At 8 years old, he made his way about 10 miles through the jungle by himself to the village. Finally, when the sergeant said OK, Hugh thought hed convinced him and got back in the helicopter and we pulled out. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. 1st Platoon of Company C, commanded by Lieutenant William Laws Calley Jr., forced approximately 7080 villagers, mostly women and children, into an irrigation ditch and murdered the civilians with knives, bayonets, grenades, and small arms fire. Do you think most people realize there was more than just the killing that was going on? Like the trials, it was forced. In 2001 we went back and were reunited with the boy in the ditch. Youve been back a few times? I now know why he wanted me to come with him to events. Did you fly with him much before My Lai? It is denial, a refusal to believe our young men could run amok the way they did. We had thought there were two or three, but there were about 10 in the bunker. For a while we were going out on snatch missions, where wed basically kidnap draft-age males and take them in for interrogations. You had no radio contact with the men on the ground? Larry Colburn was a door gunner with crew chief Glenn Andreotta and Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson as pilot of a small scout . Im Irish so Im to suffer. There was also testimony of absolute insanity. He struggled too. 199 0 obj <>stream Thompson continued to fly and was hit eight times, in four of which incidents the aircraft was lost. Particularly because of the Peers and the IG investigations, I thought there were people sincere about upholding the Uniform Code of Military Justice. How could I ever be prepared for something like that? History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. You risked your lives, I said, to protect those Vietnamese civilians., Well, it didnt come to that, he replied. 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. They interviewed Hugh Thompson and his crew. But I really didnt know what was going to happen or how to react. 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. 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 Thompson and his crew rescued a surviving child whom they flew to the nearest field hospital. I testified in the trials of Henderson, Medina and Calley. Larry Colburn talks about his late friend Hugh Thompson, the My Lai massacre, the subsequent cover up, investigations and trials, https://www.historynet.com/interview-larry-colburn-why-my-lai-hugh-thompson-matter/, Jerrie Mock: Record-Breaking American Female Pilot. And when Thomson reported the horrific actions, the Army tried to cover up the M Lai massacre. All of a sudden I hear my name called, I had no advance knowledge, no idea what was happening until they pinned the Bronze Star with Valor on me. Calley was the only person found guilty out of the 14 charged. Ever reflect about how you are part of an event of such historical significance? They killed everything. This ended his combat career in Vietnam. ' Thompson recalled. Upon entering Sn M, officers and soldiers of Company C moved through the Song My Village and vicinity, murdering civilians, raping women, and setting fire to huts. How did you and Hugh reconcile what you knew happened with the outpouring of public support for Calley and his men? But remember, at My Lai only about a third of the men participated in the massacre, but no one else tried to stop it. He angered some GIs as he tried to photograph them as they fondled the breasts of a fifteen-year-old Vietnamese girl. The citation, bestowed in a ceremony at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, said the three crewmen landed "in the line of fire between American ground troops and fleeing Vietnamese civilians to prevent their murder.". I didnt write Hugh up for anything and he said he didnt write me up. U.S. ArmyWilliam Calley, the officer who ordered the slaughter at M Lai. But it was mostly done with a machine gun. I did hear that the men on the ground were told to pretend like it never happened. As United States citizens, as representatives of the one country in this world that is supposed to protect human life, they are ones to be ashamed of, to be shunned, to be branded traitors. 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. Hugh Thompson reported the massacre to his commanding officer. Furious, Hugh Thompson landed again, this time in front of a bunker where civilians were hiding. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. They were taking volunteers for the 11th Brigade. Mercy Thompson, Testimony, Church of Christ in Missouri v. Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, 70 F. 179 (8th Cir. Thompson had a famous emotional outburst upon returning to base? Thompson spent the rest of his life wondering if he could have saved more lives. That was the only enemy combatant we saw that day. One morning as I was prepping an aircraft for a mission, he came down and introduced himself. He just said I was a prime candidate for PTSD. And the people guilty of committing war crimes should have been dealt with. 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. After evacuating the people, you thought you could do more? 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? When Mr. Thompson returned home, it seemed to him that he was viewed as the guilty party. Commentdocument.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id", "a49bccbef3b55dea5fdfe48a500a42a9" );document.getElementById("c08a1a06c7").setAttribute( "id", "comment" ); Content on this website is free to use and share, but please provide a link back to Spec Ops Magazine as a source. I would be there from December 67 to December 68. To do something like that in the whirlwind of war was downright insane, and thats exactly what he did. In harsh times, heroes are ordinary men doing extraordinary things. From his helicopter, Hugh Thompson could not communicate with Charlie Company on the ground. But when he returned to his Stateside home in Stone Mountain, Georgia, Thompson. He was first appointed to the court on March 1, 1994, by Governor Zell Miller (D). From the air, Thompson and his two-person crew quickly realized American soldiers were slaughtering innocent civilians. At first, they only wanted to give it to Hugh at a private ceremony. You are the ones that deserve to be called American Soldiers. They also led as many surviving civilians as they could to shelter. 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 alerted the low gunship as to what we had seen on the ground. Amid a flurry of corporate earnings releases and somewhat lackluster market activity last week, an important milestone went largely unnoticed. Mr. Thompson worked as a veterans' counselor in Louisiana after leaving military service. Using hand signals, Mr. Thompson persuaded the Vietnamese to come out while ordering his gunner and his crew chief to shoot any American soldiers who opened fire on the civilians. That aspect of it made me feel real good.. If there was anything that was cleansing for me that was it. On March 16, 1968, he was flying a mission in Vietnam and came across a large number of dead civilian bodies; and in pursuing surveillance, he discovered that those civilians had been killed, and the survivors were still under fire, by American forces. The My Lai Massacre was and still is a huge, shameful event that will be hard for several generations to get past. Charlie Company arrived in M Lai with orders to destroy the village. Hugh Thompson, a helicopter pilot, had threatened to fire on the American troops in order to rescue Vietnamese women and children from the slaughter. The Army covered it up. It was fresh enough that things hadnt changed much. I was back in Mount Vernon, outside Washington, and I got a call from my mother saying there were some people at the house who wanted to talk to me. They landed their helicopter between the American forces and the civilians, and they trained their guns on the advancing Americans. Letters to the Editor: Should speed humps be put around all L.A. elementary schools? 0 Were you glad you got it? Hugh Thompsons actions may be unique. 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. When I finally got in to see the guy, he was a major, he wouldnt make eye contact as I read my list. As we did, we heard automatic weapon fire. As murderous bloodlust unfolded on the ground below, Thompson and crew confronted fellow GIs to save numerous civilians from the fate of some 500 others that morning. Hugh Thompson died in 2006, when he was only 62. LinkedIn is the world's largest business network, helping professionals like Hugh Thompson discover inside connections to recommended job . Well, I took the prescriptions, ripped them up into little pieces and walked out. I flew from Ft. I imagine he wants to get right with God; hes not a young guy anymore. To see people herded up like so many animals, marched into a ditch and machine-gunned? Colburn said. My father landed on Normandy Beach and as a kid I watched the television series Victory at Sea and went to bed praying never to have to face the fire like those men on Normandy. I was encouraged in that there was an investigation going on and they were going after some people in a big way. No. I just thank God everybody kept their cool and no one made any quick moves. Bettmann/Getty ImagesHugh Thompson on his way to testify against William Calley on November 23, 1970. Ill never fly again, he vowed. He knew the importance of getting people who are struggling the attention they need so they can transition back into civilian life and deal with problems, be they physical or emotional. By this time, Lt. William Calleys Charlie Company was reaching My Lai? Nobody would be held responsible. In 1998, 30 years after the massacre, Hugh Thompson and the two other crew members, Andreotta and Colburn, were awarded the Soldiers Medal (Andreotta posthumously), the United States Armys highest award for bravery not involving direct contact with the enemy. Were you prepared to fire on the squad?
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