Polar Bear 73;686723 wrote:You are correct that the charges were dropped, but, there were considerably more than 13 who were investigated. The total was more like 26. However you are incorrect about them not being able to be charged after they were discharged. They could have been involuntarily recalled to active duty to be tried if charges were appropriate.
btw, when I was last stationed at Ft Benning, GA, LT Calley was a jeweler in downtown Columbus, GA.
"On November 24, 1969, Lt. Gen. W.R. Peers was directed by the Secretary of the Army to review “

ossible supression or witholding of information by persons involved in the incident." After more than 26,000 pages of testimony from 403 witnesses were gathered, the Peers inquiry recommended that charges should be brought against 28 officers and two non-commissioned officers involved in a cover-up of the massacre. The Peers report concluded that the brigade commander, Col. Oran Henderson, and the commanding officer, Lt Col Frank Barker, had substantial knowledge of the war crime, but did nothing about it. In the end, Army lawyers decided that only 14 officers should be charged with crimes. Meanwhile, a separate investigation by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division concluded that there was evidence to charge 30 soldiers with the crimes of murder, rape, sodomy, and mutilation. Seventeen men had left the Army, and charges against them were dropped.
Army investigators concluded that 33 of the 105 members of Charlie Company participated in the massacre, and that 28 officers helped cover it up. Charges were brought against only 13 men. In the end, only one soldier – Lt. William Calley - was convicted. Calley was charged with murdering 104 villagers in the My Lai massacre."
this is what i was getting at, thirteen men were charged. i worded my statement poorly.
and that is eerie about Calley. i couldn't imagine what he was going through back then