William Calley, who led the My Lai massacre that shamed US military in Vietnam, has died

The convicted war criminal and Army lieutenant who led his soldiers to kill hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians — including children — has died.

William Laws Calley Jr. died in his Gainesville, Florida apartment on April 28, The Washington Post reported on Monday, citing his death certificate. He was 80.

Calley had lived in obscurity since he was court-martialed and convicted of his heinous war crimes in 1971.

He was the only US service member out of 25 men initially charged to be found guilty in the massacre, which is often referred to as “the most shocking incident of the Vietnam War” and is credited with turning American’s opinion against the war in Vietnam.

Calley was a young lieutenant in command of Charlie Company 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 23rd Infantry Division in Vietnam in 1968.

By March 1968, Calley’s regiment had suffered 28 casualties while they navigated South Vietnam’s Quang Ngai province, a key area for the Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive — a countrywide assault by the Viet Cong that targeted American bases and South Vietnamese cities.

On March 16, 1968, US forces were ordered to attack the village of My Lai, a “search and destroy” mission in Quang Ngai, two days after a booby trap had killed a sergeant, blinded a GI, and wounded several others while Charlie Company was on patrol.

Calley was ordered to lead 100 soldiers from Charlie Company on a mission to confront a crack outfit of Vietcong enemies.

Over the next several hours, his men would shoot and bayonet an estimated 504 unresisting civilians to death — primarily women, children, and elderly men — in the small farming village.

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Their actions, so horrendous, went as far as the soldiers reportedly throwing hand grenades into shelters where families were hiding from the carnage, civilians being slaughtered in masses in a drainage ditch, and even the gang-rape of women and girls.

An Army investigation later concluded that 347 men, women, and children had been killed, but a Vietnamese estimate placed the death toll at 504.

However, the atrocity would not be brought to light until a year and a half after the massacre, as efforts from the US government attempted to cover up what happened to the public.

The Army had initially glossed over the details of the mission itself, referring to the massacre as “a successful search-and-destroy mission.”

Details about the war crimes only began being exposed in 1969, when Army veteran Ron Ridenhour tried to inform President Richard Nixon and members of Congress about what he’d heard about the massacre.

Following mounting pressure from Ridenhour’s claims, the Army quietly court-martialed Calley with six specifications of premeditated murder for the deaths of 109 South Vietnamese civilians in Sept. 1969, according to PBS .

Still, Calley’s charges were not released to the press.

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In Nov. 1970, journalist Seymour Hersh published a story detailing Ridenhour’s account of the event he learned from members of Charlie Company who participated in the killings at My Lai.

The story instantly gained public attention and was reinforced by helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson Jr., who was present for the killings, according to Military.com .

Thompson and his crew are credited with rescuing 16 Vietnamese children in the village after they had witnessed the Massacre from the air, with the pilot making an official report of the civilian killings immediately after the event, where he referred to the US soldiers on the ground as no different from Nazis in their slaughter of innocent civilians.

Thompson would also later testify against Calley.

Following the outcry for an investigation, multiple other soldiers at the scene began speaking out, with some saying civilian deaths were inevitable in a war where the enemy could be anywhere.

Others said Calley, who was charged with killing 109 civilians, shouldn’t have been singled out.

“Calley, he didn’t kill the 109 all by himself. There was a company there,” said Herbert Carter, a soldier from Houston.

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“We went through the village. We didn’t see any VC (Viet Cong). People came out of their hootches (huts) and the guys shot them down and then burned the hootches, or burned the hootches and then shot the people when they came out. … It went on like this all day. Some of the guys seemed to be having a lot of fun doing it.”

Calley claimed in his defense that he was just following orders, but was later convicted in 1971 for the murders of 22 people during the rampage.

He was sentenced to life in prison but served only three days because President Nixon ordered his sentence reduced, which later was ruled as three years of house arrest.

After his release, Calley married, worked at his father-in-law’s jewelry store in Columbus, Georgia, and had a son.

He later got divorced and moved to Atlanta, where he avoided publicity.

Calley broke his silence in 2009 when he spoke to the Kiwanis Club in Columbus near Fort Benning, where he had been court-martialed, NBC News reported .

“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” Calley said. “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”

with Post wires

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