RECOVERED HISTORY

PASSINGS: HUGH THOMPSON

CLANCY SIGAL, COUNTERPUNCH - There is an Ugly American, a Quiet American
and then there's Hugh Thompson, the Army helicopter pilot who, with his
two younger crew mates, was on a mission to draw enemy fire over the
Vietnamese village of My Lai in March, 1968. Hovering over a paddy
field, they watched a platoon of American soldiers led by Lt. William
Calley, deliberately shoot unarmed Vietnamese civilians, mainly women
and children, cowering in muddy ditches. Thompson landed his craft and
appealed to the soldiers, and to Calley, to stop the killings. Calley
told Thompson to mind his own business.

Thompson took off but then one of his crew shouted that the shooting had
begun again. According to his later testimony, Thompson was uncertain
what to do. Americans murdering innocent bystanders was hard for him to
process. But when he saw Vietnamese survivors chased by soldiers, he
landed his chopper between the villagers and troopers, and ordered his
crew to fire at any American soldiers shooting at civilians. Then he got
on the radio and begged U.S. gunships above him to rescue those
villagers he could not cram into his own craft.

On returning to base, Thompson, almost incoherent with rage, immediately
reported the massacre to superiors, who did nothing, until months later
when the My Lai story leaked to the public. The eyewitness testimony of
Thompson and his surviving crew member helped convict Calley at a
court-martial. But when he returned to his Stateside home in Stone
Mountain, Georgia, Thompson received death threats and insults, while
Calley was pardoned by President Nixon. Indeed, for a time, Thompson
himself feared court-martial. Reluctantly, the massacre was investigated
by then-major Colin Powell, of the Americal Division, who reported
relations between U.S. soldiers and Vietnamese civilians as "excellent";
Powell's whitewash was the foundation of his meteoric rise through the
ranks.

Hugh Thompson died last week, age sixty two. Thirty years after My Lai,
he, and his gunner Lawrence Colburn, had received the Soldiers Medal, as
did the third crew member, Glenn Andreotta, who was killed in combat.
"Don't do the right thing looking for a reward, because it might not
come," Thompson wryly observed at the ceremony.

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