Did you know when the story was about to break? This fella stood up and said: Fuck you. Just then Glenn spotted some people in an earthen bunker, saw faces peering out of the entry. Then he assumed the Army initiated an investigation. Having redeemed himself for other peoples mistakes, his heroic act was written in US Military history. Thompson was vilified by many Americans for his testimony against United States Army personnel. They landed their helicopter between the American forces and the civilians, and they trained their guns on the advancing Americans. I flew with him dozens of times and saw sporadic action. I now know why he wanted me to come with him to events. Im not judge, jury and executioner. 1895), in United States testimony 1892, typescript, 247, Church History Library, Salt Lake City. Then, in 1998, the Army awarded him the Soldiers Medal for heroism. When he had a heart attack he said he would slow down, but he didnt. The alternative was to be in an infantry unit, and I was told it would be a good idea to attach to an aviation company, better odds there. NYPD officers face departmental trial over shooting death of mentally The truth of the M Lai massacre did not come out until a year and a half later when a soldier whod seen reports on the massacre contacted a journalist. I think that is probably what has helped me get through it all. And then she finished her sentence: she said, So we could forgive them.'. %PDF-1.6 % Amid a flurry of corporate earnings releases and somewhat lackluster market activity last week, an important milestone went largely unnoticed. Glenn took a .51-caliber in the head, he was dead before he hit the ground. After learning about the heroism of Hugh Thompson Jr. during the M Lai Massacre, read about the Gulf of Tonkin incident that started the Vietnam War. You are the ones that deserve to be called American Soldiers. Well, Hugh told them, if you just give it to me Ill take the medal, with a camera crew, to the first mens room I can find and Ill flush it down the toilet. This is a colonel he is talking to. What happened next was one of the most remarkable events of the entire war, and perhaps unique: Thompson told the American troops that, if they opened fire on the Vietnamese civilians in the bunker, he and his crew would open fire on them. Hugh struggled, but you see the people who survived are still in the same village, doing what they do. In unison, all three of us shouted, You son of a bitch! That was Captain Ernest Medina. When he arrived,. DOC HUGH THOMPSON'S TESTIMONY: - Social Studies with Miss Daniel Do you think most people realize there was more than just the killing that was going on? 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. Ill have no part of this, Ill tear these wings off and never fly again!. Youve been back a few times? He was saying: Ill never fly again. Thompson spent the rest of his life wondering if he could have saved more lives. We loved those guys in the field. After the trial, Hugh Thompson received death threats. Prepared Testimony and Statement for the Record of Hugh Thompson Chief Technology Officer Hearing on "Bolstering the Government's Cybersecurity: Lessons Learned from WannaCry" Before the United States House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee on Oversight and Subcommittee on Research and Technology Im not going to let this happen, weve got to do something. When did you make your report of what happened? Thompson was buried in Lafayette, Louisiana, with full military honors, including a three-volley salute and a helicopter flyover. hb```,(qaB3W[ 4 `Tfc" QB\%xv{ I know its great copy, but Ive tried to correct the record many times: No one pointed any weapons at anybody. Mercy Thompson and the Revelation on Marriage - The Church of Jesus People need to know who Hugh Thompson was, what he did and why he did it. The second time, he touched down near a bunker in which a group of about 10 civilians were being menaced by American troops. With Hugh, usually the more tense the situation, the more comical he would be. I did hear that the men on the ground were told to pretend like it never happened. You can imagine the emotions that surfaced. "I'd received death threats over the phone," he told the CBS News program "60 Minutes" in 2004. Any hesitation? Testimony to the Truth [Smyth, Reverend Hugh P.] on Amazon.com. I would be there from December 67 to December 68. Bettmann/Getty ImagesHugh Thompson on his way to testify against William Calley on November 23, 1970. 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? In harsh times, heroes are ordinary men doing extraordinary things. In late December 1967, at the age of 25, Hugh Thompson was ordered to Vietnam and assigned to Company B, 123rd Aviation Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Division. Larry Colburn was a door gunner with crew chief Glenn Andreotta and Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson as pilot of a small scout helicopter during a combat assault at the village of My Lai on March 16, 1968. That was a point of no return for Thompson? Why is Frank McCourt really pushing this? Somehow they trusted him and they came out. He was presumably mindful of the ostracism he had faced and the long wait for that medal ceremony in Washington. The high gun stayed in the air and circled. PDF The Forgotten Hero of My Lai: The Hugh Thompson Story He is an amazing person made me cry just reading the research about him. As children ran for safety, soldiers gunned them down. There was a sergeant standing by the ditch by himself. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. Hugh Thompson, who has died aged 62, was the helicopter pilot who tried to halt the My Lai massacre of more than 500 villagers by American troops during the Vietnam war . 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. William Calley, the officer in charge of Charlie Company, ordered American soldiers to round up the villagers and open fire. 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. But still, who do you shoot? 0 "Something terrible happened here 30 years ago today," Mr. Thompson was quoted as saying by CNN. Medina and maybe higher. When did you see those particular villagers again? They waited until the sun went down and they crawled out of that ditch. If we would have had direct contact, we could have told them that these people are unarmed, no threat. If there was anything that was cleansing for me that was it. Sorry thats not what we did and I dont care what they think of me. The story of My Lai is well known: On the morning of March 16, 1968, a company of U.S. soldiers killed as many as 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians in My Lai, a village in South Vietnam. Hannah's Testimony. This thread is archived New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast 73K 94 2.4K 2.4K comments Best artnaqent 1 yr. ago Standing up for what's right, shouldn't be as hard as that. Hugh Thompsons actions may be unique. Like the trials, it was forced. Im not going to let this happen, weve got to do something. Mercy Thompson, Testimony, Church of Christ in Missouri v. Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, 70 F. 179 (8th Cir. Back at the base, Thompson threw his flight helmet on the ground. Larry Colburn talks about his late friend Hugh Thompson, the My Lai massacre, the subsequent cover up, investigations and trials. How could I ever be prepared for something like that? A list of his survivors was not immediately available. How did you and Hugh reconcile what you knew happened with the outpouring of public support for Calley and his men? We started thinking what might have happened, but you didnt want to accept that thought, Thompson said in a 2000 interview, because if you accepted it, that means your own fellow Americans, people you were there to protect, were doing something very evil.. Thompson risked his life and career and had Lt. Calley shoot him. 187 0 obj <>/Filter/FlateDecode/ID[<24715D214BB8264D9C081C2824AD5AA6><5B5B6AB10B516B4B92CEE481B23C2455>]/Index[171 29]/Info 170 0 R/Length 83/Prev 54619/Root 172 0 R/Size 200/Type/XRef/W[1 2 1]>>stream "They said I was screaming quite loud," he told U.S. News & World Report in 2004. As he approached the soldiers, he told them to stop. "I cannot explain why it happened. William Calley, the officer who ordered the slaughter at M Lai. You and Hugh had the opportunity to tell your stories to young military officers. To do something like that in the whirlwind of war was downright insane, and thats exactly what he did. A sergeant stood by the ditch. In front of Lt. Calley,Hugh Thompson was outranked. Mr. Thompson landed twice in an effort to determine what was happening, finally coming to the realization that a massacre was taking place. Since Hughs death, I have become the recipient of some of the hate mail he used to get. Ill always know that we did was morally right, we did what we could to help people who could not defend themselves. And the people guilty of committing war crimes should have been dealt with. Court-martial me, and he left his weapon and walked away. That aspect of it made me feel real good.. Wed done what we could. However, Ive spoken to survivors on different occasions who had been at the bottom of the pile. At 8 years old, he made his way about 10 miles through the jungle by himself to the village. Thats what keeps me going. No, but Hugh was sent on missions in his OH-23 with his back up another OH-23no gunshipsinto Dragon Valley, where there was rocket activity. There were probably 10 in the squad. Did you consider bringing gunships to ferry out others from the ditch? He recounted in a CBS 60 Minutes television program in 2004, "I'd received death threats over the phone.Dead animals on your porch, mutilated animals on your porch some mornings when you get up." [14] [7] Andreotta died in action a few weeks later, but Thompson and Colburn were key witnesses in the investigations and trials to follow. Wed 11 Jan 2006 08.06 EST. But many in the Army and the public supported Calley over Thompson. After the initial shock, I think some sort of a defensive mechanism kicked in. Hugh came back to the aircraft and because we had flight helmets on and the aircraft was running, we had to literally put our heads together as Hugh shouted instructions. 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. Are you guys with me?. Through the years, he continued to speak out, having been invited to West Point and other military installations to tell of the moral and legal obligations of soldiers in wartime. Hugh Thompson was a volunteer officer in the Vietnam War who turned his squad's weapons on American soldiers to stop them raping and murdering more women and . After we took the boy to Quang Nai, we went back to our base, and Hugh Thompson and I reported to Colonel Oran Henderson. They awarded him the Soldiers Medal for heroism not involving actual conflict with an enemy., On the 30th anniversary of the massacre, Thompson went back to My Lai and met some of the people whose lives he had saved. At that point, no one had a clue beside you and Hugh? They didnt want to. He just lateraled the ball to Medina. Glenn Andreotta was killed just a few weeks after My Lai? I felt that my testimony validated Hughs, and that was why it was important. endstream endobj 172 0 obj <. The eyewitness testimony of Thompson and his surviving crew member helped convict Calley at a court-martial. Hugh transmitted what he could to the low gun in hopes that it would get up to the commander and someone would make a decision to stop it. For the sake of any kind of lame justice, they should have been put to death for their atrocities. When the orders came down, the CO called me into his office and demanded to know what they were for. No one wants a president to die in office. 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 We were very protective of the men on the ground. If you are an American who thinks all of our foreign policy and actions over the years is as pure as the driven snow, well that is just not reality. Nicholas Goldberg: Is God on the side of blasphemy laws? I stayed on gunships for rest of my time in Vietnam. Only he would have known that. When the revelations about My Lai surfaced, he testified before Congress, a military inquiry and the court-martial of Lt. William L. Calley Jr., the platoon leader at My Lai, who was the only soldier to be convicted in the massacre. We had no direct radio contact with the men on the ground. Harry's phone-hacking testimony contained 'troubling factual What led you to enlist in the Army? That Is little Hugh!" It was "Little Hugh" sure enough. Facebook gives people the power to. When you see something like that happen, with no negative repercussions, you begin to think perhaps this is the method of operation. But he didnt even draw a sidearm as he walked up to the bunker and motioned to the people to come out. Particularly because of the Peers and the IG investigations, I thought there were people sincere about upholding the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In addition to scholarly publications with top presses, she has written for Atlas Obscura and Ranker. We came to think we were indirectly killing these people ourselves by marking them with smoke. Nick Turse investigated violence in Vietnam against noncombatants for his book Kill Anything that Moves. He concluded after a decade of research in Pentagon archives and more than 100 interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors that Americans killing civilians in Vietnam was pervasive and systematic. One soldier told him there had been a My Lai a month.. Would I have? If Hugh knew that, it would have made everything he went through worthwhile for him. You risked your lives, I said, to protect those Vietnamese civilians., Well, it didnt come to that, he replied. Glenn and I were staring them down and watching to see how it would unfold. 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. Ill have no part of this, Ill tear these wings off and never fly again! Fortunately, people calmed him down before he reported to Colonel Henderson. I told him everything and he didnt know how to respond, he had no idea how to deal with it. When it was all over, hundreds of unarmed civilians had been murdered by American forces. He didnt want to appear to be frantic; he wanted to be taken seriously by Henderson. 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. Mr. Thompson told of what he had seen when he returned to his base. There could be a reason for doing it, or there could have simply been a complete breakdown in leadership. He told the story of what happened that day, when he and his two-man crew flew over My Lai, in support of troops who were looking for Viet Cong fighters. Well, I took the prescriptions, ripped them up into little pieces and walked out. How do you think your story, of an event now long in the past, can make a difference?
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