Word: forte
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Conversely, a number of lawyers contend that a military court may be biased in favor of Calley. The ten members of the court-martial, five or more of whom will ultimately decide Calley's fate, have already been chosen by Major General Orwin C. Talbott, commanding general at Fort Benning, Ga. All career officers at Fort Benning, they range in rank from captain to lieutenant colonel; five are in the infantry, two in the Signal Corps and three in other branches of the Army...
...former infantryman in the same Americal Division, claimed last week that he counted "60 dead bodies?women, children and maybe a few old and decrepit men" after U.S. troops had shot up a village 130 miles south of My Lai in early 1968. A Viet Nam veteran at Fort Benning, Ga., who would not give his name said he and other G.I.s had taken three Viet Cong prisoners up in a helicopter. "We told them to talk or we'd throw them out. The first guy wouldn't talk, so we tossed him out. The second wouldn't say anything...
TIME Correspondent Ken Danforth interviewed Calley before the Army announced that the lieutenant would be court-martialed on charges of premeditated murder. Danforth saw him again at Fort Benning last week, but this time was not allowed to speak to him. "He could communicate only with a gesture of recognition," Danforth reports. "He shuffled papers nervously, trying to look busy at his practically empty desk. Under the circumstances, he seemed reasonably cheerful." Calley is attached to the staff of the deputy post commander, Colonel Talton Long, designing plans for the colonel's parking lot and working on an infantry museum...
...next morning, on orders whose origin is still unclear, C Company took on a special assignment. It was described last week by Sergeant Michael A. Bernhardt, another C Company veteran. At Fort Dix, N.J., he went before TV cameras accompanied by a base press officer. As Bernhardt told it, the company commander (Captain Ernest Medina, now stationed at Fort Benning) assembled hk men and announced that the Task Force was to destroy My Lai and its inhabitants...
...Many questions about My Lai remain unanswered. Who had ordered the attack on the hamlet, which was apparently designated as a "free-fire" zone? What exactly were the orders? The answers may come out in a court-martial; Fort Benning Commander Major General Orwin Talbott is expected to announce a decision this week on whether Lieut. Galley is to be tried. Even so, time has already erased much of the evidence...