Hugh Thompson reported the massacre to his commanding officer. Im giving interviews and working with students. It was unusual, the only time it happened while I was there. Hugh told me to keep my mouth shut and I did. Hugh alerted the low gunship as to what we had seen on the ground. First He Castrated Himself. Join Facebook to connect with Hugh Thompson and others you may know. Mr. Thompson worked as a veterans' counselor in Louisiana after leaving military service. Hugh P. Thompson was the chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. Finally, the Army launched an inquiry. On March 16, 1998, Mr. Thompson and Mr. Colburn attended a service at My Lai marking the 30th anniversary of the massacre. He found 69 between the ages of 4 and 7, and 91 between the ages of 8 and 12. Out of the blue, our unit was called out onto the tarmac for an awards and decoration ceremony. The eyewitness testimony of Thompson and his surviving crew member helped convict Calley at a court-martial. They also reported the massacre to higher officers, who ordered the troops on the ground to stop. Only he would have known that. There were real good highs, he told me, and very low lows. It was like he dropped out of the sky. Did you get help? Friends I had on the division level told me they were taking volunteers for the 123rd Aviation Battalion. What drove you to create the Hugh Thompson Foundation? 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. We knew something seemed wrong. 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. Thompsons father played a central role in his childrens education. 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. 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. Upon seeing that, Hugh Thompson landed the helicopter, approached Calley, and talked to him. You risked your lives, I said, to protect those Vietnamese civilians., Well, it didnt come to that, he replied. Ronald L. Haeberle/U.S. We didnt talk too much about it ourselves because we reported on it and we were, frankly, preoccupied with the next mission. This meant that military prosecutors would be prohibited from calling those persons as witnesses . 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 . Thompson was later promoted to Major, but Thompson was a Warrant Officer in his heroic acts. 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 . Im not going to let this happen, weve got to do something. I was hoping there would be justice, but what did it achieve? I had an administrative MOS and was ordered to Hawaii where I was working as a courier. I knew General Peers had gotten in touch with Hugh and took him back over to the scene of the crime. He retired as a VA counselor in Louisiana. This is not what Im here for. We even started marking the wounded with smoke, thinking the men on ground would come assist them. Then, take a look through these declassified Vietnam War photos. Calley had many supporters, who condemned and harassed Thompson. Colburn came from Atlanta to be at his bedside. I did hear that the men on the ground were told to pretend like it never happened. He tried to explain that these people appeared to be civilians, that we hadnt taken any fire and there was no evidence of combatants in that area. Then came the backlash. He wanted to give us some idea of what were getting into. When I arrived at My Lai in 2008, no one knew where he was. There was a guy at the ditch with Calley, shooting people not yet dead. On March 16, 1968, Chief Warrant Officer Thompson and his two crewmen were flying on a reconnaissance mission over the South Vietnamese village of My Lai when they spotted the bodies of men, women and children strewn over the landscape. I thought Hugh would pull it off, when I saw some pull their rucksacks off and leave it to the lieutenant to have it out with Hugh. the testimony he gave to the House Committees and the courts-martial of the . He educatedhis children to act with discipline and integrity. In mid-March 2022, posts about a warrant officer named Hugh Thompson and his role in the My Lai massacre circulated on social media, including a tweet describing that time period as the 50-year anniversary of that incident:. Hugh said, Im going to take him on the right, which meant he was my target. 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 . You found later that that wasnt true? I just figured it was time to do something, to not let these people get killed. I had no idea what it was about. So I was not a good guy.". Whenever I felt discouraged about things, Hugh would remind me that if we get through to just one person, its worth it. Its like the line from the movie No Country for Old Men when the Vietnam veteran played by Josh Brolin, who responds to another guy who introduced himself and says he was in Nam too: Oh, you were in Vietnam too. The high gun stayed in the air and circled. We came across a ditch, with probably 150 or more people in it and the wounded trying to crawl out. From the air, Thompson and his two-person crew quickly realized American soldiers were slaughtering innocent civilians. Calley told Thompson that he was following orders, presumably from Capt. You must have had some post-traumatic stress after your experience in Vietnam. Thompson and his crew managed to evacuate the civilians and stop the massacre. Likewise, what Hugh did has been ignored or glossed over in history texts, much the same way the incident has been. Among those numbers were 17 pregnant women and 56 infants. 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. So, how did you guys feel when you got the Soldiers Medals in 1998? I wish I was, but I wont lie to anybody. 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. 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. Hugh told her he probably didnt have any family left. At the time, I figured he was 3 or 4 years old, he was tiny. It was absurd, but you have to be willing to pay the price. When did you start talking to investigators? We came to think we were indirectly killing these people ourselves by marking them with smoke. No, we had no knowledge of who they were, we just knew they were Americans on the ground and we would have done anything for them. At first, they only wanted to give it to Hugh at a private ceremony. By this time, Lt. William Calleys Charlie Company was reaching My Lai? We came in from altitude down to low level. I may have clipped him but he made it to the trees. 171 0 obj <> endobj endstream endobj 172 0 obj <. Andreotta died in action a few weeks later, but Thompson and Colburn were key witnesses in the investigations and trials to follow. We were the closest and should have been able to communicate, but thats the way it was structured. Hugh said, No, lets do it at the Wall. They said no, the weather might be bad or something. If they fire on these people, or fire on me while Im doing that, shoot em!. How did you feel about that? That particular morning we were to provide reconnaissance for a ground operation that was going on in My Lai . It was denial on the part of the public, said Colburn. Where else in history has a massacre of civilians been stopped in the middle of the massacre? How Palm Springs ran out Black and Latino families to build a fantasy for rich, white people, 17 SoCal hiking trails that are blooming with wildflowers (but probably not for long! Hugh landed and ran over and told the sergeant, These are civilians, we got to help them out. The sergeant agreed, telling Hugh hed help themout of their misery. Hugh continued to argue, said they were no threat, they had no weapons. And he was a character, a real joker. 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. 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. That aspect of it made me feel real good.. We are inundated with information but we are not very well informed. The My Lai story and Hugh Thompsons role in it is really important, but do you find most people are unaware of it? They interviewed Hugh Thompson and his crew. 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. This is not how this military organization supposed to conduct operations. It was in their hands. The M Lai massacre started when the U.S. Army declared everyone in a broad region of Vietnam either part of the Viet Cong or sympathizers. Then again, it was a Saturday morning and they were possibly going to market. But many in the Army and the public supported Calley over Thompson. Did the word about what happened at My Lai get around? Were you talking about this at the time? He is still tiny, but he remembers everything. When did you make your report of what happened? 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. Ultimately, it was a pubic relations move, they had to give the medal. I think that is probably what has helped me get through it all. I figured, I was in the Army, so I should experience it where the action was. Of course anyone thinking of making a career in the military probably pretended they never heard anything. As Hugh jumped out, he told us to take our weapons down off the bungee cords and take some belted ammo and backup weapons and set up a little perimeter around the aircraft. Like the trials, it was forced. "Dead animals on your porch, mutilated animals on your porch some mornings when you get up. 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. On March 16, 1968, a company of U.S. soldiers stormed into the Vietnamese village of Sn M and began shooting. We hope to link up with other organizations and grow some legs. You still didnt understand what was actually happening? The bodies of massacred villagers at M Lai, as captured by a U.S. Army photographer. Indeed, for a time, Thompson himself feared court-martial. You had no radio contact with the men on the ground? Amid a flurry of corporate earnings releases and somewhat lackluster market activity last week, an important milestone went largely unnoticed. I have a few lined up at some universities this year. HOANG DINH NAM/AFP via Getty ImagesHugh Thompson returned to M Lai in 1998 and met some of the people he saved. . View Hugh Thompson's professional profile on LinkedIn. Anyone can read what you share. That one person will go on to tell 10 other people. When I got to Vietnam I was attached to a headquarters company. All content is protected by copyright and may not be used for commercial purposes without prior written permission. When we first saw him in 2001, he said all he wanted was to get out of Ho Chi Minh City where he worked in a factory at low wages, and get back to village and find a wife. I think Task Force Barkers intent was to create panic and drive the enemy forces out of the area. We took him out of the area to a hospital and gave him to a nun. Thompson wanted you to also make a report? And it turned out it was a good thing that they did. I want you to come down here and shuttle these people out of here. And thats what happened, but at that he had to make two trips. Id never seen nor heard of anything like that before, except in World War II. You started out on an OH-23 scout helicopter? I think he broke his flight helmet, he threw it down so hard. Yes, and we were checking the perimeter as they were coming in and starting the combat assault. Fortunately for the monsters that committed these crimes against everything that is good, the generations that remember this (I remember the headlines and I was only 11 years old) are dying off and the current generations of American citizens think the world revolves around them and cant see past the end of their cell phones. It was so blatantly wrong what they were doing, we had no choice, we had to do what we did. I give credit to my sister Mary, who saw my condition when I came home. After evacuating the people, you thought you could do more? %PDF-1.6 % When it was all happening, the feeling I had was, if this is how Im going to die, Im OK with it. Thompson had a famous emotional outburst upon returning to base? 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, []. Nobody would be held responsible. Some were sent out into the field for 60-75 days straight, and they started getting the feeling somebody was trying to get rid of them. Charlie Company arrived in M Lai with orders to destroy the village. 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. Hugh Thompson Jr. graduated from Stone Mountain High School on June 5, 1961. He remembered Glenn picking him up, seeing me in the ditch. We couldnt come up with an explanation until Hugh marked a woman we saw who had a chest wound and decided to just move back in a hover when we saw a squad coming near. In about 10-15 minutes we were back to the same spot where we saw the villagers on the road leaving. But still, who do you shoot? The cause was cancer, Jay DeWorth, a spokesman for the Veterans Affairs Medical Center where Mr. Thompson died, told The Associated Press. Hood to give testimony in the basement war room of the Pentagon. I went back in 2008 for the 40th anniversary. Hugh Thompson is a genuine, bone-fide hero of the Vietnam war, protecting hundreds from being massacred by US troops at My Lai. These people appeared to be no threat at all, and we couldnt figure out why they were fired on and killed as they were leaving the area. Our main job was to fly close to the deck, entice fire to get the enemy to give up their position, mark it, suppress fire and get out of the gunships way. It couldnt be gunships, they werent firing on people. William Calley, the officer who ordered the slaughter at M Lai. 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. When he arrived,. . How did you get to the 123rd Aviation Battalion? None did. As he approached the soldiers, he told them to stop. With Hugh, usually the more tense the situation, the more comical he would be. Hugh was furious, ready to do anything to save these innocent people. The sergeant waited until Thompson left and then fired on the helpless civilians. He was first appointed to the court on March 1, 1994, by Governor Zell Miller (D). It was an enemy tactic to blur the lines between combatants and noncombatants. endstream endobj startxref HUGH THOMPSON'S TESTIMONY: I'm Hugh Thompson. I believe Glenn got a Bronze Star too. We thought that was good, that they would be out of the way. We were told by the prosecuting attorneys to keep our mouths shut, and I didnt advertise the fact I was at My Lai. If we would have had direct contact, we could have told them that these people are unarmed, no threat. I dont know, at the time I thought about creating a diversion, discharging my weapon in another direction. No, because the commander was on a different frequency. Billy Waugh, Famed Special Forces Warrior and CIA Legend, Dies At 93. 199 0 obj <>stream Im not judge, jury and executioner. Any hesitation? And then she finished her sentence: she said, So we could forgive them.'. Thompson told his crew, Im going to go over to the bunker myself and get these people out. In the Peers inquiry testimony, I believe there were 14 rapes that were reported. This is not what Im here for. Hugh was running scenarios through his head to figure it out. Im not going to let this happen, weve got to do something. Thompson acted more instinctively, given his morals, character, and military training. Hugh Thompson, a helicopter pilot, had threatened to fire on the American troops in order to rescue Vietnamese women and children from the slaughter. There was a sergeant standing by the ditch by himself. I thought someone else was getting recognition for something. It can be disturbing. We went back to the ditch because we knew there were a lot of people there who could have been saved. Hugh was the generals personal pilot. Thompson had become something of a professional witness. If its not sincere, it doesnt mean anything. To do something like that in the whirlwind of war was downright insane, and thats exactly what he did. I enjoyed that. These were infants, two-, three-, four-, five-year-olds, women, very old men, no draft-age people whatsoever.. I am sorry this world has lost you. He didnt want to appear to be frantic; he wanted to be taken seriously by Henderson. U.S. ArmyHugh Thompson in his Army uniform, c. 1966. No. In harsh times, heroes are ordinary men doing extraordinary things. Hugh Thompson in his Army uniform, c. 1966. He said: They are coming this way. Glenn took a .51-caliber in the head, he was dead before he hit the ground. As we did, we heard automatic weapon fire. It was fresh enough that things hadnt changed much. Im Irish so Im to suffer. 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 I think it is deception, and that remains constant today. He teaches the U.S. history survey since 1877 and specialized courses on Vietnam, 1960s America, and U.S. foreign relations. He angered some GIs as he tried to photograph them as they fondled the breasts of a fifteen-year-old Vietnamese girl. Mr. Thompson, you and Mr. Colburn are indeed the heroes in this sordid story and I am ashamed at how they were treated. Kyle Hockenberry: For Those I love I will sacrifice, Adam Brown: The life and legacy of fearless Navy SEAL, Gary Gordon and Randy Shughart: The real heroes of the Battle of Mogadishu, Ivica Jerak: The Croat who died as American hero. Thats unlikely to improve anyones mental health, Letters to the Editor: Yes, we need to talk about Bidens age. 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. He tried to persuade him to stop the attack but with no success. And we did, the best we could. She asked me what it was about, and I said I wasnt sure. I dont know who did what. The lieutenant told him to mind his own business and get out of the way. That was the only enemy combatant we saw that day. Thompson ran over and said, These are civilians, we got to help them out.. Exactly what you saw. Since we were sitting shoulder to shoulder, we saw virtually the very same things. If people have some confusion about that, thats their problem. I walked in and told Henderson we saw unnecessary killing of many civilians. Those on station knew something about it but not many saw it up close and personal except for the men on the ground and a couple of helicopter crews. And when Hugh Thompson testified against William Calley, the officer who ordered the massacre, Thompson received death threats. Whats that make you, my buddy? So, just because guys served in the same theater doesnt necessarily mean we are all that close. And just sitting there saying, God, howd this happen? Glenn had a visual on some sort of movement in the ditch, so Hugh landed, and Glenn and I got out. Somehow they trusted him and they came out. "They said I was screaming quite loud," he told U.S. News & World Report in 2004. Ernest Medina and Lt. William Calley were court-martialed. 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. Today theres a little museum in My Lai, where Thompson is honored, and which displays a list of the names and ages of people killed that day. According to Miriam-Webster.com, the word "testimony means: proof or evidence that something exists or is true, firsthand authentication of a fact, an open acknowledgment, a public profession of religious experience . At first, I just felt shock. 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 different missions. 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. You and Thompson must have been good mutual support. Jan Swango Emerson and Hugh Feiss, eds., Imagining Heaven in the Middle Ages (New York: Garland, 2000); . Back at their base he filed a complaint about the killing of civilians that he had witnessed. Thompson felt obliged to return to military service when the Vietnam War began. Thompson kept testifying against the butchers of My Lai in hopes of securing justice for the civilians killed that day. That seemed suicidal to me, going out with next to no backup or firepower. That same day, the cover up started. No one wants a president to die in office. There are those hardcore people who do still say we shouldnt have told the truth, that we should have covered for those guys in the field; that we didnt know what it was like on the ground. Glenn went down into the ditch and found the boy that he had seen moving and handed him up to me. That is what other people say. They were face to face, screaming at each other. Who were the people lying in the roads and in the ditch, wounded and killed? If there was anything that was cleansing for me that was it. As far as a place in history, thats not something I dwell on. Thompson spent the rest of his life wondering if he could have saved more lives.
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