A whistleblower who discovers fraud or bribery has the luxury of time, to think things over and decide what to do. Hugh "Buck" Thompson had no time at all, between stumbling across the My Lai massacre as it happened, and deciding what to do about it.
With his crew chief Glenn Andreotta and gunner Lawrence Colburn, Thompson landed the helicopter near a pile of dead and injured locals' bodies. He and his crew started to help the wounded, but were told by a platoon leader, Lieutenant William Calley, to back off.
Calley outranked him, so Thompson and his men returned to their helicopter, but as they took to the air, Andreotta screamed that the Americans had opened fire on the wounded villagers.
Thompson could have flown away and said nothing, but instead he again landed the helicopter — this time touching down in the direct line of fire, as American soldiers pursued about ten locals, including old people and several children.
To his gunner, Colburn, Thompson gave an order: "If these bastards open up on me or these people, you open up on them. Promise me!" But the American soldiers stood down, after the chopper blocked their way.
Under cover of his aircraft's guns, Thompson confronted Lieutenant Stephen Brooks, an officer who was leading the pursuit of the villagers. Without waiting for the Lieutenant's permission, Thompson, Andreotta, and Colburn then coaxed the cornered and terrified villagers out of hiding, called in more helicopters to carry the wounded to safety, and dug several other injured locals out of the mud and blood.
More than 500 Vietnamese men, women, children, and infants had been murdered at My Lai that day, though the body count was always minimized by military spokesmen.
Thompson filed a full report, but there was no investigation. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, but the official citation was fiction, stating that he had rescued civilians "caught in intense crossfire" — as if it had been a military battle instead of a war crime.
Two years later, after reporter Seymour Hersh wrote about the massacre in the pages of the St Louis Post-Dispatch, official hearings were finally held. Thompson testified to what he had seen, and investigators recommended filing charges of murder, rape, and sodomy against up to thirty officers and enlisted men.
In the military and media, though, many saw Thompson's acts as betrayal. Most news accounts portrayed Calley as a good soldier who had perhaps had a bad day, and numerous "rallies for Calley" were held in major American cities.
US Representative L Mendel Rivers (D-South Carolina) chaired Congressional hearings about what he described as "the so-called My Lai incident," and stated that the only criminal action had been by Thompson himself, when he ordered guns turned on American soldiers.
Only Lt Calley was convicted of any crime at My Lai. Found guilty on 22 counts of murder, he was sentenced to life at hard labor, but President Richard Nixon ordered him removed from prison and instead placed under house arrest. Over three years of appeals, Calley lived in bachelor-quarters at Fort Benning, until his parole in 1974. In 2009, in a speech at a Kiwanis Club in Georgia, Calley publicly apologized for his role in the massacre. He died in 2024.
Thompson left the military in 1983. He then worked as a helicopter pilot for oil companies off the Louisiana coast, and volunteered as a counselor for veterans. Whenever the My Lai massacre was mentioned in the media, he received a fresh flurry of death threats.
In 1998, at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC, Thompson, Andreotta, and Colburn received the Soldier's Medal for their heroism at My Lai. Andreotta's medal was posthumous — he'd been killed in Vietnam less than a month after the events at My Lai.
Thompson died in 2006, and Colburn in 2016.
"I had a real hard time understanding why in the world everybody was trying to make me the bad guy," Thompson told a reporter in 1999. "It's hard to live with that."
9/16/2024
itsdougholland.com
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Part of being an American is to forget. You could pick a new name when you entered the country, forgetting everything about your past life. When I was young I heard about Vietnam and thought it was some great anomaly. This was the country that fought Hitler, you know. American wars start in 1776 and hit the Civil War and nothing really happens until 1941. Obviously: not true. All the takeovers of Central American countries, the invasions of Haiti, the Philippines, brutal anti-insurgency campaigns, etc. All forgotten now except when you come across some list of congressional medal winners and see a bunch of them for wars that nobody remembers.
ReplyDeleteSince Haiti's in the news, it's notable to google the name "Charlemagne Péralte" and then click on images and look at his death. American Marines did that. They actually even took the picture while parading him like that. The Marines that did it actually got medals of honor for doing that.
One of the worst things in our lives was the way the same military brass were able to swindle the American public on the notion of "smart bombs" and the notion of safe, bloodless war where only the bad guys get killed and everything else is a terrifying, once-in-a-lifetime mistake. Remember Zemari Ahmadi, the Afghan who was out securing water for his family when we murdered him and most of them in "retaliation" for the ISIS strike at Kabul Airport during the withdrawal? Didn't need a Lt. Calley to go in and get our pound of flesh. Some nerd with a joystick, a monitor and people he doesn't know and never sees telling him to open fire. Robot dictatorship can hardly be worse than this.
I wonder if joystick warriors get medals, to help say "Thank you for your service." Snipers do, so why not e-soldiers?
DeleteCharlemagne Péralte's story was new to me. How utterly American. There's a documentary, but it hasn't been released yet.
Yup, I remember Zemari , or at least I remember his demise, though I'd forgotten his name. Of course, 99 out of 100 such war crimes, we never even hear about.
I gather you know lots more about America's international evils than I do. I no longer even follow the details, because it's always the same. My knee jerk is never wrong: Whatever the USA's military or intelligence is doing outside America will be evil, wrong, and counterproductive to *genuine* American interest.
We could and should be exporting good news, dropping food and first aid where it's needed, but that's not the American way. We're busy dropping bombs, or selling them so other countries can be our killing proxy, or yeah, sending video-controlled missiles instead.