Long Overdue Recognition Paid to Unsung Hero of the My Lai Massacre

Flying low over the village of My Lai in South Vietnam, helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson frantically scanned the ground below. The enemy must be there, he thought. Must be. What else could explain what he had just seen?

But the “enemy” that Thompson would confront that day almost exactly 30 years ago wore U.S. uniforms. His battle with them haunts him still.

The My Lai massacre, which left about 500 Vietnamese civilians dead and led to the court-martial of Lt. William Calley, stands as one of the darkest moments in American military history.

There is a sliver of light: Thompson’s little-known story.

It’s the story of a man who obeyed his convictions, who defied superiors, who placed his body between villagers and his fellow soldiers, who ordered his gunner to fire on American troops if necessary. It’s also a story of long-withheld recognition of this bitter brand of heroism, which some blame on a nation’s shame.

On Friday, the story got an overdue concluding chapter.

By the glossy granite walls of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, Thompson received the prestigious Soldier’s Medal for his action in saving some villagers and stopping American troops from killing more on March 16, 1968.

“We stand in honor of their heroism, and we have taken too long to recognize them,” Chaplain Donald Shea said at the emotional ceremony. “Remembering a dark point in time, we are now a richer nation as their personal heroic service is woven into the fabric of our history.”

Some insist that the military was reluctant to publicly honor what Thompson did. Shortly after My Lai, he received the Distinguished Flying Cross and his crew mates received Bronze Stars, but he looks on that cynically.

“It was only to keep me quiet,” he says.

*

My Lai was deceptively quiet that March day.

Thompson, then 24, and his two-man crew were to swoop down over the village and draw fire so helicopters behind them could destroy the enemy with machine-gun and rocket fire.

They never drew fire.

But they spotted a young Vietnamese girl, injured and lying on the road. Thompson marked the spot with a smoke grenade, radioed for help and then hovered nearby.

He and his crew watched in horror as an American Army officer walked up to the girl, flipped her over with his foot--and shot her dead.

They saw the bodies of Vietnamese children, women and old men piled in an irrigation ditch. Thompson landed and implored American soldiers: “Help the wounded.”

Instead, troops fired into the bodies.

Thompson racked his brain for an explanation.

“We wanted to find something that would point the blame to the enemy, but it just didn’t work,” the gruff, graying Thompson says. “It all added up to something we just didn’t want to believe.”

He was moved to action when he spotted villagers crowded in a hut--an old woman standing in the doorway, a baby in her arms, a child clutching her leg.

American soldiers were approaching.

“These people were looking at me for help and there was no way I could turn my back on them,” Thompson recalls.

He told the officer in charge to help him get the villagers out. The officer replied that the only help the villagers would get was a hand grenade, Thompson says.

So he placed his chopper down in front of the advancing Americans and gave his gunner, Lawrence Colburn, a simple, direct order: Train your M-60 on the GIs.

If the Americans attempt to harm the villagers, “You open up on them.”

Thompson radioed to two gunships behind him, and together they airlifted a dozen villagers to safety.

He flew back to the irrigation ditch where his other crew mate, Glenn Andreotta, saw something move. Andreotta jumped out and waded through the bodies until he reached a 2-year-old boy, still clinging to his dead mother, but unharmed. He handed him to Colburn.

“You’ve never seen shock like this,” Colburn says of the child, whom he cradled as they flew to a hospital. “Such a blank stare.”

The standoff lasted 15 minutes.

Retelling it, Thompson shields his teary eyes at one point and whispers sternly to himself, “Get control, get control.” For a while there is silence.

“I had a son at home about the same age,” he finally says.

*

Few Americans ever knew of Thompson’s deed until David Egan, a professor emeritus at Clemson University, saw a BBC documentary on My Lai 10 years ago in which Thompson was interviewed.

“I thought this was a guy that did something that was brave, honorable and morally correct,” Egan says. “And I was curious. Did he get recognition? I didn’t realize he was a forgotten hero.”

Egan wrote more than 100 letters to Congress and high-ranking government officials. He pressed others to write. Among those who did: Dean Rusk, secretary of state during the Vietnam years.

“I sincerely hope that some action will be taken by the Army to record the courage of Thompson,” Rusk wrote to Egan.

At the Pentagon, Lt. Col. Kevin Clement lobbied the Army brass, holding up the pilot as a model for officers in training.

Still, no recognition came until Aug. 22, 1996, when the Army told Thompson he’d been approved for the Soldier’s Medal, given to those who risk their lives in situations where an opposing army is not involved.

Nothing more came from the Pentagon, Thompson says, until last November, 15 months later. Then he was faxed a copy of the citation. No medal. No ceremony.

A Pentagon spokesman, Dov Schwartz, acknowledges the delay but blames it on bureaucracy and efforts to ensure that Thompson’s crew also was recognized, not on military reluctance to revive the tragedy and shame of My Lai.

“What he did was an incredibly heroic thing,” Schwartz says. “He’s deserving of his medal and he’s going to get his medal.”

David Anderson sees it differently.

“The delay is not just a problem of the military, but of American society and official institutions to deal with a shock of this magnitude,” says Anderson, a professor at Indianapolis University who has written a book on the massacre.

“My Lai is a challenge to American image and ideals.”

Colburn and Andreotta also will receive Soldier’s Medals, though Andreotta’s will be awarded posthumously. He died in a helicopter crash three weeks after My Lai. His name is etched in the black stone of the Vietnam memorial.

Colburn left the military after his tour in Vietnam and is now a salesman in Woodstock, Ga.

He and Thompson will travel to My Lai this month, the 30th anniversary of the massacre. Colburn figures that’s what prompted the government to act now. “Just to save face,” he says.

“But still, 30 years later, I do get a little satisfaction. The way the award is worded, they’re admitting a mistake. And that’s all we thought the public should know.”

In the award citation, Thompson is honored for “heroic performance in saving the lives of Vietnamese civilians during the unlawful massacre of noncombatants by American forces.”

Today, Thompson counsels veterans in Lafayette. After My Lai, he stayed in uniform 13 years, then flew helicopters in Louisiana for an oil company.

On the return trip to My Lai, he has been told that the Vietnamese, too, may give him a medal.

And he’ll meet the people he rescued that day, maybe even the little boy, now all grown up.