The Blog of Death

Hugh Thompson Jr.

On the morning of March 16, 1968, Army helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson Jr. was flying a reconnaissance mission over the south Vietnamese village of My Lai when he saw a horrific scene of carnage.

"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. 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. That's what you look for, draft-age people," Thompson once said.

Upon landing the OH-23 helicopter, door-gunner Lawrence Colburn, crew chief Glenn Andreotta and Thompson began picking through the bodies and placing green gas markers near the Vietnamese civilians who were wounded, but still alive. As they returned to the helicopter to call for additional aid, however, a U.S. soldier in Charlie Company, 11th Brigade began shooting the marked civilians. When Thompson found another GI preparing to blow up a hut filled with Vietnamese, he told Andreotta and Colburn to point their weapons at the Americans and shoot anyone who tried to kill the villagers. With his two-member crew providing cover, he went searching for the platoon's leader and ordered a cease fire.

Thompson then radioed for two other helicopters to transport the injured Vietnamese to safety. He and his crew were flying away from My Lai when Andreotta spotted movement in an irrigation ditch filled with dead bodies. Once they landed the helicopter, Andreotta hopped out to search the mass grave for survivors. He returned a few minutes later carrying a wounded child.

Up to 500 people were killed in My Lai that day by approximately 80 American soldiers. Not every member of Charlie Company participated in the slaughter, neither did they do anything to stop it.

In 1969, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh published an expose of the My Lai massacre and its subsequent cover-up. The series of articles, which included comments about the incident from Thompson, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970. It also helped change the public's opinion of the Vietnam conflict and led to the conviction of the platoon's leader, Lt. William L. Calley. Calley received a life sentence for his role in the killings, but served just three years of house arrest after President Richard Nixon reduced his punishment. He was the only soldier to be convicted in the massacre.

Thompson later testified before the U.S. Senate, the U.S. Army Inspector General and at every one of the My Lai massacre court-martials -- and suffered retribution for doing so. Strangers phoned him with death threats and left mutilated animals at his home. Members of the armed services called him a traitor for turning on his own countrymen, and one congressman allegedly labeled him as "unpatriotic." David Egan, a professor emeritus at Clemson University, felt otherwise and in the late 1980s launched a letter-writing campaign to encourage the government to honor Thompson's heroism.

Still, it wasn't until 1998 when the Army decided to award the Soldier's Medal, the highest award for bravery not involving conflict with an enemy, to Thompson, Colburn and Andreotta. Andreotta was honored posthumously; he was killed in a helicopter crash three weeks after My Lai. Thompson and Colburn returned to the village that same year to dedicate an elementary school. There they met some of the villagers they saved, including the 8-year-old boy pulled from the irrigation ditch. In 1999, the two veterans received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award.

Thompson enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1961 and in the U.S. Army in 1966. The Atlanta native was shot down five times during the Vietnam war, broke his backbone in the last attack and suffered from psychological scars for the rest of his life. Despite this, he continued to serve his country as a counselor for the Louisiana Department of Veterans Affairs.

Thompson died on Jan. 6 of cancer at the age of 62. He was buried in Lafayette, La., with full military honors.

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Posted on January 17, 2006 6:39 AM