Every time the Americans passed this village they would not help them with rebuilding any of their camp. This was common for troops to not interact with civilians at this time.
It was believed that the Vietnam army was keeping supplies somewhere near by. Men from the Charlie Company found a weapon cash and destroyed it in My Lai. This sparked a killing spree with all of the troops and before anyone knew it, there were one hundred and sixty men firing at unarmed civilians in My Lai.
Some thing similar happened like this In Platoon. It was when Charlie Sean's unit was on patrol and came across what they thought was food for the Viet Cong Army.
They killed some people and destroyed all the rice bins in their town. Also, they torched the village people's houses.
In Casualties of War a similar scene takes place, which depicts the events at My Lai. The Company of soldiers goes into a town and kidnaps a girl. They call her an undercover Vietnam Soldier. They take her and rape her repeatedly then end up killing her. This is similar to the brutality of what happened in the village of My Lai.
In all three cases, the leadership roles were not played as they should have been. They could have not touched any civilians at My Lai, Charlie's company could have not been so brutal on the civilians, and the soldiers in Casualties of War were led by an inferior leader, which led to the unit's downfall.
There was a lot of military ignorance at this time. A crime was hard to commit someone of with only visual evidence. A lot of higher-ranking people were racist and would be bias in their decision if the soldiers were brought to court on their actions. In Casualties of War the man has to go outside of his rank and tell a Chaplin to get a fair investigation.
Today this goes on but not as much. There is the occasional accidental killings of someone in Iraq or Afghanistan. People don't go on killing sprees like they did in My Lai at all anymore though. We have become more used to war and adopted the policies of the Geneva Convention. It is a war crime to attack an unarmed civilian and the troops try to get used to that.
