Reflection on My Lai

In my experience My Lai was an aberration. In three tours with Special Forces in Vietnam I never heard of such an incident. I have, however, seen many soldiers risk their lives to save the lives of Vietnamese civilians. On the first day of the Tet Offensive in 1968 I saw Sgt. Sammy Coutts of Cupertino run through the proverbial hail of bullets to drag a young Vietnamese girl under fire from the Viet Cong to safety. Others whose names I do not recall did the same.

We fought under extremely stringent rules of engagement, the only purpose of which was to save the lives of Vietnamese civilians. At least half the names on the Vietnam Memorial Wall resulted from going into hot objectives with inadequate or nonexistent artillery or air cover, solely to save civilian lives. We traded the lives of tens of thousands of American teen-agers to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians. This is not supposition; it is a plain objective fact.

People who perpetrate atrocities do not deserve the honorable designation “soldier.” They are frightened amateurs.

JIM MORRIS

Los Angeles