How did you feel about that? In November 1970, the M Lai trials started and Hugh Thompson testified against William Calley. You started out on an OH-23 scout helicopter? Some peoplepublicly stated that they felt Thompson was the only soldier at My Lai who should be punished (for turning his weapons on fellow American troops) and wanted to see him court-martialed for his actions at My Lai. That seemed suicidal to me, going out with next to no backup or firepower. But that was not to be the case. William Calley, the officer in charge of Charlie Company, ordered American soldiers to round up the villagers and open fire. Hugh Thompson reported the massacre to his commanding officer. Out of the blue, our unit was called out onto the tarmac for an awards and decoration ceremony. Then he assumed the Army initiated an investigation. Then He Assassinated a US President. And when Thomson reported the horrific actions, the Army tried to cover up the M Lai massacre. before the subcommittee, and then refused to release the transcripts of the testimony. ' Thompson recalled. Thompson was buried in Lafayette, Louisiana, with full military honors, including a three-volley salute and a helicopter flyover. hbbd``b`:$WXWkZ ["|Ab b:H2@#H@ ( None did. Everybodys heard of the My Lai massacre March 16, 1968, 50 years ago today but not many know about the man who stopped it: Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot. Hugh Clowers Thompson Jr. (April 15, 1943 - January 6, 2006) was a United States Army Major, and a former warrant officer in the 123rd Aviation Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Division.He is credited with ending the M Lai Massacre of the South Vietnamese village known as Sn M on March 16, 1968, alongside and hierarchically above Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn. The villagers offered no resistance as U.S. soldiers shoved them into a ditch and opened fire with machine guns. He is best known for his role in stopping the My Lai Massacre, in which a group of US Army soldiers tortured and killed several hundred unarmed Vietnamese civilians, mutilating their bodies after they had been murdered. Many fellow GIs still dont think you did the right thing? I testified in the trials of Henderson, Medina and Calley. For his interference. Indeed, for a time, Thompson himself feared court-martial. It was fresh enough that things hadnt changed much. Having redeemed himself for other peoples mistakes, his heroic act was written in US Military history. Some soldiers even jumped on the water buffalos, riding them around while trying to kill them with their bayonets. Glenn had a visual on some sort of movement in the ditch, so Hugh landed, and Glenn and I got out. Thompson continued to fly and was hit eight times, in four of which incidents the aircraft was lost. I looked at them and the first thing I saw was, Reason: to conduct necessary military business. So thats all I would tell the CO. Inside Brianna Maitland's Chilling Disappearance And The Bizarre Clues Left Behind, How Ken Miles Helped Ford Beat Ferrari Before Dying Tragically Behind The Wheel, What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch. It took the Army 30 years, but in 1998, they finally acknowledged that Thompson had done something good. US military helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson helped stop one of the most infamous massacres of the Vietnam War. When I got to Vietnam I was attached to a headquarters company. From Testimony to Tragedy: My Lai in Personal Perspective Michael W. Flamm Michael W. Flamm Michael W. Flamm is professor of history at Ohio Wesleyan University. Yes, and we were checking the perimeter as they were coming in and starting the combat assault. But when he returned to his Stateside home in Stone Mountain, Georgia, Thompson received death threats and insults, while Calley was pardoned by President Nixon. I wanted to survive and get home. When I first joined the company, the commander took the volunteers to the flight line and showed us bullet holes in the aircraft and asked us if we knew what they were. Hugh and I were skeptical in 01, so we asked him a lot of questions and he told us things only he could have known. In 1999, Thompson and Colburn received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award. The conclusion Hugh and I came to was they were trying to keep us quiet by giving us a phony award. Furious, Hugh Thompson landed again, this time in front of a bunker where civilians were hiding. He was very helpful to General Peers and it seemed like he wasnt just going through the motions, it was like he really wanted to know what happened. Where else in history has a massacre of civilians been stopped in the middle of the massacre? I thank God to this day that everybody did stay cool and nobody opened up. On February 8, Congressman Charles Boustany (R-La.) The sergeant waited until Thompson left and then fired on the helpless civilians. They could communicate with the command craft that was flying at altitude. Thats what they want to do. I have mine put away somewhere, but I think Hugh threw his away one night. This fella stood up and said: Fuck you. You felt pretty vulnerable in that little helicopter. There could be a reason for doing it, or there could have simply been a complete breakdown in leadership. You and Thompson must have been good mutual support. So I was not a good guy.. Calley was paroled just three years later, in 1974, after Richard Nixon commuted his sentence. Hugh Thompson on his way to testify against William Calley on November 23, 1970. You risked your lives, I said, to protect those Vietnamese civilians., Well, it didnt come to that, he replied. I dont know who did what. There were real good highs, he told me, and very low lows. We were very protective of the men on the ground. Id never seen nor heard of anything like that before, except in World War II. There was no time to get an ethics opinion or consult authorities. If they fire on these people, or fire on me while Im doing that, shoot em!. I lost faith in the whole military organization and wanted to put it all behind me. A $300-million (minimum) gondola to Dodger Stadium? Mr. Thompson radioed for a helicopter gunship to evacuate the group, and then his crew chief, Glenn Andreotta, pulled a boy from a nearby irrigation ditch, and their helicopter flew him to safety. Now Trent Angers, who chronicled Hugh Thompson's heroism during the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians in 1968, believes he has uncovered information about an unseen adversary Thompson fought . We took him out of the area to a hospital and gave him to a nun. I said, Thank you, sir, and went back to work. Upon coming home, he got death threats and the like. It was so blatantly wrong what they were doing, we had no choice, we had to do what we did. Are you guys with me?. We were told by the prosecuting attorneys to keep our mouths shut, and I didnt advertise the fact I was at My Lai. When we would come back to those we marked, wed find they were now dead. He said youre a plant arent you. One of the instructors told me a story that he wished Hugh could hear. So, he decided to do something. Ill never fly again, he vowed. Thompson spent the rest of his life wondering if he could have saved more lives. Possibly we could have stopped things earlier. Jan Swango Emerson and Hugh Feiss, eds., Imagining Heaven in the Middle Ages (New York: Garland, 2000); . Instead, the Army hid the slaughter of hundreds of innocent people, including 182 women and 173 children. Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. There were probably 10 in the squad. It was absurd, but you have to be willing to pay the price. I have come to understand him more now than I did when he was here. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. We had thought there were two or three, but there were about 10 in the bunker. In an interview first broadcast in 2004, Hardtalk's Tim Sebastian spoke to Mr. It was an enemy tactic to blur the lines between combatants and noncombatants. ArmyThe bodies of massacred villagers at M Lai, as captured by a U.S. Army photographer. I flew from Ft. Calley pointed his weapon at him and threatened him with a court-martial. Thats what keeps me going. Hood and my CO called me in, said I had a phone call. Jon Wiener is professor emeritus of history at UC Irvine, and working, with Mike Davis, on a book on Los Angeles in the 1960s. HOANG DINH NAM/AFP via Getty ImagesHugh Thompson returned to M Lai in 1998 and met some of the people he saved. I wish I was, but I wont lie to anybody. In the middle of a firefight I was an E4, what was I to do? . Does it worry you that it was, and remains, in our capacity to excuse or rationalize an atrocity like My Lai committed by Americans? The squad leader ordered Thompson and his men to get out of the way. I remember wearing the same fatigues and they were pretty much covered with blood stains from carrying the boy and being in that ditch. At the same time, judging from Hendersons reactionhe seemed almost nonchalant, like it was just another day at the office. Did you have a sense that what you had seen at My Lai was and isolated incident or did you suspect similar atrocities were happening elsewhere? History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. Harry's phone-hacking testimony contained 'troubling factual inconsistencies', hacking judge says. No Id never seen nor heard of anything like that before, except in World War II. A defendant charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, who testified that he believed he was "following presidential orders" from President Donald Trump when he stormed the building. Dont salute me or call me sir, he said, Just Mr. Thompson. He didnt believe in that no fraternization stuff, he was really one of the fellows, he knew both sides. On March 6, 1998, the Army presented the Soldier's Medal, for heroism not involving conflict with an enemy, to Mr. Thompson; to his gunner, Lawrence Colburn; and, posthumously, to Mr. Andreotta, who was killed in a helicopter crash three weeks after the My Lai massacre. When did you start talking to investigators? That morning, Hugh said, This is supposed to be a VC stronghold, but you know G2. Usually, when intelligence said an area was hot, it wasnt, and visa versa. Anyway, they remembered our story about My Lai, and instead of just lighting up a target, they took the time to analyze and study the situation. All content is protected by copyright and may not be used for commercial purposes without prior written permission. Following graduation, he enlisted in the United States Navy and served in a naval mobile construction battalion at Naval Air Station Atlanta, Georgia, as a heavy equipment operator. He was presumably mindful of the ostracism he had faced and the long wait for that medal ceremony in Washington. Still, Thompson had saved civilians who would have been killed if he had not intervened. Thompson felt obliged to return to military service when the Vietnam War began. When Hugh realized it was our people doing this killing, he knew he had to take drastic measures, recalled Larry Colburn, a gunner on Thompsons crew. I think he broke his flight helmet, he threw it down so hard. She asked me what it was about, and I said I wasnt sure. Hugh and I went in 1998 with 60 Minutes, just after we were given the Soldiers Medal. It was a case of bloodlust. Im not judge, jury and executioner. People should realize that when atrocities are committed like this and covered up, it degrades us all. It was denial on the part of the public. Then again, it was a Saturday morning and they were possibly going to market. For more information about the Hugh Thompson Foundation, visit www.designaire.com/HughThompson, Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. This is not what Im here for. And the Army company only stopped because Thompson literally put himself between the soldiers and the civilians and threatened to shoot them if they didnt end the killings. Yet in the midst of the chaos and bloodshed, one U.S. soldier followed his convictions. By the end of what has become known as the M Lai massacre, the Vietnamese government estimates that American soldiers killed at least 504 people, mainly women and children. endstream endobj startxref The low gun probably did because they had visual and were communicating with Hugh, and Hugh had been telling them what wed been seeing, hoping they were relating that up to the command craft that was flying above at altitude. . Thompson and his crew stood in front of the bunker, protecting the civilians. As far as a place in history, thats not something I dwell on. William Calley, the officer who ordered the slaughter at M Lai. Calley had many supporters, who condemned and harassed Thompson. Traces the life of U.S. Army helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson, who tried to stop the infamous My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War Genres NonfictionHistoryWar BiographyMilitary HistoryMilitary Fiction 248 pages, Hardcover First published May 1, 1999 Book details & editions About the author Trent Angers 40 books6 followers Friends Following At the age of 62, after extensive cancer treatment, Thompson was removed from life support and died on January 6, 2006, at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Pineville, Louisiana. Testimony of Dr. Hugh Thompson, HTA Engineering (Expert Witness) (Exhibit Allegra-10) Exhibit Allegra-10 includes Survey Notes and 12 photographs taken by HTA Engineering on January 12, 2010. He walked about 50 meters and encountered the lieutenant who was leading the squad. The troops also burned the village and Sn Ms surrounding hamlets to the ground and slaughtered the livestock. I wish we could have done more to thank him. After My Lai, did you feel traumatized or feel like you carried a huge burden? Im a garden-variety human being and thats all there is to it. I dont know how they found me, but I gave a brief interview, and it appeared with the Life magazine photo spread in December 1969. We came across a ditch, with probably 150 or more people in it and the wounded trying to crawl out.
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