Progress on My Lai

As anyone following my twitter feed noticed, this is My Lai week as I prepare to write my first two dissertation chapters.  I'll be trying to get the the first chapter on My Lai and the reactions of those present to the horrific events there on March 16, 1968, and part of my note-taking enterprise has been to tweet as I find interesting or important items in various books and documents.  Yesterday's reactions to Seymour Hersh's 1970 Harper's Magazine article were quite positive, as were those to Captain Jordan J. Praust's 1970 Military Law Review article.

Also important to my preparations to write have been Rives M. Duncan's dissertation, "What went Right at My Lai: An Analysis of the Roles of "Habitus" and Character in Lawful Disobedience".  Temple University seems to have been a veritable hotbed of My Lai scholarship during the 1990s, as one of yesterday's twitter responses from Pauline Kaurine revealed her dissertation "Agency and Character: A View of Action and Agency".  Neither History per se, but provide some good tools for examining how people at My Lai reacted, and even raise questions for how we judge their actions.  There's a definite conflict in interpretation between the two: Rives places the emphasis on individual, preexisting moral and professional mental frameworks, while Kaurine focuses on the nature of military character based on trust, honor, and oath-taking.  I'm not quite sure how to resolve the conflict, but both dissertations have important contributions to the discussion of why different people acted in the way that they did at My Lai.

The ideas in both intersect with the usual suspects, and I'm not talking about Calley or Medina.  Paul Meadlo seems to play a pivotal role in any discussion of what happened, as do Michael Bernhardt, Mike Terry, Gregory Olsen, Hugh Thompson, and Larry Colburn.  Rives Duncan argues that the social setting of Charlie company helps explain why some soldiers killed, raped, and pillaged at My Lai, while others didn't.  Duncan relies on Pierre Bourdieu's theories to explain why this happen, especially that of fields of power.  The military structure of power and rank form the social topology that determines which agents are influential in the social field.  The cultural capital of those agents also exerts influence on the social field - veteran combat soldiers, drill instructors, company commanders have more cultural capital to spend in influencing the social setting in which they operate, especially when dealing with inexperienced soldiers.

Duncan argues that social fields have their own mass and inertia, making them slow to change.  Change in an established social field can be so slow that it is virtually unnoticed when it occurs.  This is part of what happened in Vietnam - the values and norms of the soldiers changed as their experience of guerrilla war and untrustworthy leadership rubbed against the edges of the regular army's habitus.  Problems arose in Vietnam partially because the values and norms of the soldiers changed, but the written codification of how they were expected to behave did not - the laws of war did not change to match the environment that soldiers found themselves in.  Expected soldierly behavior in Vietnam changed from what the formal military culture indicated it should be.

The result was that the troops in Charlie Company who did not participate in atrocities at My Lai were the outliers, not the ones who engaged in rape and murder.  Duncan believes that nonparticipants didn't due to various forms of isolation from the rest of Ernest Medina's troops that day.  The isolation of nonparticipants was social, religious, geographic, and professional - these are the factors that Duncan argues led some soldiers not to participate in atrocities in My Lai.  Unfortunately, nonparticipation in atrocities further separated those soldiers from the group, and may have put their lives in further jeopardy because they lost the trust and loyalty of their comrades.  One example of this predates the massacre - according to his testimony before the Peers Commission, Dennis Bunning had used his large size to stop rapes several times before March 16, 1968, but other members of Charlie Company threatened to kill him if he continued.

Duncan identified several types of factors that lead soldiers to resist unlawful orders - personal factors, situational factors, and "other" factors.  Personal factors include strong religious faith that instills a moral code so ingrained that is seems normal or natural to the individual.  People act on these moral codes without conscious thought because they are practiced in real life, not just theories, to the point that they may be seen as just part of a society's values.  Situational factors include where the person is when the illegal order is given, and how far the order deviates from normal acceptable practices.  An order to kill unarmed women and children fits this category, as does being on the peripheries of the action (which might allow soldiers to resist an order without appearing to).  Other factors that Duncan identified as being part of soldiers' resistance to unlawful orders included education, maturity, age, and experience in the military.

Some soldiers were able to fully or partially resist orders to shoot civilians at My Lai due to their location in the village - Bunning, Olsen, Carter, Maples, Dursi, and Bernhardt all benefited from their relative distance from Lt. Calley and their comrades who were shooting civilians.  Chronological distance also helped some soldiers more easily avoid unlawful orders from Calley.  Bernhardt and Partsch were delayed while they examined an ammunition box while the rest of 1st Platoon assaulted the village.  When they did enter My Lai, Bernhardt did so with his rifle slung - he didn't actively resist orders to shoot, but was also not in a position to kill.  Similarly, the delayed entry of 3rd Platoon kept it from participating in atrocities as much as 1st and 2nd platoons.  Some members of 3rd Platoon were horrified by what they saw - Leonard Gonzalez notably vomited on encountering the bodies.

Other soldiers used tactics of avoidance, including leaving the group, shooting animals, or misunderstanding orders to resist at My Lai.  Duncan reports that LaCross, Lee, and Pendleton shot only at livestock, which gave the appearance that they were participating in the slaughter, but kept them from shooting innocent civilians.  Ronald Grzesik later claimed that he didn't understand what Calley meant when told to "finish off" a group of villagers that he was guarding.  Others' , like Sergeant Isaiah Cowen simply wandered off.  Gregory Olsen's M60 machine gun kept jamming, which allowed him to stop and move off to the flanks of his platoon to avoid killing.

James Dursi took a greater risk by refusing a direct order from Calley to open fire, saying that he was willing to go to jail over it.  He led his team away from the lieutenant to avoid getting caught up in the action.  Robert Maples similarly refused to use his M60 on a line of villagers that Calley wanted killed, ultimately dropping the weapon, which Calley seized and used anyway, and event corroborated by Mike Terry.  Bunning, who had earlier stopped rapes in progress, refused his squad leader's order to open fire, and found himself moved to guard the flank like Olsen.

These acts of resistance are primarily passive or negative in nature - the men involved did little to stop their fellows from murdering or raping the residents of My Lai.  Only Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson answered the call of duty to put a halt to the killing in My Lai.  After numerous attempts to contact the ground forces and complaints to other helicopters that were recorded in Duc Pho and Cu Chi, Thompson landed his scout helicopter and confronted Calley, ordering his door gunner and crew chief to open fire if American troops moved to kill more civilians.  Beyond this, Thompson entered a bunker to retrieve women and children hiding there to save them from grenades, and waded into a ditch with Larry Colburn to rescue a small child.  Thompson even cajoled the crews of the helicopter gunships over My Lai to land and evacuated some of the wounded.  Not satisfied with this, he filed a formal complaint with his superior officers, coming close to insubordination while doing so, and discussed the massacre with 11th Brigade chaplain Captain Carl Cresswell.

Duncan argues that individual habitus overrode any military training for the men that resisted participating in Charlie Company's acts in My Lai, saying that it took great courage for any soldier to disobey a direct order in combat.  Paul Meadlo, one of the more interesting figures of the massacre and its aftermath is an example of those whose character led them to follow authority above other considerations.  His initial response at My Lai was to gather and guard civilian prisoners and play with the children to keep them occupied - he believed that this seemingly normal procedure was what Calley had intended.  As a result, Meadlo was surprised when ordered to kill the villagers that he was guarding.  As the day progressed, he said he didn't want anything to do with the killing, but Calley pressed him to do it. Shooting civilians when ordered to by Calley until overwhelmed by the horror of it, Meadlo still had a distinct sense of morals, as evidenced in his candid television interviews, in which he was matter of fact and didn't shirk responsibility for his role in the massacre.  He testified that his understanding was that if he disobeyed orders in combat, he could be summarily executed, or jailed at hard labor.  Meadlo also contended that based on his interactions with veteran soldiers, his understanding of the war in Vietnam was that permissible behavior was different in guerrilla wars because everyone could be the enemy.

Gregory Olsen, Mike Terry, Hugh Thompson, and Michael Bernhardt also stand out as soldiers whose individual characters played a large role in their actions at My Lai.  Olsen and Terry were devout Mormons, and used to being seen as different as a result.  Duncan contends that religion was a determining factor in both Olsen's behavior and how people viewed him.  Mormons grew up living in a culture that was generally opposed to them, but adhered to their faith anyway.  That experience gave Olsen and Terry practice in taking a stand for their own values.  Olsen had previously expressed his concerns about the morals and disciplines of his comrades when they abused captives, and acted to avoid the carnage in My Lai.  He later testified that he saw no plausible way to report violations of the Geneva Conventions during the attack.

Terry was devout enough that he refused to use profanity even when quoting others under oath.  He was quite willing to be considered different, and other soldiers remember him as prone to questioning everything in order to understand the purpose of what he was told to do.  At My Lai, Terry made a gut-wrenching decision to kill severely wounded civilians who had no hope of receiving medical aid, and was tormented by that decision afterward.  In this case, a soldier technically violated the laws of war, but made what he believed was the most moral choice in a bad situation by acting to alleviate pain and suffering.

Religious motives are also frequently assigned to Hugh Thompson, who was a Baptist in the process of studying to become a confirmed Episcopalian.  Even before My Lai, Thompson was seen as a pilot who was willing to aggressively fly to fight the enemy, but would only fire if he saw a weapon and had a clear shot.  Coming from the deep South, Thompson was sometimes described as being racially prejudiced, but still acting like a professional.  These attributes were accompanied by an almost idealistic view of the American character - he reportedly said that he couldn't abide what happened at My Lai because Americans were supposed to be the "good guys", and didn't do those sorts of things.

Like Paul Meadlo, Michael Bernhardt represents another outlier.  He was alienated from Charlie Company from the beginning, joining the group after it had been together for awhile.  Bernhardt later testified that he just didn't understand the motivations of his comrades in the company, who were described as average soldiers, or grunts.  They were a group quite different from his own experience - he had attended LaSalle Military Academy, and attended summer training conducted by Green Berets, and received LRRP training before joining Charlie Company.  Bernhardt was a STRAC soldier - he did things by the book, and believed that the purpose of the war was not just to kill the enemy, but to induce them to stop fighting.  He saw My Lai as having no strategic purpose, and being counter-productive because it would push Vietnamese to support the communists.

Culpability and War Crimes

While review my My Lai materials for the first chapter of my dissertation, I came across Brigadier General Howard H. Cooksey's response to Tom Glen, who served in the 4/3rd Infantry, 11th Brigade, Americal Division.  Glen had written MACV Commander Creighton Abrams as he left Vietnam for home about abuses of Vietnamese by American soldiers.  Cooksey's comments get to the core of my dissertation since I'm writing more about witnesses to atrocities than the alleged perpetrators:

It is the duty of every American soldier to ensure that [the Geneva Conventions] are upheld, and the responsibility of violations rests in a certain measure upon those who do not report violations they have witnessed.  You imply that this goes on at other than the individual level; yet, there is always a higher headquarters to which violations can be referred and channels exist to which these reports can be made.  You ask: "Does his presence in a combat zone and his possession of a rifle absolve a soldier from moral responsibility?" The answer to that is, of course, No.  But neither is a person who keeps silent when he witnesses a war crimes absolved of responsibility for that crime because he did not actively participate in it.*

This is certainly the correct legal, moral, and ethical response, but when considered in relation to My Lai, seems a bit naive.  Hugh Thompson and Chaplain CPT Creswell both reported the massacre to higher authority, and radio intercepts of the conversations among the helicopter pilots were made, but the officers of Task Force Barker were successful in their cover-up of what happened at My Lai.  Only letters to Congress and media coverage brought any action.  The dozens of other men who witnessed the massacre, including those who refused to take part, did nothing to report the massacre to the authorities, and themselves took part in hushing things up when COL Oran K. Henderson and LTC Frank Barker conducted their sham of an investigation of their own units.  What I'm trying to get at is how those guys rationalized their noninvolvement and lack of intervention when they witnessed what were clearly war crimes.

Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim, Four Hours in My Lai. New York: Viking, 1992.

Online Collection of Soviet War Posters at the University of Nottingham

Manuscripts and Special Collections at the University of Nottingham (in collaboration with Web Technologies and the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies), have created a website for the display of its collection of Soviet war posters, curated by Cynthia Marsh, Emeritus Professor of Russian Drama and Literature: http://windowsonwar.nottingham.ac.uk/


The online exhibition examines the creation, intentions and use of the posters in great detail. Each poster is placed within ‘stories’ to provide context and simple routes through the site in a horizontal layout echoing the experience when visiting a real exhibition. They are featured full screen with hotspots and side panels providing information on the war context, design, artists and writers involved in their creation, giving a broad historical commentary. Audio (readings of the verse featured on some of the posters) and video (interviews with various members of the team) are also being added.

Eleonora Nicchiarelli
Digital Development Officer
Manuscripts and Special Collections
University of Nottingham
King's Meadow Campus
Lenton Lane
Nottingham
NG7 2NR
Tel: 0115 84 68649

Email: eleonora.nicchiarelli@nottingham.ac.uk

Jane White: Rich Colleges, Poor Professors

This is a future I rather dread is a possibility.  From the article:

Melissa Bruninga-Matteau is a single mother who relies on food stamps and Medicaid to survive. Her take-home pay is $900 a month, of which $750 goes to rent and $40 goes to gas. Where does she work? If you're thinking a fast food chain, think again. She's a PhD who teaches humanities courses at a state college in Arizona.

"I find it horrifying that someone who stands in front of college classes and teaches is on welfare," she told the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2012. The only thing worse than being an underpaid professional is shouldering an even higher debt load than your average college graduate. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the total tab for a typical doctoral program will range from $242,000-$300,000.

Part of Bruninga-Mattaeu's dilemma is driven by shrinking state budgets. But it isn't just the public sector that's squeezing academic pay. Elite private schools have saved money by increasing the number of adjunct professors, who because their jobs aren't permanent or full-time their teaching load is below the minimum required to qualify for health care coverage, retirement benefits or unemployment benefits. Incredibly, the majority of professors in the U.S. are benefit-deprived. According to the American Association of University Professors, 70 percent of college faculty work outside the tenure track. So they likely wind up working at multiple employers but still getting no benefits.

Jane White: Rich Colleges, Poor Professors

This Week's Reading

Most of this is review and note-taking, not new reading, but I have to get through it FAST!

Books at USF (Go Bulls!)

Anderson, David L. 1998. Facing My Lai: moving beyond the massacre. Lawrence, Kan: University Press of Kansas.

French, Peter A. 1972. Individual and collective responsibility: massacre at My Lai. Cambridge, Mass: Schenkman Pub. Co.

Hersh, Seymour M. 1970. My lai 4: a report on the massacre and its aftermath. New York: Random House.

Hersh, Seymour M. 1972. Cover-up: [the Army's secret investigation of the massacre at My lai 4. New York: Random House.

Oliver, Kendrick. 2006. The My Lai massacre in American history and memory. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Peers, William R. 1979. The My Lai inquiry. New York: Norton.

United States, William R. Peers, Joseph Goldstein, Burke Marshall, and Jack Schwartz. 1976. The My Lai Massacre and its cover-up: beyond the reach of law? : The Peers Commission report. New York: Free Press.

My Books

Trent Angers, The Forgotten Hero of My Lai: The Hugh Thompson Story. Lafayette, LA: Acadian House, 1999.

Michal R. Belknap, The Vietnam War on Trial: The My Lai Massacre and the Court-Martial of Lieutenant Calley. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002.

Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim, Four Hours in My Lai. New York: Viking, 1992.

James S. Olson and Randy Roberts, My Lai: A Brief History with Documents (previously planned title was Dark Mirror: A Documentary History of the My Lai Massacre). Boston: Bedford Books, 1998.

ILL Books

Louise K. Barnett, Atrocity and American Military Justice in Southeast Asia: Trial by Army. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Journal Articles

Mark D. Carson, "F. Edward Hebert and the Congressional Investigation of the My Lai Massacre," Louisiana History 37:1 (Winter 1996), pp. 61-79.

Claude Cookman, "An American Atrocity: The My Lai Massacre Concretized in a Victim's Face." Journal of American History 94 (June 2007), pp. 154-62.

Jesse Frank Frosch, "Anatomy of a Massacre," Playboy, July 1970, pp. 139-39, 184-92.

Seymour Hersh, "The Story Everyone Ignored." Columbia Journalism Review, VIII:4 (Winter 1969-70), pp. 55-58.

Captain Jordan J. Paust, "My Lai and Vietnam: Norms, Myths and Leader Responsibility." Military Law Review, Vol. 57 (Summer 1972), pp. 99-187.

Hugh Thompson and Ron Ridenhour, "Vietnam Testimony: Two Veterans Recount Their Roles at My Lai." Louisiana Cultural Vistas (Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities), Winter 1995-96, pp. 22-29.

Col. William V. Wilson, "I Had Prayed to God that this thing was Fiction", American Heritage, February 1990, pp. 44-52.

Dissertations

John H. Daily, "Dimensions of Political Attitudes: A Q-Technique Study of Public Reactions to the Calley Verdict." Ph.D. dissertation, Political Science(?), Kent State, 1973. 234 pp. 74-07303.

Rives M. Duncan, "What went Right at My Lai: An Analysis of the Roles of "Habitus" and Character in Lawful Disobedience". Ph.D. dissertation, Religion, Temple University, 1997. 185 pp. DA 9813493.

Documents

Report of the Department of the Army Review of the Preliminary Investigations into the My Lai Incident.

"Autobiography of Charles E. Hutto."

Testimony of SGT (E-5) Lawrence Charles La Croix. Sergeant La Croix was questioned by Col. William V. Wilson, 2 May 1969, at Fort Carson, Colorado.

Testimony of SP 4 William F. Doherty. Doherty was questioned by Col. William V. Wilson, 5 May 1969, at Fort Hood, Texas.

Testimony of SGT E-5 Michael A. Bernhardt. Sergeant Bernhardt was questioned by Col. William V. Wilson, 8 May 1969, in Washington, D.C.

Testimony of CPT Robert L. Hauck. Captain Hauck was questioned by Col. William V. Wilson, 12 May 1969, at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Testimony of Captain Ernest L. Medina. Captain Medina was questioned by Col. William V. Wilson, 13 May 1969, at Fort Benning.

Testimony of SSG Manuel Lopez. Sergeant Lopez was questioned by Col. William V. Wilson, 13 May 1969, at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Testimony of Major Charles C. Calhoun. Major Calhoun, who had been XO/S3 of Task Force Barker, was questioned by Col. William V. Wilson, 19 May 1969, in Washington, D.C

Testimony of SSG (E-6) L. G. Bacon. Sergeant Bacon, who had been squad leader of 2d Squad, 1st Platoon, C Company, 1/20 Infantry, was questioned by Col. William V. Wilson, 22 May 1969, at Fort Jackson. South Carolina.

Testimony of SFC Isaiah Cowan. Sergeant Cowan was questioned by Col. William V. Wilson, 23 May 1969, at Fort Jackson, South Carolina.

Testimony of COL Oran K. Henderson. Col. Henderson was questioned by Col. William V. Wilson, 26 May 1969, in Washington, D.C.

Testimony of SSG David Mitchell. Sergeant Mitchell was questioned by Col. William V. Wilson, 26 May 1969, in Washington, D.C.

Testimony of 1LT William L. Calley, Jr. Lt. Calley was questioned by Col. Norman T. Stanfield, 9 June 1969, in Washington, D.C.

Testimony of John H. Paul. Mr. Paul, who had been a radio operator assigned to C Company, was questioned by Col. William V. Wilson, 16 June 1969, in Washington, D.C.

Testimony of CW2 Dan R. Millians. Millians, who had been a UH-1B pilot in B Company, 123d Aviation Battalion, was questioned by Col. William V. Wilson, 18 June 1969, in Washington, D.C.

Testimony of PFC Lawrence M. Colburn. PFC Colburn was questioned by Col. William V. Wilson, 19 June 1969, in Washington, D.C.

Testimony of CPT Stephen J. Gamble. Captain Gamble, who had commanded D Battery, 6/11 Artillery, was questioned by Col. William V. Wilson, 23 June 1969, in Washington, D.C.

Testimony of Andress Delgado. Delgado, who had been a grenadier in 3d Squad, 2d Platoon, C Company, was questioned by Col. William V. Wilson, 10 July 1969, in Uvalde, Texas.

Testimony of Frederick Joseph Widmer. Mr. Widmer, who had been Captain Medina's radio operator, was questioned by Col. William V. Wilson, 15 July 1969, in New Kensington, Pennsylvania.

Testimony of Paul D. Meadlo. Mr. Meadlo was questioned by Col. William V. Wilson, 16 July 1969, in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Dissertation Ruminations

With just over six months left to write before I time out of the program next May, I've finally settled on what looks like a solid outline for the nine chapters (including the Introduction and Conclusion), in three sections.  The first section of two chapters, which focuses on the extreme reactions to war crimes on Vietnam, is due to my committee by the end of June.  That's a fast, but workable time frame for around sixty pages of text - I'll definitely have to stay on schedule to have any chance of getting it done, so it's a good thing I've only got two online courses to deal with over the summer.

I'm looking at the reactions of soldiers to alleged war crimes that they witnesses in Vietnam, which means that while the events are important, what I'm most interested in is how the soldiers reacted to what they saw or heard.  Of necessity, that means I'm mostly focused on company grade officers and enlisted men; there will be few officers above the rank of Major in my analysis unless I'm discussing things they experienced while younger.  William Westmoreland and Creighton Abrams will be unlikely to make a significant appearance in my dissertation.

For my first section that means that I'm going to be dealing with the elephants in the room: My Lai, the Winter Soldier Investigation, and the Citizens Commissions of Inquiry into United States War Crimes in Indochina. The My Lai Massacre hangs over the entire conversation of American atrocities in Vietnam due to its scope, the attempted cover-up in the 11th Brigade, the actions of Hugh Thompson's helicopter crew to end the violence, and then the protracted investigations and trials afterward.  Reactions of the soldiers present range from Calley's assertion that he was just following orders, to Hugh Thompson ordering his crew to open fire on American troops if they continued to fire on the villagers, to Paul Meadlo telling Calley that God was punishing him for his role at My Lai after he lost a foot to a mine.

Winter Soldier and CCI represent another type of extreme reaction to alleged war crimes in Vietnam - concerted political and propaganda efforts to use reports of atrocities by American troops to end end the war, but while protecting individual soldiers from potential prosecution.  While some of the events soldiers claimed they saw or heard about appear to have been invented, the majority of the allegations were investigated by the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division.  In the case of the Winter Soldier/Vietnam Veterans Against the War claims, most could not be confirmed because the soldiers who testified at the Winter Soldier hearings refused to cooperate with investigators.  These soldiers gave two primary reasons for their noncooperation: their attorneys advised them not to to avoid self-incrimination, or because they blamed political and military leaders.  Several indicated that they would only provide details to the Secretary of Defense, or the President himself.  What that means is that we'll likely never know whether the majority of the events described in the Winter Soldier investigation occurred, but the reason is not as simple as critics argue (that they didn't happen).

So the first part in my dissertation will look at the varying reactions to war crimes in Vietnam, and in the motives for action and inaction that we see in these three events.  The second and third parts of my dissertation are trickier, as I try to describe and analyze "normative" reactions to witnessing atrocities (part II) , and other efforts to report alleged war crimes to Congress, the media, and the Executive branch for other purposes (Part III).

Obviously, my reading and organizing this week are going to focus on My Lai.  More on that as I work on the topic.  The first step is reading the Peers Commission reports, followed by a trip to the library at my alma mater later in the week to pick up some key references (the alumni association membership is handy after all).

Camouflaging the Chimera

Camouflaging the Chimera

By Yusef Komunyakaa

We tied branches to our helmets.

We painted our faces & rifles

with mud from a riverbank,

blades of grass hung from the pockets

of our tiger suits. We wove

ourselves into the terrain,

content to be a hummingbird’s target.

We hugged bamboo & leaned

against a breeze off the river,

slow-dragging with ghosts

from Saigon to Bangkok,

with women left in doorways

reaching in from America.

We aimed at dark-hearted songbirds.

In our way station of shadows

rock apes tried to blow our cover,

throwing stones at the sunset. Chameleons

crawled our spines, changing from day

to night: green to gold,

gold to black. But we waited

till the moon touched metal,

till something almost broke

inside us. VC struggled

with the hillside, like black silk

wrestling iron through grass.

We weren’t there. The river ran

through our bones. Small animals took refuge

against our bodies; we held our breath,

ready to spring the L-shaped

ambush, as a world revolved

under each man’s eyelid.