The 29th March was not a happy day. You may recall my entries for the 16th March - an equally unhappy day - and the matter of My Lai. Of the 26 officers and soldiers initially charged for their part in the My Lai massacre or the subsequent cover-up, only Lt. William L. Calley Jr was convicted. Indeed, after deliberating for 79 hours, the six officer jury (five of whom served in Vietnam) convicted him on the 29th March 1971, of the premeditated murder of 22 Vietnamese civilians.
Many people saw the actions at My Lai to be a direct result of the military's attrition strategy with its emphasis on body counts and kill ratios, quite apart from burning down entire villages along the way.
Two years later, to the day, on 29th March 1973, two months after signing the Vietnam peace agreement, the last U.S. troops left Vietnam when Hanoi freed the remaining American prisoners of war. Between 7000 and 8500 U.S. Department of Defence employees (Civilians, embassy guards, defence office solders) remain in South Vietnam to help aid the ongoing battle with North Vietnam. They were later evacuated in 1975 in the largest helicopter evacuation in history, from the U.S. Embassy in Saigon the day before Saigon fell in April of 1975. The evacuation was not a pretty sight. There are a number of You Tube entries to see.
It was also on the 29th March 1951 that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage.The charges related to passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.
They were the first civilians executed for espionage in United States history. There is and was a great deal of controversy over there prosecution. The case created a great deal of support in Europe were it was argued that the Rosenbergs were victims of anti-semitism and McCarthyism. Jean Paul Sartre called the case "a legal lynching which smears a whole nation with blood". But then the United States is clearly used to that. I am not being anti-American but history does speak for itself.
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