gash behind the old man's ear to intimidate him even further. That's basically where it started. You know, all my years of comedy. I know that's not funny. You're right. You're right.

I would say, yeah, every my first thought was like, hmm, I don't think he understand his

joke structure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's just that. It's startling an old man and an old man shit in himself. It's really not funny. You know what's fun? No matter what, really. You know what's funny is that a house, it's just a place for stuff. Yeah. And then when you go

“on vacation, you just take a small or version of yourself. How many times can you say stop?”

Stop. Stop. And then when you go on vacation within your vacation, you've got to take a name and small or a version of your stuff. Yeah. It's told George Carlin that while you kids out there. You know it's brand new. He loved me at them. Oh, he was great. Despite being told that there was a VC behind every tree in Bush,

any action besides the action they created for themselves by beating up old men and children.

“But day by day, Charlie company's actions began escalating in the tone set by Captain Medina was”

catching on. After Charlie company captured an old man in February, they brought this old man to Lieutenant Cali. Cali discovered through an interpreter that this old man was just a farmer. But Cali decided to treat this old man as if he was VC. Cali had one of his men punched the old man in the stomach, then Cali ordered that GI to throw the old man down a well. Now the old man survived the fall, but when he tried climbing on again, Cali ordered one of his men to smash the

old man's fingers. Once the old man was at the bottom of the well, Cali shot the old man himself,

killed him. Then he reported to Captain Medina that his platoon had killed a Vietcong soldier

who had tried to escape down a well. Taking Cali at his word, Medina ordered him to search the well for an underground tunnel system. But of course, no one in Charlie company was willing to climb down there. So Cali reported back to Medina. Hey, we searched the well. No tunnel. This was Vietcong in a nutshell. Needless cruelty, begets a lie, which begets orders based on that lie. Another lie is then told in response to that order, and it's all reported to commanders

as a success. So in the end, nothing connected and nothing worked in Vietcong because so many actions were based on everyone telling the person above them what they wanted to hear. And that chain that started with one soldier on the ground, that shit went all the way to the president. No, it's easy to tell if a well leads to a tunnel. If there's a splash, there's no tunnel. Yeah, or some of the tunnel starts below the above the waterline. And then how many times

you throw a Vietcong man into what you think is a well? And then they end up in the water world

“of Super Mario 3. And I think that's truly frightening. Yeah, down there with all those turtles,”

three kill fireballs. Yeah, I bet he's like, what a relief. But Charlie Company went three weeks in Pinkville without any enemy contact, but they were still keyed up and on-edge psychologically. They were both tired and confused as to what they were actually doing there. Charlie Company went three weeks in Pinkville without any enemy contact, but they were still keyed up and on-edge psychologically. As far as Charlie Company was concerned,

they had come into contact with the enemy every single day because every villager was the enemy. And Charlie Company was convinced that any of these villagers might make a move at any time. As the weeks went by, Charlie Company's low morale began translating to increase cruelty towards the Vietnamese. Instead of giving the local children candy, some soldiers were following Callie's lead and were kicking the children when they approached. But things changed at the end

of February when men and Charlie Company actually began dying themselves, which of course made

the entire situation a thousand times worse. Because now they're finally going to see some action.

Well, now they have a now they have a reason to be angry. Yeah. On February 25, 1968, six men and Charlie Company were killed and another 12 were wounded when they wandered into a minefield while patrolling Pinkville. Moralsunk even lower because the minefield had been clearly marked on the map. Most likely Lieutenant Callie's poor map reading skills had resulted in these deaths. This is what I'm talking about. This is why you

can't add these guys out there. But the blame was placed on Allied troops from South Korea, according to the officers, those South Koreans. They were supposed to disarm these minds long before we march through. So it doesn't matter if we read the map wrong or not, it's the South Koreans fault. It's not our fault. It's fucking idiot just passing the buck. These worried about getting them in trouble. That's one of those things. That's one of those things.

That's not a fucker at that point. It's weird about getting fragged. Yeah, dude, because all of this is just like red day. They're all acting like these are office fucking problems and like little whoopsie do's mistakes, but it's fucking them. They're everybody's diet. Also, if I'm leading a platoon and I know a bad at reading maps, I find the guy who reads the maps. You tell me what the map says. Yeah, where are we going? But you're a guy that knows how to admit when he's wrong. Lieutenant

Callie was not that type of person. Lieutenant Callie was the type of person who is going to

“keep going no matter what and tell someone dies. Because for him, it's more important for him to”

appear as a big man that it is for his buddy to survive and go back home. It's because these guys are all thinking it's like it's just this other idea. It's almost like you're thinking about back home.

Like it's very it's fascinating watching all these people think that Vietnam was like a way to get

“a wet head and they're fucking career. And it's just like no you walked into hell itself.”

Yeah, the six deaths in Charlie Company was bad enough. But there is nothing that can rile a company up more than the death of a beloved member. Yeah, the funny guy. The funny guy on March 14th, two days before Charlie Company marched into the village of Milai, a huge explosion from a booby trapped bomb killed a well-liked and well-respected sergeant named George Cox. Because you know if you was doing his like lieutenant shit head dance act that he does and the

whole love when he goes, he's like, you know what's like what Kelly's got to fucking dice you, it's right? Oh my god. Yeah. No George. No. He had his like shoes on his knees. Another G.I. in Charlie Company lost his eyes and arm and a leg in that same explosion.

They weren't cared about that guy. Yeah, we don't even have his name. He was never into that

George. He's hilarious. St. George. Yeah, but nothing else. It's like shut up. George is dead. But that's not George! I wish I could see George's corpse. But you actually bring up kind of an interesting point there because even though this guy lost an arm, he lost an eyes, he lost an a leg, he survived. Yeah. So he's not his name isn't mentioned. He's not and he's not enough any

“fucking memorial. I think he's doing great. Yeah. I bet somewhere every he is right now. I bet you”

it's Palm Beach. Swimming in his pool, you know. Yeah. Bob and in his pool. Yeah. Well, after George Cox was killed, the fear boredom and exhaustion that it settled into Charlie Company, daring their patrols throughout Pinkville, that very quickly focused into intense anger. That anger was supposed to be directed at the Vietnam. But since Charlie Company believed that everyone in Pinkville was a potential VC, the anger was focused on anyone who was Vietnamese. And of course, as it often happens,

the casual killing starts with one death. And that death came on the same day that Sergeant George Cox was killed. The GIs left on the ground that day were rating a village when they saw something moving in the bushes. It was a woman hiding from the Americans because I'm sure she had seen what happened when a group of soldiers, specifically American soldiers, found a woman all alone. But

“on that day, the only thing on Charlie Company's mind was vengeance. The GIs took this woman in”

shorter, and the soldiers kicked her repeatedly after she fell to the ground. One GIs suggested they take her to a field hospital while she was still alive, but another GIs gave his answer to that suggestion by shooting the woman in the chest. She was killed and another GIs looted her corpse for a ring on her finger before Charlie Company returned to camp, too. Of course, collectively more in Sergeant Cox. One thing that keeps coming up in my brain is that Charlie Company feels like

when a serial killer ramps up. Like it's putting itself in the scenario. Like it keeps putting it, we talk about serial killer sometimes, put themselves up into a scenario where it becomes like I had to do it. I had to kill. I had to go do this where it seems to be like they're really like what's going on here would then happen in other companies. But it feels like that where they're like looking for the reason. They are looking for the reason. And that is part of that is one of the

things that leads to me. It's so many different things. There's not one thing you can point to it. Oh, they did it because of George Cox or they did it because of the body counts. It's all

these things together. In a way, she's like the first victim of me lie. Yeah, I mean, and also the

old man. They had killed civilians before this. Yeah, and there have been plenty of people in Task Force Barker besides Charlie Company that killed people in the univillages of Vietnam. In fact, they weren't even the only company in Task Force Barker to commit a massacre in Me lie in Vietnam. That fucking morning. Yeah. No, in that province. Yeah, there was it. It was a whole thing. Yeah, we already talked about 155 in February. Yeah, and those were not Vietnam. Those were

regular ass people. Now, this is the general mood of Charlie Company when Captain Maddug Maddina and Colonel Frank Barker began planning a mission into a village that was just 7 miles north of their Commencement Center. And I might have mentioned, I might have referred to Frank Barker

Well, let's fly I'm walking. Oh, I'm walking is a member of the cultural war of the, I'm

“venerally culture. Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, Barker's a dog. Yep. I totally see it. He's actually”

cast every person in this story in his own mind as a dog. Absolutely easier to digest. Yeah, and also something about dog on dog massacre is fascinating. Barker, however, did not file plans outlining the tactical aspects of this operation, nor did he show his superior's mission plans. A Barker did order the dropping of leaflets in the area to tell civilians that they needed to move to a nearby refugee center, or they were going to be killed as via Kong supporters. This was of

course the protocol. We talked about this in the first episode, I think. But true to the chaos of the

Vietnam War, the refugee center was already overcrowded in anyone who tried to show up was turned away and sent back to their village. So even if they tried to get out of the way of the Americans, they couldn't. It's the grief that Charlie Company was feeling over the death of Sergeant Cox. Task Force Barker had received intelligence that the infamous 48th Vietkong Battalion was hiding out in that nearby village with a force of at least 250 soldiers. Captain Medina had also

been told that on the morning of the mission where they were supposed to go get the 48th Battalion, the women and children were expected to be gone to the markets at one of the nearby cities.

“So go in as mean as you want, go in with everything you have to kill everything you see.”

The name of this village was of course Milai. Charlie Company's mission was to go into Milai

destroy the 48th Battalion, burn down all the houses, blow up all the bunkers and tunnels, and kill all the livestock. Anything to ensure the Vietkong could not and would not return to this area, but there was no mention of what to do or what not to do with the civilians they found within the village. As it had been with every mission led by this task force, Barker had left the treatment of civilians up to the discretion of the commander. In this case the commander was a man named

fucking mad dog. Needless to say, it went poorly. After the mission was planned, Captain Medina gave a pet talk to his men. This is the night before. They were going to go out to the village of Milai to ostensibly find and kill the 48th Vietkong Battalion. Now at this point, the memories of various GIs and Charlie Company, they started getting a little fuzzy. Yeah, what a wine. Every GIs would give a different version of what he heard Medina say leading up to the mission in Milai. Some said

that Medina gave standard search and destroy orders. Others believe that Medina's orders were vague and up for interpretation. I, however, believe the soldiers who said that Medina gave direct orders to kill everyone in the village of Milai. One GIs named Herbert Carter said that Medina told them that this was their chance to get revenge on these people, that it was open season in Milai. According to some soldiers, Medina had said when this operation was over, nothing in Milai

would be walking, growing, crawling or even living. Everything had to go. Destroy the village, make it uninhabitable. Another GIs remembered someone asking Medina specifically, "Who is the enemy?" in Milai. Because after a three-months in country, nobody had really answered this question. "Who the fuck is my enemy?" Yeah. And reportedly, Medina said, "The enemy is anyone who's running." But whatever the orders were, Lieutenant Cali and the rest of Charlie Company came away from

their pep talk with Medina with the impression that they could and should kill any human being they saw when they entered the village of Milai early the next morning. And it's there that we will conclude our series on the Milai Masker next week with the actual massacre itself and the

fallout that eventually came when the massacre was finally revealed to the American people.

Really good stuff. I'm glad we saved the funniest part for the end. Because that's really what it is. It's really about like because we wanted to leave you

“on a high note, you know, which I think is the next episode. It's really just more of up.”

I call it a rom. Yeah. I see Medina kind of like telling different guys different things too. Well, he's given a speech to all these guys. He's standing up, he's standing up in front and he's given them that he's doing the pattern. Yeah. Fascinating because literally they all say something different about what he said. And I don't know whether it's not it's just their fucking morons if they weren't paying attention, if they were exhausted or if they're covering for him. You don't know. Like it's

and what's not true is an Oliver Stone movie. But I think of like Barnes and his crew and how he had

“like certain guys in his platoon where's I kill everybody. Now the guys he just wouldn't talk to because”

he knew they were good guys. And I'm pretty certain that that is like I can go must guarantee it would start with a big speech that was more vague. And then he's got his boys. He was like, make sure you fucking kill him right back. Yeah. Yeah. But he was keeping it. He might have said,

this is the one we're getting the vengeance on. Yeah. I could definitely see him saying that to

everybody. Yeah. Not necessarily saying like we're going to go in and get vengeance for

“Sergeant Cox and for all the the other six guys that were killed by going in and killing women and”

children. It's just saying like we're just going to go in and kill everybody. And it's sort of like understood that like we're going there's this all of a like assumed knowledge that should be said but it's not said. Yeah. And it just sounds like or they all go off road and all different kind of who fucking knows. We'll talk about I know that they were directed to. Yeah. And Medina also joins in Yeah. And many many points. Yeah. The scene. So he loves it. Unforge. So we'll get to Unforge. We're going to

“get to this next week. Thank you so much. Go to patreon.com/lastpodcast and we'll have to”

listen to us. Ed free also see movie stories, video wise. Also you can see last stream every Tuesday live at 5 p.m. P.S.T. Go check out our new YouTube channel. So all we got so much good shit. LPNTV with hgx2 and vampire the masquerade that's going strong. No dogs and spaces coming out with new stuff. New videos on there. Go see the four report. Fuck LPN romanticie. Go check it. Out. The brighter side LPN also has it on YouTube channel. Subscribe there. We switched the

Mondays. So go and check that out. We had too much coming out on Friday. It's in brighter side.

I always seen like a Mondays show to me anyway. Hello, but start your week off. It's something crazy.

And Henry and I week last week we put out a bunch of dates for side stories. We're coming all over the place. But we got too coming up soon. So the ones I really want to stress to you are September 18th, Norfolk Virginia at the addicts and September 19th at the Fletcher Opera House in Raleigh, North Carolina. And then of course we're going to Brooklyn and Hartford and all that stuff. But go to lastpodcast and I'll have to calm to find out what's going on.

And of course come see me 9/11 weekend in DC. I love to laugh. I love to laugh. I love to laugh. I love spending 9/11 weekend in our nation's care. It's my favorite thing. I just want to see the president so I feel safe. So hail Satan, everybody. Don't go to war. Yeah, not how you begin. Vietnam man. Hail Murphy. The dog we were fostering just got adopted halfway through this episode. It's very happy. Oh, it's really great. He looks just like the dog that Lance finds on the boat

that they shoot up in the apocalypse now. Yeah. So you kind of reminded me of Vietnam. Fuck you dog. Fuck you dog. Yeah. Fuck you dog. You got that. This is a Vietnamese soul on me.