Louisiana Voice

You want heroes? I’ll give you one who never received the recognition he deserved.

Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, a native of Atlanta, Georgia, settled in Lafayette, flying helicopters for the petroleum industry. He died of cancer in Pineville on Jan. 6, 2006. He was 62.

One week from today will mark the 55^th anniversary of one of the darkest stains on the U.S. military. But for the actions of Thompson and his crew members, Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn, the death toll of the My Lai massacre would have been considerably higher.

On March 16, 1968, Thompson was piloting his OH-23 Raven observation helicopter on a support mission for Task Force Barker’s search and destroy operations in Quang Ngai Province, South Vietnam.

Army intelligence that said the four villages of My Lai, My Khe, Co Luy, and Tu Cung were Viet Cong strongholds proved inaccurate. The villages were comprised of rice-farming families but that didn’t deter Lt. William Calley, commander of 1^st Platoon of Company C. Company C was attached to Task Force Barker, led by Capt. Ernest Medina.

“We kept flying back and forth, reconning in front and in the rear, and it didn’t take very long until we started noticing the large number of bodies everywhere,” Thompson told an academic conference on My Lai at Tulane University in 1994. “Everywhere we’d look, we’d see bodies. These were infants, two-, three-, four-, five-year-olds, women, very old men, no draft-age people whatsoever.”

It didn’t take Thomson and his crew long to realize that Americans were murdering the villagers when a wounded civilian woman they had requested medical evacuation for was murdered before their eyes by Medina.

“Then we saw a young girl about twenty years old lying on the grass. We could see that she was unarmed and wounded in the chest. We marked her with smoke because we saw a squad not too far away. The smoke was green, meaning it’s safe to approach. Red would have meant the opposite. We were hovering six feet off the ground not more than twenty feet away when Captain Medina came over, kicked her, stepped back, and finished her off. When we saw Medina do that, it clicked. It was our guys doing the killing,” Thompson said.

When Thompson saw that there was an irrigation ditch filled with bodies (people killed by Calley’s men, it would turn out), he told his crew, “There’s something wrong here. Seeing that some of the civilians in the ditch were alive, he landed his helicopter where a confrontation with Lt. Calley ensued.

Calley told Thompson, “This is my show. I’m in charge here. It ain’t your concern” and that “you better get back in that chopper and mind your own business.”

“You ain’t heard the last of this,” Thompson said.

Even as the exchange was taking place, Sgt. David Mitchell, who was under Calley’s command, fired into the ditch, killing any civilians who were still moving.

Enraged and shocked, Thompson and his crew returned to their helicopter and began searching for civilians they could save. Spotting a group of women, children, and old men attempting to flee the advancing soldiers, Thompson landed his helicopter between the civilians and the soldiers.

Turning to Colburn and Andreotta, he ordered them to shoot the soldiers if they attempted to kill any of the fleeing civilians. He called in two UH-1 Huey helicopters to help in the evacuation of the civilians.

Because he was low on fuel, Thompson was forced to return to a nearby supply airstrip but before they could depart, Andreotta spotted movement in the irrigation ditch full of bodies. Thompson looped his helicopter round and landed near the edge of the ditch. Andreotta exited as it touched down and walking on several badly mangled bodies, he arrived where he had seen the movement. Lifting a corpse with several bullet holes in the torso, he found a child no older than five or six, covered in blood and in a state of shock.

The child, Do Ba, was transported to a hospital in Quang Ngai. Nearly 40 years later, Thompson and Do Ba would reconnect through an intermediary.

Thompson would testify against Calley in the latter’s court martial. Calley was convicted in March 1971 and sentenced to life imprisonment, a sentence that was twice reduced by Richard Nixon’s Department of Defense before he was released in late 1974.

Nixon, meanwhile, with the assistance of Louisiana Rep. F. Edward Hebert, attempted to discredit Thompson.

It took 30 years but in 1998, Thompson, Colburn and Andreotta were awarded the Soldier’s Medal, the Army’s highest award for bravery not involving direct contact with the enemy. The medal was awarded posthumously to Andreotta, who died in Vietnam on April 8, 1968, just three weeks after the standoff in My Lai.

Despite the efforts of Nixon and Hebert to ruin Thompson’s reputation and credibility, he received hundreds of appreciative letters from people from all over the country. Among those who expressed their gratitude for his actions were U.S. Rep. Bob Livingston and U.S. Sen. John Breaux, both of Louisiana.

Breaux in 2000 nominated Thompson for the Nobel Peace Prize, writing to the Nobel Committee, “Hugh Thompson’s story is a shining example of ethical, humane treatment of civilians and prisoners-of-war during wartime. His actions serve as a powerful statement having the power to inspire others to act justly and compassionately toward their neighbor, regardless of nationality.”

Author Trent Angers wrote an excellent book about Thompson entitled The Forgotten Hero of My Lai. Published by Acadian House Publishing of Lafayette, the book is available on Amazon or by ordering it from Cavalier House Books of Denham Springs by clicking on the Cavalier House logo in the column to the right of this post.

Please take the time to read about a true American hero. There are so few of them left anymore.