biography
| name: |
Calley, William L(aws), Jr
|
pronunciation:
[kalee]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1943– )
|
| biography:
| US soldier, born in Miami, Florida, USA. A college dropout, he worked as a dish washer and railroad switchman before enlisting in the US Army in 1966. Commissioned a lieutenant through Officers Training School, he was posted to South Vietnam. On 16 March 1968, he led a platoon into the hamlet of My Lai and supervised as his men massacred some 500 elderly men, women, and children. In 1971 he was convicted of the murder of 22 Vietnamese and sentenced to life imprisonment. President Richard Nixon commuted the sentence, first to 20 years and, in 1974, to time served. Calley slipped back into civilian life as an insurance agent, and many came to feel he had been made a scapegoat for all the atrocities of the Vietnam War. |
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