This is a series of descriptions of compositions important historically, but I have also learned to play all of these works myself so they are important to me personally. All praise goes to my music teacher, a Brit named Doris Watts.
It has been observed that the music of Johann Sebastian Bach is somehow transcendent, qualitatively greater than that of anyone else, so much so that it can be played on almost any instrument and still hold up. Here is an extraordinary short sample of Bach’s ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’, being played on hundreds of carefully constructed pieces of wood winding their way through a forest – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2BWrmNhyXU&t=103s&ab_channel=jemyao .
This post is about a matching pair of Bach’s compositions from his celebrated collection ‘The Well-Tempered Clavier’.
COMPOSITIONS: Prelude and Fugue No. 7 from Das Wohltemperierte Klavier (The Well-Tempered Clavier), Volume 1
COMPOSER: Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750)
HISTORICAL CONTEXT: This is from the Baroque Period, and so is very different in style from the work of Romantic composers such as Beethoven, Chopin and even Rachmaninoff. Published in 1722, this pair of works is part of a complete set of works which consists of twenty-four pairs of compositions, each one in a different one of the twelve major and minor keys. This collection is considered to be one of Bach’s greatest achievements. The keys of any keyboard instrument can be adjusted to any desired pitch. The standard practice for keyboards today is to use a system of Equal Temperament, and the title of this collection is a pun which suggests that this was the system Bach intended. Bach was also familiar with Meantone Temperament and as an organist probably played on instruments using that alternative system. Musical tuning systems and note frequencies are important, fascinating, and complex but I won’t get into that here (for more details see – https://www.britannica.com/art/tuning-and-temperament/Tuning-and-musical-history ). This pair of works is in E Flat Major.
THINGS TO NOTICE: The complexities of Bach’s compositions are head and shoulders above everyone else. Period. He’s in a league of his own. The wonder of it is that he still manages to make his intricate structures dynamic and lyrical. Bach was also a masterful improvisationalist, and that involves an entirely different range of skills than those used in most classical music. Most compositions lay down a melody in the right hand and add harmonic chords in the left hand. Composing something with two interweaving melodies, one in each hand, is much more difficult. Composing something with three complementary melodies is even more daunting. In the Prelude here Bach has combined an incredible four melodies, two played by each hand. This is ridiculously difficult. See if you can pick them out. The accompanying Fugue ‘only’ has three melodies. Music with intertwining melodies like this is called ‘contrapuntal’, i.e. counterpoint in English. Bach was the master of counterpoint. In some of his organ works (e.g. Fugue in G Minor), one melody is played by the right hand, one by the left, and a third by the feet playing the organ pedals.
These two works were written for harpsichord or clavichord, neither of which possess a sustaining pedal. The first rule my teacher taught me was that when you play Bach you NEVER use the sustaining pedal. This means you sustain notes using your fingers, which adds a new layer of details to think about. Bach didn’t use many dynamic markings either, so that’s something else you must bring to the music. Most recordings of this piece are on the piano but the piano was only invented a few years before Bach died so he only got to play on a piano a few times.
There’s a lot I could say about the structures of these works but this is not the place. Simply listen to the contrapuntal work, concentrate on the melodic relationships, and enjoy the subtleties. Having the score helps. The second work here, the Fugue, is faster and considerably shorter than the more subtle Prelude.
Rock and jazz musicians are also famous for musical counterpoint. By far the best example of this is RADIOHEAD’s track ‘Paranoid Android”. In the beautiful and haunting middle section, (starting at the 3 minute 34 second mark here) we can distinguish two voices an octave apart with a third melody (Thom Yorke’s lead vocal) weaving a third voice in and out of the other two. At the 3 minute 58 second mark a fourth melody begins, at the 4 minute 27 second mark we hear a fifth, and at the 4 minute 58 second a sixth. This is extraordinary (also notice that the opening section oscillates between 4 / 4 time and 7 / 4 time, notice too the excellent guitar work of Jonny Greenwood) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzPtr_n-m8A&ab_channel=BBCMusic .
CREAM – In this example from rock’s first supergroup, co-written by bassist Jack Bruce, at the 2 minute 5 second mark the singer, Bruce, starts to take off with his own complex bass lines, and on top of that Clapton is not only playing a solo line of his own, but he has also overdubbed a second solo line so you have an extraordinary triple melody structure playing out (note the sinister lyrics as well) – the piece is called ‘Politician’ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOPDzD_P9gg&ab_channel=AyoubBelkhiri .
SIMON AND GARFUNKEL – Scarborough Fair / Canticle – superlative two part singing here, with the second voice coming in at the 42 second mark, and the harpsichord part providing a third melody line – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AwsrrROCx4&ab_channel=buishuiler
BLUR – Country House – we get two part counterpoint at the 40 second mark, and again at the 1 minute 28 second mark. Then, most interestingly, a third melody play by the brass emerges at the 3 minute 3 second mark to create a three voice combination – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQyWWRnmxAc&ab_channel=Blur-Topic
This is a series of descriptions of compositions important historically, but I have also learned to play all of these works myself so they are important to me personally. All praise goes to my music teacher, a Brit named Doris Watts.
ART CASE STEINWAY PIANO BUILT IN THE 1880’s By Piano built in the 1880s by Steinway & Sons for Alma-Tadema; I took this photograph. – Piano built in the 1880s by Steinway & Sons for Alma Tadema; I took this photograph., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6318455
COMPOSITION: The Bells of Moscow (Prelude in C Sharp Minor, Opus 3 No. 2)
COMPOSER: Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873 – 1943)
HISTORICAL CONTEXT: This came to be known as The Bells of Moscow because the opening bars seem to mimic the bells of Ivan the Great’s Bell Tower which dominates the Kremlin in the centre of Moscow. When I visited the Kremlin in 1969 the first thing I thought of was Rachaninoff’s prelude. The work was originally published as one of a set of five pieces (Morceaux de Fantaisie), but became very popular so Rachmaninoff later composed twenty-three more preludes to accompany it, each prelude written in one of twenty-four major and minor keys. The Bells of Moscow was composed by Rachmaninoff when he was still a teenager, and it was first performed, by Rachmaninoff himself, on September 26, 1892, at the Moscow Electrical Exhibition.
Rachmaninoff composed the piece after graduating from the Moscow Conservatory, and it is dedicated to Anton Arensky (1861 – 1906) who was Rachmaninoff’s Harmony professor at the Conservatory. The work is one of Rachmaninoff’s most famous, and is still performed by concert pianists, but the only payment Rachmaninoff ever received for the work was a fee of forty roubles, about two months’ wages for a factory worker at the time.
In 1898 Rachmaninoff toured Western Europe and the United States playing the work as part of his program and soon audiences demanded it as an encore at his concerts chanting “C Sharp!”. Not long after that publishers in London brought out several editions of the work. It has been published under various titles, including ‘The Burning of Moscow’, ‘The Day of Judgment’ and ‘The Moscow Waltz’ (even though it’s not in waltz time, i.e. 3/4).
ANTON ARENSKY 1895 By unknown Photograf – archives de –FinitoR Originally uploaded in ruwiki by ru:Участник:Финитор as ru:Файл:Postcard-1910 Arensky.jpg., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6819202
PERFORMER: Evgeny Kissin
THINGS TO NOTICE: This work is a study in contrasts – the opening bar is marked ‘double forte’ (very loud) but almost immediately, in the third measure, we have ‘triple piano’ (extremely soft) as the main theme is introduced. The first section is also marked ‘lento’ (slow) but the second section, in contrast, is marked ‘agitato’ (restless, agitated). The first section ends with ‘triple piano’ again and ‘poco ritard’ (slowing down a little bit) before launching into the much different second section.
The second section in the right hand consists entirely of chromatic triplets except for the ‘double and triple forte’ (very loud, extremely loud) chords in the last two measures. The key here in the right hand is to play the top notes at the beginning of each triplet quite a bit louder than the other notes in order to bring out the melody. This requires the weakest (fifth) finger of the hand doing the most work, and to prepare myself for this section my teacher had me work on Philipp’s Exercises for Independence of the Fingers. The section is wonderfully frantic and near the end there is a descending passage featuring triads in the right hand and thirds in the left which I loved to play as it is marked ‘triple forte’ (extremely loud), not particularly difficult, and great fun to play. One must also have to have a quick left hand because on four occasions one is expected to play, with just the left hand, two notes simultaneously which are just one tone short of being two octaves apart.
Most of the final section is played at a sustained ‘triple forte’ (extremely loud) level. The section is marked ‘pesante’ (ponderous, heavy, with great importance) with a great many thundering chords. Most unusually, because of the density of the notes and the range both hands are expected to cover, the right hand notes have had to be recorded on two staffs not one, and the same is true of the notes in the left hand. Some of the notes are even marked ‘triple sforzando’ (extremely emphatic). As the section winds down both hands are playing octaves and four note form chords simultaneously an octave apart. In the last line of the score there is a dramatic, incredibly somber sequence of chords like a death knell, and at the very end it sadly falls to ‘triple piano’ (extremely soft). Then there is a final surprise. The overwhelming majority of compositions end on the tonic note of the scale of the key the work is written in, in this case C Sharp. Here Rachmaninoff gives us a C Sharp Minor chord, yes, but then at the last minute jumps up to a chord on the dominant note, the G Sharp, as if it is somehow resisting the predictably dolorous ending. I always loved that final surprise.
Classical music itself can be compelling. Riots broke at the premier of Stravinsky’s ‘The Rite of Spring’ over a century ago. Consider also what the process of composing a classical masterwork involves. One must somehow conjure up a pattern of notes in the form of melodies, harmonies and rhythms around a particular established structural framework and once a key is selected one must work around all the sharps and flats the key includes, whether major or minor. One must have a working knowledge of the modes / scales musical structures are built upon, and be familiar with all manner of harmonies (dominant sevenths, augmented thirds, perfect fifths and so on). One must then come up with an unforgettable melody, perhaps hauntingly minor or upliftingly major. When it comes to concertos and symphonies, one must harmonically integrate a wide range of instruments playing different notes into an organic whole. Enormous musical complexities must be constructed around intriguing melodies. The greatest works also break new musical ground and are both emotionally and cognitively challenging. Some works are also immense unified wholes, like grand cathedrals or great literary trilogies. Gershwin’s Concerto in F lasts about 35 minutes. Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes all together last about an hour, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion lasts about three hours. Classical music doesn’t have to be boring.
This is a series of brief descriptions of classical piano compositions important historically, and which I have also learned to play myself so they are important to me personally. All praise goes to my music teacher, a Brit named Doris Watts. This series of posts begins with a dramatic work that covers a lot of ground in two and a half minutes.
COMPOSITION: The Revolutionary Étude (Opus 10, No. 12)
COMPOSER: Frederic Chopin (1810 – 1849)
HISTORICAL CONTEXT: This work was inspired by the attack on Warsaw, Poland by Russian forces in November 1831 (see illustration below). I don’t know whether the current Russian invasion of Ukraine will inspire any musical compositions. Chopin was born in Poland and grew up in Warsaw. The work is dedicated to his friend Franz Liszt, another one of the great classical composers. Chopin (and to a lesser extent Liszt) basically raised the quality and complexity of piano compositions to a whole new level, though he was only thirty-nine when he died, of tuberculosis. His life was both momentous and tragic.
THINGS TO NOTICE: Chopin cleverly reverses things here as most of the work is done in the left hand, usually the weaker hand for most pianists (who are usually right handed). There are relentless runs and arpeggios here executed by the left hand. Whenever I played this I was happy that it was a relatively short piece because my left hand was physically exhausted by the end of it. When I was eight two of the fingers on my left hand were detached from my hand in a bicycling accident; later the fingers were re-attached but my left hand is still weaker than the average pianist’s left hand making this particular piece a bit of a challenge. There are 84 measures in the piece with sixteen notes per measure in 70 of them, fifteen notes per measure in 11, and fourteen notes per measure in one, all in the left hand, with two abrupt pairs of chords in the last two measures. The piece is also marked to be played ‘allegro con fuoco’ meaning ‘brisk with fire’ yet notice how perfectly evenly Buniatishvili plays the notes throughout.
You also get plenty of fz markings (‘forzando’ meaning ‘forceful’) and ‘f’ (‘forte’ meaning ‘loud’) markings and even four ‘ff’ markings (‘fortissimo’ meaning ‘very loud’). It ends with a double run from both hands to be played ‘ed appassionato’ meaning ‘and passionate’. Chopin springs a surprise at the end as well because while the work is in C minor it ends on two major chords – F major then C major.
OTHER VERSIONS – Here is a rock version of the work under the title ‘Rock Revolution’ used as the theme song for the British action television series ‘Interceptor’ –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP9oVaL07i0&ab_channel=mongrelvids . This work can also be heard in the anime and manga series ‘Your Lie in April’ (Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso) played by the character Takeshi. Parts of the piece can be heard in the 1953 television series ‘The Abbott and Costello Show’ (in ‘The Music Lover’) and in the Tom and Jerry cartoon ‘Somebody Loves Me.’ It is included in the game ‘The King of Fighters 2003’ as well as in the game ‘Catherine’ released in 2011 heard here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K79-i_Lzuk&ab_channel=RemixRobots
Enthralled audiences were convinced Paganini was Satan incarnate, capable of doing the impossible, and an unapologetic murderer. The charismatic composer and performer Franz Liszt exuded sexual energy on stage. Classical composers were anything but boring. They were the rock stars of their age. Beethoven’s deafness, his fury and despair, as he composed his greatest work, the Ninth Symphony, is legendary. Tchaikovsky was gay at a time when such things had to be kept secret, he avoided the limelight, he drank prodigiously, and he ended his life by committing suicide. The lives of the classical composers were also often tumultuous and short. Modest Mussorgsky, composer of the brilliant ‘Pictures At An Exhibition’, died shortly after his 42nd birthday of alcoholism. Chopin died at the age of 39, Bizet died at 36, Mozart at 35, Schubert was 31.
A series of posts about important people long ago whose names are either forgotten, or were never well-known in the first place. The posts may also deal with little known aspects of the lives of famous people no longer alive.
Before we begin, be clear that this is not an anti-military screed. I have a great respect for the military as can be seen by my previous post here – ( https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2023/05/27/ghost-story-22-wartime-ghosts/ ). I am also not a pacifist. I strongly oppose unjust wars but support justifiable conflict. What I condemn are unjust wars masquerading as just wars, though different people have opposing opinions about what is just and unjust. However, anyone who has actually fought in war will tell you that war is hell.
Nazis killed millions during the Holocaust before and during World War Two which was initiated by Germany. Thirty million died during World War Two. That is a lot of ghosts. But our side fire-bombed Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo, and dropped atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We turned millions of innocent people into ghosts as well. War is indeed hell.
When the Americans entered the Vietnam War it was framed as a battle between capitalism (United States) and communism (China / Russia). It was the height of the Cold War. In fact capitalism, framed as pro-democracy, is actually anti-democratic, and the so-called communist systems of Russia and China were actually brutal totalitarian states which were the opposite of the unrealistic communist states envisioned by Karl Marx. The American soldiers fighting in Vietnam believed that they were fighting for freedom, fighting to defeat despotism, attacking a threat to their families back home.
There are soldiers who act ethically and those who don’t, and often what distinguishes the two depends on how they were brought up, and the social hegemonic forces that surrounded them. The purpose of the military is to turn ordinary citizens into fighting machines and one attempts to make sure that soldiers are all right with killing the enemy by demonizing that enemy. However, if you are socially conditioned to follow orders and you are ordered to kill an unarmed enemy pre-schooler then whether or not you follow that order may depend on whether or not your ethics are strong enough to kick in so that you refuse to follow an order that is ethically wrong even if that means you will be called a traitor and punished for disobeying a direct order. Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann’s defence was that he was only following orders, this defence was found wanting at the Nuremberg War Tribunals, and Eichmann was later executed for following orders.
GOOKS
Soldiers during the Vietnam War were subject to:
The powerful impulse / necessity to obey orders without question
The demonization of the enemy (the United States was and is a racist society; many American soldiers referred to their Vietnamese enemies as ‘gooks’)
The cultural displacement from fighting in a foreign land full of snakes, bugs and heat
The battlefield stress of being surrounded by an enemy attempting to kill you
The circumstance of having the power of life and death over others
Praise from one’s superiors for killing the enemy
Peer pressure and toxic masculinity
Freedom from responsibility even if the people you kill are non-combatants
It is very important to underline here that all this is not to excuse the horrible atrocities committed by some soldiers in time of war. It is in fact to highlight the behaviour of other soldiers who refused to commit atrocities despite the pressure not to refuse. Ethics must supersede conformity, war crimes committed under the guise of patriotism must be punished. That’s why we have war crime tribunals. Sadly, sometimes a career in the armed forces attracts sick and sadistic people, rapists and white supremacists, people who are quite happy to shoot unarmed civilians and rape children, particularly if they are non-Caucasian.
SPRAYING DEADLY AGENT ORCHARD DURING THE VIETNAM WAR By USAF – US Military Picture, found at the U.S. National Agricultural Library [1]. From en wiki, uploaded by w:user:Achille, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=538738
HELL IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
The Vietnam War ended about fifty years ago. Why bring it up now? I bring it up because the Americans lost that war, however these days I hear Americans saying that they really did win it or at least they could have won easily enough. The claim is that the media and the antiwar movement (which was enormous) tied the hands of the military. If only the army had taken the advice of General Curtis LeMay and used nuclear weapons to bomb Vietnam back to the Stone Age they would have won, so goes the narrative.
In the last forty years the United States has invaded 23 nations: Grenada (1983), Bolivia (1986), Panama (1988), The Virgin Islands (1989), Liberia (1990, 1997, 2003), Saudi Arabia (1990), Kuwait (1991), Somalia (1992, 2006), Bosnia (1993), Zaire / Congo (1996), Albania (1997), Sudan (1998), Afghanistan (1998, 2001), Yemen (2000, 2002), Macedonia (2001), Colombia (2002), Pakistan (2005), Syria (2008, 2011), Uganda (2011), Mali (2013), Niger (2013), Yugoslavia (1919, 1946, 1992, 1999), Iraq (1958, 1963, 1990, 1998, 2003) ( https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/mar/31/facebook-posts/viral-meme-says-united-states-has-invaded-22-count/ ).
When Trump was president he desperately wanted to invade Mexico more than once, according to some reports, and if he wins in 2024 he might get his wish. We know how racist and xenophobic Trump and the Republicans are, we saw what happened with the children at the Mexican border under Trump. In recent months there have also been calls on the American right to invade Canada. We are, after all, ‘woke’. Remember, when socialist Bob Rae won the Ontario provincial election in 1990 the US had a major fit and took retaliatory measures. Blame Canada – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOR38552MJA&ab_channel=Movieclips
Authoritarian leaders often use the strategy of getting their people to focus on an external enemy, be it communists, Arab terrorists, Antifa or undocumented immigrants, so that they don’t think about things like the economic inequities in their own country, the corporate destruction of the environment, the justification of a police state and so on. That’s Political Science 101. There were plenty of good soldiers who thought they were doing the right thing, soldiers who thought they were defending their country, soldiers who were convinced that if the U.S. lost that war then the communists would take over Vietnam, then the rest of Southeast Asia (The Domino Theory), then the rest of the world which included America. What happened in Vietnam fifty years ago, and the ideological chicanery surrounding it, has relevance today.
PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY (LEFT) AND ROBERT McNAMARA, 1962 By Cecil (Cecil William) Stoughton, 1920-2008, Photographer (NARA record: 4538278) – U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16894995
PARANOIA STRIKES DEEP, INTO YOUR LIFE IT WILL CREEP
It is important to distinguish between those who fashion foreign policy and pass it on to generals giving orders, and those who are expected to carry out those orders. The former are quite capable of initiating horrendous military initiatives while distancing themselves from having to look the victims in the eye as they die. An argument can be made that President Kennedy, President Johnson, President Nixon, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and General Westmoreland were war criminals.
I will not go into all the background surrounding the American war in Vietnam but in the 1960’s I did a considerable amount of research before I took a stand. It’s what you do. Such issues are often far more complicated and nuanced than they look. Sometimes both sides in a war are less than honourable. All the evidence was clear, however, that the war was unjust, that the American forces had no business being there. American soldiers tortured and killed a lot of Vietnamese, and used agent orange to destroy the countryside (causing cancer in the civilian populations exposed to it as well). The communists took power in North Vietnam through fair democratic elections. In South Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem gained power through American intervention and he was a ruthless dictator who killed thousands and imprisoned tens of thousands of his political enemies. Paranoia was at play, patriotism was at work.
BODY COUNT
How many ghosts did the Vietnam War create? Hard to say. Body counts were exaggerated, and civilian deaths were sometimes counted as combatant deaths. As far as I can tell, from a variety of sources: War deaths (both sides), both military and civilian, in Vietnam, Kampuchea (then Cambodia) and Laos: between 1 450 000 and 3 595 000. Of those 627 000 civilians died on both sides. There were 58 220 American deaths. On the Vietnamese side there was a total of 849 018 dead and 232 000 missing. That is incredibly one-sided. 18.6 Vietnamese killed for every American. That’s a lot of ghosts. The war lasted from 1955 to 1975 (though the Vietnamese considered this war to be only one of three successive wars). Fighting in the war also spilled over into Kampuchea and Laos with President Nixon initiating a secret incursion into Kampuchea at one point. There were also massacres perpetrated by both sides
One particularly horrendous example of the horrors of war was the My Lai Massacre. This mass murder on unarmed Vietnamese civilians occurred on March 16, 1968, perpetrated by the United States Army in Son Tinh District, South Vietnam. There were 504 men, women, children and infants killed. The platoon leader in charge, Lieutenant William Calley Jr., was found guilty of multiple murders and given a life sentence but he only served three and a half years under house arrest when President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence.
THESE WOMEN AND CHILDREN DIED A FEW SECONDS AFTER THIS PHOTOGRAPH WAS TAKEN By Ronald L. Haeberle – "Report of the Department of Army review of the preliminary investigations into the My Lai incident. Volume III, Exhibits, Book 6 – Photographs, page 50 14 March 1970". From the Library of Congress, Military Legal Resources.[1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2461603
Three of the soldiers who tried to stop the massacre and help the civilians were shunned, and denounced as traitors by several American Congressmen including Mendel Rivers, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Rivers referred to himself as “The Granddaddy of the War Hawks”, he urged the President to use nuclear weapons against the North Vietnamese, he tried to cover up the My Lai massacre, and was a racist and strict segregationist. He was also a member of the Democratic Party.
The massacre started without any warning. The soldiers entered the village of My Lai and just started executing unarmed civilians, killing with guns and grenades. Calley ordered the executions and did some of the killing himself. According to an eyewitness at one point several women threw themselves on top of their children to protect them and after the women were murdered, and some of the children old enough to walk stood up, Calley shot the children as well. The Americans encountered no resistance during the massacre, and no weapons were found in the village. There were no Vietnamese men of draft age.
Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr., a helicopter pilot from Company B, sighted dead and wounded civilians as he flew over so he landed while his crew radioed for help for the survivors. Thompson encountered a sergeant who he asked to help him rescue some survivors in a nearby ditch. The sergeant instead started firing into the ditch killing those still alive rather than rescuing them, saying he was just following orders. Thompson flew on and witnessed more wanton killing by American soldiers, with the victims often being young children and unarmed women and old men. Thompson landed again as he saw a group of civilians being approached by Calley’s soldiers. Thompson told his crew that if Calley’s soldiers attempted to interfere while Thompson got people (many of them children) to safety, Thompson’s crew were to shoot Calley’s men. Thompson saved several groups of adults and children that day, and later, when the massacre was being investigated, several other helicopter pilots also testified that there were “needless and unnecessary killings going on”.
Thompson angrily reported by radio what was happening while the massacre was still unfolding but nothing was done to stop the massacre. After the massacre military officials still called the massacre “a success” and General Westmoreland himself called it “outstanding action” saying that they had “dealt the enemy a heavy blow”. An investigation was called for but there was an attempt to cover up the massacre, with several people lying about what happened and praising Calley’s soldiers. Most of the participants in the massacre and the cover-up were never held responsible. Kind of like those who ordered and carried out the illegal tortures and, in at least eight cases, murder, at Guantanamo Bay. Eight more ghosts.
Thompson testified against the people responsible for the My Lai Massacre and twenty-six enlisted men and officers were charged with criminal offences. Incredibly, every last one was acquitted or pardoned. There were definitely at least twenty rapes, probably more (estimates are difficult to come by) and the victims ranged in age from ten to forty-five with nine of them under the age of eighteen. Some of the rapes were accompanied by sexual torture. Not a single soldier was ever charged with rape.
Thompson, however, was condemned by many individuals in the military, the government and the public for his testimony as well as his actions during the massacre. He received death threats over the phone, and mutilated animals were left on his porch. As a direct result of this treatment Thompson experienced post-traumatic stress disorder, alcoholism, divorce and nightmare disorder. At least later, a full thirty years after the massacre, Thompson, and two members of his crew, Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn, were awarded the Soldier’s Medal for bravery not involving direct contact with the enemy. There have been others in the military and the government who have since condemned the massacre, but few such voices were heard when the massacre and subsequent investigation were going on.
The investigation also discovered that there were soldiers under Calley’s command who were not willing to participate in the massacre. One actually took himself out of the action by intentionally shooting himself in the foot. In the Vietnam War itself some soldiers returned from fighting and formed Veterans Against the War groups and protested in the United States despite the vitriol and hatred they had to endure because they did so. I met some of them at one of the anti-Vietnam War rallies..
Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn, two of Thompson’s men who also tried to stop the massacre, are no longer among the living. Hugh Thompson Jr. himself died at the age of sixty-two of cancer in Louisiana. Lawrence Colburn flew in from Atlanta to be at his bedside when he died. Finally, there are five hundred and four Vietnamese ghosts many of whom lived very short lives.
After the war Lt. Calley, after his brief period of imprisonment, married, became a gemologist, and later obtained his real estate licence despite his criminal record. He is still alive and living in Florida.
According to The Kidd 