GreekChat.com Forums - An American Military Hero Passes

I was saddened to learn that Hugh Thompson passed this last week... I always had the utmost respect for the man, someone who literally put himself in harm's way at My Lai.

Up here, the Canadian Armed Forces held him up as a paragon of honour; as well as an example of the duty of every soldier to disobey an unlawful command, and just as importantly the duty to stop others. It's too bad he and his crew never got the respect and honour they deserved from the US Military community... :(

CBC Story

Quote:

A hero during Vietnam massacre, pilot dies at 62
Last Updated Fri, 06 Jan 2006 20:39:51 EST
CBC News

Hugh Thompson Jr., a helicopter pilot who trained his guns on American troops to save civilians during the worst atrocity in modern U.S. military history, has died of cancer at 62.

On the morning of March 16, 1968, he was a 24-year-old chief warrant officer skimming above Vietnamese rice paddies in a U.S. Army helicopter with a crew of two, gunner Lawrence Colburn and crew chief Glenn Andreotta.

In and around the village of My Lai, they saw piles of bodies and realized that U.S. troops were killing civilians – about 500 that day, it was later estimated.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/ir...cp_1523169.jpg
Bodies of women and children on road leading from My Lai, March 1968. (AP photo / Ronald L. Haeberle / Courtesy Life Magazine)

After landing and being warned away, they saw civilians running toward a bunker, pursued by Americans.

Thompson landed the helicopter in the line of fire between the two groups. With Colburn and Andreotta providing cover – he told them to shoot the Americans if they opened fire – he coaxed the Vietnamese out of the bunker so they could be flown to safety

>more at: http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/nation...t.html?ref=rss

USAToday Story

Quote:

A hero scorned
Fri Jan 13, 6:45 AM ET

In 1968, helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson flew into the thick of what he thought was a fierce battle in South Vietnam and discovered, instead, that a massacre was going on - of women, children and elderly men at the hands of U.S. soldiers. Horrified, he landed his helicopter between the soldiers and the civilians, ordered his crew to fire on any American who continued shooting, called for back-up and rescued victims, digging through corpses to scoop up one child.

An instant hero? It would be nice to think so. A year later, the public found out about the killings - infamous as the My Lai massacre, exposed by journalist Seymour Hersh. But Thompson, who died of cancer last week at age 62, received no honors then. He was made a pariah.

For years, when he walked into officers' clubs, they emptied out. He got threatening phone messages. Dead animals were left on his porch. When he was called to give closed congressional testimony, a senior lawmaker said that if anyone deserved to be court-martialed, it was him. As it was, only one officer, Army Lt. William Calley, was convicted, spending just three years under house arrest before President Nixon pardoned him.

>more at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/200...NlYwN5bmNhdA--