My Lai massacre

March 16, 1968

American soldiers from Charlie Company entered a South Vietnamese hamlet on a search-and-destroy mission and, over the course of a morning, killed between three hundred and five hundred unarmed villagers, mostly women, children, and elderly men. A helicopter pilot named Hugh Thompson intervened to stop some of the killings. The cover-up unraveled slowly, and the revelation shattered what remained of American innocence about the war.