However as the "search and destroy" mission unfolded it soon degenerated into a massacre.
There were nine helicopters in the first lift-off. Enough room for twenty-five men, Captain Medina, his small headquarters unit of three radiomen, some liaison officers and a medic. The troops were ready to fight. They had lost enough of their buddies in the proceeding weeks, and they .
were not going to loose anymore. One soldier, Gregory Olson said, "The attitude of all the men--the majority, I would say--was a revengeful attitude" (qtd. in Lamb 1). .
The first platoon's mission when they landed was to secure the landing zone and to make sure no enemy troops were left to fire at the second round of helicopters. As the second platoon arrived one of the pilots advised a lieutenant that they had received fire from one of the adjacent hamlets and at this point the sight was labeled "hot". .
As they moved into My Lai they shot numerous fleeing Vietnamese and bayoneted others; they also threw hand grenades into houses and bunkers, destroyed livestock and crops, and committed other atrocities (Peers 173). By this time all of the Vietcong who were in the area were hiding out and watching as Charlie Company gunned down hundreds of innocent men, women and children. Lieutenant Calley ordered his men to enter the village firing, and not to stop until he commanded them to. .
Lieutenant Calley was said to have rounded up a group of seventy-five or so unarmed men, women and children. He ordered them into an irrigation ditch and commanded members of Charlie Company to assist him in mowing them down in a fury of machine gun fire, reminiscent of the killing of Jews by Nazi stormtroopers in WW2.
The following is a story told by Mrs. Thuan, a survivor of My Lai who was ordered into the irrigation ditch: "Anyone who resisted, they hit with their guns," she said. "People were crying, screaming, begging for their lives.
