Hugh Thompson recently died. LIke Robert Stethem, Thompson was another American military hero. He did what was right and paid a heavy price throughout his life for doing so.
Despite a U.S. Military Academy standard of ethics far higher and more stringest than just about everywhere (“To educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets so that each graduate is a commissioned leader of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Country…), personal foibles and moral defects still tragically appear.The military honor code specifically states: “A cadet shall not lie, cheat, steal, nor tolerate those who do,” but the desire to move up the chain of command, to not implicate buddies, to-get-along-by-going-along remains present but unaccounted for. Right, Lieutentant Calley and Captain Medina?
For whatever it’s worth, you are one of my heroes Hugh Thompson. To put doing right first and foremost, knowing that your life will never be the same, is often inexplicable.
But what mattered most to Thompson was basic right and wrong. Killing civilians was wrong, no ifs, ands or buts. As he put it: “There was no way I could turn my back on them,”
Here is the opening of investigative journalist Robert Parry’s article that appeared right after Thompson’s death
“Hero” is one of the most abused words in the English language, often applied to people who simply face some danger or who do well in sports or business. But the word really should be reserved for someone who – in the face of danger – does the right thing.
Hugh Thompson, who died on Jan. 6 at the age of 62 from cancer, was such a hero. In one of the darkest moments of modern American history – on March 16, 1968, in the Vietnamese village of My Lai – Thompson landed his helicopter between rampaging U.S. soldiers and a group of terrified Vietnamese villagers to save their lives.
Circling over the village, Thompson was at first uncertain what he was witnessing. A bloodied unit of the Americal Division, furious over its own casualties, had stormed into a hamlet known as My Lai 4.
Revenge-seeking American soldiers rousted Vietnamese civilians – mostly old men, women and children – from their thatched huts and herded them into the village’s irrigation ditches.
As the round-up continued, some Americans raped the girls. Then, under orders from junior officers on the ground, soldiers began emptying their M-16s into the terrified peasants. Some parents used their bodies futilely to shield their children from the bullets. Soldiers stepped among the corpses to finish off the wounded.
American Heroes
But there also were American heroes that day in My Lai, including helicopter pilot Hugh Clowers Thompson Jr. from Stone Mountain, Georgia. After concluding that he was witnessing a massacre, he landed his helicopter between one group of fleeing civilians and American soldiers in pursuit.
Thompson ordered his helicopter door gunner, Lawrence Colburn, to shoot the Americans if they tried to harm the Vietnamese. After a tense confrontation, the soldiers backed off.
Later, two of Thompson’s men climbed into one ditch filled with corpses and pulled out a three-year-old boy who was still alive. Thompson, then a warrant officer, called in other U.S. helicopters to assist the Vietnamese. All told, they airlifted at least nine Vietnamese civilians to safety.
When he returned to headquarters, a furious Thompson reported what he had witnessed, leading to orders that the My Lai killings be stopped. By then, however, the slaughter had raged for four hours, claiming the lives of 347 Vietnamese, including babies.
“They said I was screaming quite loud,” Thompson told U.S. News & World Report in 2004. “I threatened never to fly again. I didn’t want to be a part of that. It wasn’t war.”
For siding with Vietnamese civilians over his American comrades, Thompson was treated like a pariah. He was shunned by fellow soldiers, received death threats for reporting the war crime, and later was denounced by one congressman as the only American who should be punished for My Lai.
Thompson responded by saying that he had done what he thought was right, even if that meant aiming guns at Americans to save Vietnamese. “There was no way I could turn my back on them,” he later explained.
There is much more in Robert Parry’s article, including Army Major Colin Powell’s ‘probe’ into abuse of civilians and his ‘exhaustive’ followup report. Some people choose integrity and suffer the consequences. Others choose the path of least resistance and are rewarded with fame and riches.
In 2004, Thompson put it succinctly: “Don’t do the right thing looking for a reward, because it might not come.”
To read Parry’s entire article, and please do so, go here:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/011006.html
