March 16, 1968
POETRY FORMAT, 19 Aug 2013
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service
On the day the United States
killed itself
504 Vietnamese also died.
The My Lai peasants
died their deaths in ditches,
while Charlie Company
of the 11th Light Infantry Brigade,
and their nation,
died a self-inflicted death
in the eyes of the world.
One soldier, Michael Bernhardt,
refused to join in the killing.
Three soldiers, Hugh Thompson,
Lawrence Colburn and Glenn Andreotta,
landed their helicopter and stopped the killing.
Ron Ridenhour collected reports
and got the story out.
Lt. William Calley took the rap;
sentenced to life at hard labor
on 22 counts of premeditated murder,
he served three years
under house arrest.
In retrospect, as McNamara wrote,
mistakes were made.
Like bodies falling into a ditch,
thus proceeds
the decline of great nations.
______________________
Tom Greening: “I engage in five professional activities:
Faculty Member at Saybrook University
Private Practice of Psychotherapy
Clinical Professor of Psychology, UCLA
International Editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology
Writing (Poetry).”
www.tomgreening.com
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 19 Aug 2013.
Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: March 16, 1968, is included. Thank you.
If you enjoyed this article, please donate to TMS to join the growing list of TMS Supporters.
This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.