A/N: A brief explanation of the style- it's basically going to be interviews with a variety of people, each giving their perspective of what happened, along with various findings that Xin comes up with, copies of important documents, and so on. Each piece of evidence will be followed by Ichizami breaking it down to its vital parts. By the end, the court martial and its results will occur.
I'm aware that the format is unorthodox enough to possibly throw some off. I can only ask you to bear with it long enough for a decent whole to be formed.
FROM THE CASE BOOK OF YURI ICHIZAMI
ADMIRAL JEONG JEONG COURT MARTIAL INITIAL NOTES AND EVIDENCE
INTERVIEW #1, CORPORAL SOU
Interviewer: Corporal, hello. I'm Ichizami, and this is my assistant Xin. Please, be seated.
[Sou sits]
I: Do you have any objection to having Xin record this interview?
Sou: No.
I: Alright. The purpose of this is to provide the court with a fuller undertstanding of what happened in My Lai. The Fire Sages have decided that the eyewitness testimony of a soldier who was actually on the ground would be illuminating.
S: I understand.
I: So, in your own words, what happened, Corporal?
S: Well...
I: Yes?
S: I'm just not sure how to do this, sir. I'm, er...
I: Just tell me the story, just like you'd tell a buddy in the barracks.
S: Alright. Well, you gotta understand, sir, we'd been getting ambushed for years in and around My Lai. Local guerillas would just stake out the road and wait for us to come along. It got so that they'd use the same hiding spots and positions over and over again, you know? So we'd approach some bend in the road, and we'd be saying to ourselves, "We got ambushed in this exact spot three times in the last two weeks. Everyone, light up and prepare for contact." And more often than not, we'd be right and we'd have to fight our way through it. It was beyond ridiculous. We conquered the province years ago and we couldn't march from base to base without passing through a warzone.
I: I had no idea things were like that. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Go on.
S: Well, when the Admiral transferred landside, he didn't like what he saw. Within, I think, a month of taking command of the 3rd Infantry, he took very proactive steps in dealing with the Earth Kingdom rebels.
I: For example?
S: Ah, at first the Admiral had us establish permanent outposts strung along the mountain range between our bases. He wanted to post artillery up there so that whenever a convoy was attacked we could rain fire on 'em in a heartbeat.
[Sou laughs]
S: We spent a week hauling those catapults up those mountains. I never bitched so hard in my life. And it never worked out! That's what got to us. Those villagers waited for us to put in the hard work, and then undermined our posts. We got to watch our fire support tumble down the mountainside.
[Sou laughs]
S: That was messed up. But yeah, the Admiral didn't stop there. He ordered more vigorous patrolling along frequently used roads, he spent money out of pocket for better arms and armor, he authorized us to kill suspected insurgents as a first resort. Basically, he turned our whole attitude around. Instead of going out the gate wondering if we were going to make it to our destination, we started betting how many rebels we'd bag.
I: I'm sorry; you were authorized to kill civilians?
S: If they were hostile or threatening, yeah.
I: By what standard?
S: What?
I: What criteria did the suspect need to meet before he was labelled hostile? Did he need to be found with a weapon, did he need to be actively attacking, or...
S: It was a gut check. Say you meet an old man on the road, and a few minutes later you're under attack. You figure, he might have sent a signal so that they'd know we were coming. So if you see him again on your next patrol, maybe you play it safe. And armed or unarmed didn't factor into it. Earthbenders don't need swords.
I: I understand. Did this aggressive policy work?
S: Mostly. We still had contact a lot, but the intensity was nowhere near what it was before the Admiral came.
I: Alright. Tell me what happened at My Lai.
S: Uh, the week before we went in, Sergeant Zhu sent the word to prepare for a big mission. So I go and check my soldiers' gear, make sure no one was missing anything vital or had broken equipment. Once I verified we were good to go, Zhu said that the Admiral was planning to strike at a rebel stronghold.
I: Did he mention that the stronghold was the village of My Lai?
S: Um... not till two days before.
I: Alright. What happened when you went in?
S: We timed the assault for the early morning, when any honest villagers would have left for market. The Admiral said that anyone remaining in the village was either an enemy combatant or a sympathiser. We went in hot, like we were on the front lines.
I: How many casualties did you suffer?
S: None of my boys got hurt. Neither did anyone in my platoon. I heard that we had one dead in third platoon and another three wounded from a booby trap on the way in.
I: So no one was fighting back.
[Sou glares]
S: This interview is over.
I: Coporal, I'm just-
S: I know what you were just trying to do, sir. You're trying to paint the Admiral as some kind of war criminal. We heard on the grapevine some slick-as-shit civilian was trying to nail the Admiral for what we did there.
I: We need a clear understanding of what actually happened before we can accuse or exonerate him of anything.
S: Alright then. We went in, we took out the enemy, and we went home almost entirely unscathed. I'm very sorry you can't recognize that as a success, Mr. Ichizami. You should be giving him a medal, not a court martial.
CONCLUSIONS BASED ON TESTIMONY
-Corporal Sou showed a shocking ignorance of the regulations concerning treatment of the inhabitants of the newly acquired colonies, ignorance which appears to be universal in the Fire Nation army.
-His testimony indicates that Admiral Jeong Jeong seems to have left the categorization of enemy combatants in the hands of the rank and file soldier, resulting in an environment where any civilian could become a "valid" target on a whim.
-Admiral Jeong Jeong's strategic competence failed him, as his assessment that "all honest villagers would be at the market", thus leaving behind only the insurgency, proved to be mistaken. Xin's research indicates that the assault took place on an Earth Kingdom holiday, thus the local market would have been deserted. Willful ignorance of local customs a possible contribution to the My Lai massacre.
-Frustration omnipresent in ranks. Admiral Jeong Jeong's solutions merely replaced it with aggression untempered by discipline.
-Corporal Sou unlikely to appear as witness for the prosecution.
