I wonder why Michael Bilton wrote this book 24 years after the massacre in My Lai, I don’t understand what the point of it was. But I can have an educated guess, In this extract it seems like he is making excuses for the American army, but also taking the mick out of the higher ranking officers for having letting things slide so to speak. I don’t know what nationality he is, or even if he was alive in the Vietnam war which raises some questions such as where did he obtain his information from? And is it reliable?
Michael Bilton’s book was published in 1992 – which is 24 years after the massacre in My Lai. This leads me to wonder why it was published so long after the incident of which it was written about, and who is Michael Bilton the source doesn’t give us any information about the author at all. Did he visit My Lai? It’s possible but he could have collected the information from unreliable sources as well.
His purpose is mixed in my opinion, in one hand he’s taking the mick out of the US soldiers but he’s also providing excuses about why the war happened, and why the soldiers acted as they did. I think the audience this book was meant for is Americans who are studying their history and other countries probably young adults, because it shows Michael Bilton making lots of excuses about why the Americans lost the war, and even why they went to war in the first place. It criticised the soldiers ways of operating.
People were drafted in the army without a choice, black men, and poor white me were sent to Vietnam, whereas well educated white men could put off their tour of duty – which only lasted one year – if they were at university or doing a degree or something similar, it all seems very unfair.
I agree with this interpretation because the soldiers were quite dumb and were let into the army only because they needed additional troops to make up the lacking numbers. Soldiers normally died in the first few months, and just as a soldier was beginning to gain experience in combat they were sent home, and new recruits were sent – who didn’t know what they were doing. There is a serious lack of evidence because this is only a small extract out of the entire books, and in the rest of the book Bilton’s opinion might differ compared to this extract. The information is sketchy at best since we have no idea if he ever went to Vietnam when the war was occurring, and we don’t even know if he was alive in the war, which leads me to wonder where this information originated from. There is no hint or interviews and neither does it mention any names in the extract.
I don’t agree with the fact that Michael Bilton says every soldier who took the test in the war time army is dumb some of them could have been very clever and skilled in combat. I don’t agree with the fact that ‘Soldiers were most likely to die in the first month.’ Because there is contradicting evidence that says the large majority of deaths took place in the first six months, not one.
I think there are many reasons to agree and disagree with this extract, however I think that I would say I agree because there is more supporting evidence for the low test scores, and the inexperienced men the things that I agree with far outweigh the things that I disagree with. Altogether though I really would prefer to read the whole book before putting forward my opinion, we are relying on a very small set of information but I believe that Michael Bilton wrote this book because he sympathised with the people who were massacred in My Lai for no reason. And they deserved better so he wants to try and focus on the bad points of what the Americans did.
Laura M.