hugh thompson testimony

That was the only enemy combatant we saw that day. I remember catching one of the soldiers eyes and I waved to him and he waved back. Were you vilified or the target of death threats the way Hugh Thompson was? By then I was a civilian and was trying to attend college on the GI Bill, but I kept getting subpoenas. To do something like that in the whirlwind of war was downright insane, and thats exactly what he did. I always thought the American people deserved to know what was going on and I just thought it was good the public got a color photo layout of what happened at My Lai. Hugh Thompson reported the massacre to his commanding officer. Typically, when we post testimonies here on truthsaves, we're detailing conversion experiences. U.S. ArmyWilliam Calley, the officer who ordered the slaughter at M Lai. Except for the boy, it appeared the rest were already dead. Charles Guiteau told a local newspaper that he shot James A. Garfield without malice or murderous intent.. We had no direct radio contact with the men on the ground. That seemed suicidal to me, going out with next to no backup or firepower. They also led as many surviving civilians as they could to shelter. Glenn had a visual on some sort of movement in the ditch, so Hugh landed, and Glenn and I got out. And it turned out, after we dropped him off with the nun at the hospital, he didnt stay 24 hours. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Opinion: California wants more psychiatric detentions. "They said I was screaming quite loud," he told U.S. News & World Report in 2004. It was an enemy tactic to blur the lines between combatants and noncombatants. I lost faith in the whole military organization and wanted to put it all behind me. Innocent people didnt die that day They didnt just fly off the handle and engage a target that was borderline. On March 6, 1998, the Army presented the Soldier's Medal, for heroism not involving conflict with an enemy, to Mr. Thompson; to his gunner, Lawrence Colburn; and, posthumously, to Mr. Andreotta, who was killed in a helicopter crash three weeks after the My Lai massacre. As the wounded tried to crawl out, they were fired on by someone who had been left there to do just that. Hugh Thompson, who has died aged 62, was the helicopter pilot who tried to halt the My Lai massacre of more than 500 villagers by American troops during the Vietnam war . Glenn went down into the ditch and found the boy that he had seen moving and handed him up to me. Commentary: Opponents need to stop equating abortion with eugenics, Editorial: Polluters keep trying to block gas bans. Then he assumed the Army initiated an investigation. endstream endobj 172 0 obj <. He is best known for his role in stopping the My Lai Massacre, in which a group of US Army soldiers tortured and killed several hundred unarmed Vietnamese civilians, mutilating their bodies after they had been murdered. The military was forced after an eight-year letter writing campaign by David Egan, a professor at Clemson University, and a businessman named William Cavanaugh. Testimony in the case against Officers Brendan Thompson and Herbert Davis is scheduled for Tuesday, with follow-ups expected in May. From Testimony to Tragedy: My Lai in Personal Perspective Michael W. Flamm Michael W. Flamm Michael W. Flamm is professor of history at Ohio Wesleyan University. Testimony of Dr. Hugh Thompson, HTA Engineering (Expert Witness) (Exhibit Allegra-10) Exhibit Allegra-10 includes Survey Notes and 12 photographs taken by HTA Engineering on January 12, 2010. "I'd received death threats over the phone," he told the CBS News program "60 Minutes" in 2004. View Hugh Thompson's professional profile on LinkedIn. Saw some advancing Americans coming that way. HUGH THOMPSON: I'm Hugh Thompson. His final term would have expired in December 2018; he retired in January 2017. Probably not. There was also testimony of absolute insanity. One of the ladies that we had helped out that day came up to me and asked, Why didnt the people who committed these acts come back with you? And I was just devastated. Calley had many supporters, who condemned and harassed Thompson. My Lai Massacre: Vietnam War & Colin Powell - HISTORY What led you to enlist in the Army? Whenever I felt discouraged about things, Hugh would remind me that if we get through to just one person, its worth it. Then, as I was in this crowd, I turned around and there he waswith his beautiful wife and new baby boy. They tried to make arrangements to get him there, but couldnt find him. I was encouraged in that there was an investigation going on and they were going after some people in a big way. Glenn shouted, Hes firing into the ditch again!, How did Hugh react when reason failed? And you want to instill the spirit of Thompson in others. Hugh Thompson is a genuine, bone-fide hero of the Vietnam war, protecting hundreds from being massacred by US troops at My Lai. We didnt know what was happening. It was fresh enough that things hadnt changed much. I was aghast at hearing how Lt William Calley got away with cold blooded murder, spending one day behind bars as a convicted criminal. I have come to understand him more now than I did when he was here. The only radio communication we had was with the low gunship. From his helicopter, Hugh Thompson could not communicate with Charlie Company on the ground. As we found out from the farce of justice being served via trials of the monsters responsible, politicians and their cronies cant be trusted either. Thompson landed his helicopter next to a ditch that contained 150 people many dead, but many others wounded and trying to escape. And although he lived with post-traumatic stress disorder, alcoholism, and nightmare disorder for decades, he eventually became a veterans counselor for the Louisiana Department of Veterans Affairs. Company C (Charlie Company), 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment of Task Force Barker, led by Captain Ernest Medina, moved into Sn M. Thompson was more experienced than Lt. Calley, more ethical, more talented, and brighter, and probably recognized Calley didnt know what he was doing. Then he assumed the Army initiated an investigation. He told me not to say anything to anybody, and just tell the truth when I got there. I just figured it was time to do something, to not let these people get killed. Its like the line from the movie No Country for Old Men when the Vietnam veteran played by Josh Brolin, who responds to another guy who introduced himself and says he was in Nam too: Oh, you were in Vietnam too. Im giving interviews and working with students. Ultimately, it was a pubic relations move, they had to give the medal. Unfortunately, Lt. Calley and the rest of Company C never paid the price for the atrocities they committed. Hugh Thompson, the helicopter pilot who stopped the My Lai massacre, later told the news program "60 Minutes" that he was ostracized and received death threats upon his return from Vietnam.. You know, you think everybody feels you and you can ignore your own symptoms. Ive tried to put myself in their position, tried to empathize. Interestingly, there are those toying with the idea of inviting him to make the trip back to My Lai to ask for the people there for forgiveness. Thompson wanted you to also make a report? I enjoyed that. TIE LOST SOLDIER Hugh Thompson's Strange Life Will Fill a Book Hood were returnees, but no one really zeroed in on what was happening. The eyewitness testimony of Thompson and his surviving crew member helped convict Calley at a court-martial. He received a life sentence in 1971 for premeditated murder which was later reduced to 10 years. When I first joined the company, the commander took the volunteers to the flight line and showed us bullet holes in the aircraft and asked us if we knew what they were. Just then Glenn spotted some people in an earthen bunker, saw faces peering out of the entry. I thought that from a historical perspective, something needed to be in place so that when Im gone, what Hugh did at My Lai wont just fade into obscurity. There could be a reason for doing it, or there could have simply been a complete breakdown in leadership. We even started marking the wounded with smoke, thinking the men on ground would come assist them. Hugh landed and ran over and told the sergeant, These are civilians, we got to help them out. The sergeant agreed, telling Hugh hed help themout of their misery. Hugh continued to argue, said they were no threat, they had no weapons. What happened next was one of the most remarkable events of the entire war, and perhaps unique: Thompson told the American troops that, if they opened fire on the Vietnamese civilians in the bunker, he and his crew would open fire on them. I did hear that the men on the ground were told to pretend like it never happened. In harsh times, heroes are ordinary men doing extraordinary things. I think Task Force Barkers intent was to create panic and drive the enemy forces out of the area. Oh, no, Mr. Thompson, let me see what we can do, he said. Jan Swango Emerson and Hugh Feiss, eds., Imagining Heaven in the Middle Ages (New York: Garland, 2000); . And it turned out it was a good thing that they did. Heroes of My Lai - University of Missouri-Kansas City We couldnt come up with an explanation until Hugh marked a woman we saw who had a chest wound and decided to just move back in a hover when we saw a squad coming near. I had no idea what it was about. It took the Army 30 years, but in 1998, they finally acknowledged that Thompson had done something good. Out of the blue, our unit was called out onto the tarmac for an awards and decoration ceremony. Were you glad you got it? Thompson had a famous emotional outburst upon returning to base? People need to know who Hugh Thompson was, what he did and why he did it. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. I am sorry this world has lost you. Everywhere wed look, wed see bodies. How do you think your story, of an event now long in the past, can make a difference? Sometimes we did and sometimes we didnt. A defendant charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, who testified that he believed he was "following presidential orders" from President Donald Trump when he stormed the building. Acadiana People: Angers writes new chapter in Hugh Thompson story We came to think we were indirectly killing these people ourselves by marking them with smoke. On March 16, 1968, did you have any expectations of serious action? 199 0 obj <>stream I give credit to my sister Mary, who saw my condition when I came home. You are not comfortable with being called a hero, either? Meet the Soldier Who Prevented More Killings During the My Lai Massacre Did the gunship crews know what was happening on the ground before this? For hours, they raped, mutilated, and slaughtered innocent civilians until a helicopter pilot named Hugh Thompson Jr. put his own life on the line to stop the massacre. Wed talk a lot and if I was stressing I could always pick up the phone and Hugh could always talk me down. Through the years, he continued to speak out, having been invited to West Point and other military installations to tell of the moral and legal obligations of soldiers in wartime. Dead animals on your porch, mutilated animals on your porch some mornings when you get up. Justice, if it could ever be achieved in this case, would have been to line each and every one of them up in front of a firing squad and start shooting from the knees up. Today theres a little museum in My Lai, where Thompson is honored, and which displays a list of the names and ages of people killed that day. We were the closest and should have been able to communicate, but thats the way it was structured. When Hugh gave his order, I distinctly remember pointing my weapon directly down at the ground, so there was no question. 30 years after the massacre, Thompson and the two other members of his crew, Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn, were awarded the Soldier's Medal (Andreott. I just thank God everybody kept their cool and no one made any quick moves. We would have died for them. That is what other people say. We kept flying back and forth, Thompson recalled, and it didnt take very long until we started noticing the large number of bodies everywhere. I looked at them and the first thing I saw was, Reason: to conduct necessary military business. So thats all I would tell the CO. This is not what Im here for. The low gun probably did because they had visual and were communicating with Hugh, and Hugh had been telling them what wed been seeing, hoping they were relating that up to the command craft that was flying above at altitude. He tried to persuade him to stop the attack but with no success. Calley was the only person found guilty out of the 14 charged. Charlie Company arrived in M Lai with orders to destroy the village. Ill have no part of this, Ill tear these wings off and never fly again!. He was very helpful to General Peers and it seemed like he wasnt just going through the motions, it was like he really wanted to know what happened. I was raised with a sense of duty. Thompson ran over and said, These are civilians, we got to help them out.. If they fire on these people, or fire on me while Im doing that, shoot em!. But remember, at My Lai only about a third of the men participated in the massacre, but no one else tried to stop it. It was like he dropped out of the sky. As children ran for safety, soldiers gunned them down. Hugh transmitted what he could to the low gun in hopes that it would get up to the commander and someone would make a decision to stop it. In the midst of it, they had a conversation like this: Remember those old guys from Vietnam and what they told us back at Annapolis?. And when Hugh Thompson testified against William Calley, the officer who ordered the massacre, Thompson received death threats. Some of Calleys men didnt follow Calleys orders and did nothing. I was 17 when I enlisted in 1966 with some friends. The Forgotten Hero of My Lai: The Hugh Thompson Story - Goodreads He was presumably mindful of the ostracism he had faced and the long wait for that medal ceremony in Washington. And we did, the best we could. We want to recognize people in the military and all walks of life who really make difficult decisions the way Hugh did. And then she finished her sentence: she said, So we could forgive them.'. He found 69 between the ages of 4 and 7, and 91 between the ages of 8 and 12. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. Among those numbers were 17 pregnant women and 56 infants. I saw them shoot an M79 [grenade launcher] into a group of people who were still alive, said Sgt. So he gave me prescriptions for several psychotropic drugs. Central to the case prosecuted by the Civilian Complaint. the testimony he gave to the House Committees and the courts-martial of the . So he called our low gunship, piloted by a friend of his, Dan Millans, and said: Danny, I need a favor. I testified in the trials of Henderson, Medina and Calley. As far as a place in history, thats not something I dwell on. "I cannot explain why it happened. Thompson told his crew, Im going to go over to the bunker myself and get these people out. Upon entering Sn M, officers and soldiers of Company C moved through the Song My Village and vicinity, murdering civilians, raping women, and setting fire to huts. I think he broke his flight helmet, he threw it down so hard. Thompson kept testifying against the butchers of My Lai in hopes of securing justice for the civilians killed that day. And yes, they did know that. I walked in and told Henderson we saw unnecessary killing of many civilians. We took him out of the area to a hospital and gave him to a nun. The My Lai Massacre was and still is a huge, shameful event that will be hard for several generations to get past. The eyewitness testimony of Thompson and his surviving crew member helped convict Calley at a court-martial. We know that Americans committed a massacre 50 years ago today; and we also know that an American stopped it. Hell, I didnt want to believe it, either, but I had no choice because I saw it. I met Thompson in 2000 and interviewed him for my radio program on KPFK in Los Angeles. There was a guy at the ditch with Calley, shooting people not yet dead. He angered some GIs as he tried to photograph them as they fondled the breasts of a fifteen-year-old Vietnamese girl. Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot who rescued Vietnamese civilians during the My Lai massacre, reported the killings to his superior officers in a rage over what he had seen, testified at. As I understand, that part of brain doesnt develop until 25. It was denial on the part of the public, said Colburn. There was some chatter since most of the people at Ft. Thats what keeps me going. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. Thompson and Colburn returned to Sn M to meet with survivors of the massacre at the Sn M Memorial in 1998. Hugh Thompson in his Army uniform, c. 1966. %PDF-1.6 % Hugh Thompson and his crew rescued a surviving child whom they flew to the nearest field hospital. Before the story broke, did you or Hugh consider going public with the story? There were real good highs, he told me, and very low lows. Hugh Thompson Jr. - Wikiwand Well, Hugh told them, if you just give it to me Ill take the medal, with a camera crew, to the first mens room I can find and Ill flush it down the toilet. This is a colonel he is talking to. It wasn't war.". Why is Frank McCourt really pushing this? Upon coming home, he got death threats and the like. Testimony to the Truth I had an administrative MOS and was ordered to Hawaii where I was working as a courier. Join Facebook to connect with Hugh Thompson and others you may know. The second time, he touched down near a bunker in which a group of about 10 civilians were being menaced by American troops. There were probably 10 in the squad. It was a case of bloodlust. Im not judge, jury and executioner. Everybodys heard of the My Lai massacre March 16, 1968, 50 years ago today but not many know about the man who stopped it: Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot. Hugh Thompson was a United States Army Major and a former warrant officer in the 123rd Aviation Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Division who helped end the My Lai Massacre of the South Vietnamese village known as Sn M on March 16, 1968. It couldnt be gunships, they werent firing on people. But in the end,. He struggled too. If Hugh knew that, it would have made everything he went through worthwhile for him. Still, Thompson had saved civilians who would have been killed if he had not intervened. I have mine put away somewhere, but I think Hugh threw his away one night. "I threatened never to fly again. Are you guys with me?. Hugh was running scenarios through his head to figure it out. Anyway, they remembered our story about My Lai, and instead of just lighting up a target, they took the time to analyze and study the situation. Did you have a sense that what you had seen at My Lai was and isolated incident or did you suspect similar atrocities were happening elsewhere? 171 0 obj <> endobj Who were the people lying in the roads and in the ditch, wounded and killed? I was back in Mount Vernon, outside Washington, and I got a call from my mother saying there were some people at the house who wanted to talk to me. The villagers offered no resistance as U.S. soldiers shoved them into a ditch and opened fire with machine guns. The squad leader ordered Thompson and his men to get out of the way. At the time, I figured he was 3 or 4 years old, he was tiny. One of the ladies that we had helped out that day came up to me and asked, Why didnt the people who committed these acts come back with you? He wanted to give us some idea of what were getting into. From Testimony to Tragedy: My Lai in Personal Perspective The story of My Lai is well known: On the morning of March 16, 1968, a company of U.S. soldiers killed as many as 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians in My Lai, a village in South Vietnam. Billy Waugh, Famed Special Forces Warrior and CIA Legend, Dies At 93. So, he decided to do something. The Army covered it up. . It was a dime short and day late for Hugh, 30 years after the factafter causing him griefthen theyre going to call him a hero? That Is little Hugh!" It was "Little Hugh" sure enough. Dont salute me or call me sir, he said, Just Mr. Thompson. He didnt believe in that no fraternization stuff, he was really one of the fellows, he knew both sides. A list of his survivors was not immediately available. Indeed, for a time, Thompson himself feared court-martial. If we would have had direct contact, we could have told them that these people are unarmed, no threat. For more information about the Hugh Thompson Foundation, visit www.designaire.com/HughThompson, Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. That morning, Hugh said, This is supposed to be a VC stronghold, but you know G2. Usually, when intelligence said an area was hot, it wasnt, and visa versa. I was on the backup team that day and we went out to try to retrieve the bodies. Jon Wiener is professor emeritus of history at UC Irvine, and working, with Mike Davis, on a book on Los Angeles in the 1960s. Id never seen nor heard of anything like that before, except in World War II. Some were sent out into the field for 60-75 days straight, and they started getting the feeling somebody was trying to get rid of them. Mr. Thompson landed twice in an effort to determine what was happening, finally coming to the realization that a massacre was taking place.

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