I’ve been doing a lot of holiday reading and I came across the story of the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War. I want to share it because I find the actions of this one individual refueled my faith in humanity.
Mankind’s brutal history has seen us responsible for massacres like The Holocaust and the Rape of Nanking (along with more recent ones in Africa and Syria) and very often we don’t hear stories about someone standing up for innocent people being killed.
This is one of the few times where someone did stand up.
I’m going to cut and paste the key points from the Wikipedia article and summarize them since I think Wikipedia tells the story best.
For a full account you can read here and here.
How it all started
- The My Lai massacre took place in on 16 March 1968.
- Before engagement, Colonel (COL) Oran K. Henderson, the 11th Brigade commander, urged his officers to “go in there aggressively, close with the enemy and wipe them out for good”.[20] In turn, LTC Barker reportedly ordered the 1st Battalion commanders to burn the houses, kill the livestock, destroy food supplies, and destroy the wells.[21]
- On the eve of the attack, at the Charlie Company briefing, Captain (CPT) Ernest Medina told his men that nearly all the civilian residents of the hamlets in Sơn Mỹ village would have left for the market by 07:00, and that any who remained would be NLF or NLF sympathizers.[22] He was asked whether the order included the killing of women and children.
- The villagers, who were getting ready for a market day, at first did not panic or run away, and they were herded into the hamlet’s commons. Harry Stanley, a machine gunner from the Charlie Company, said during the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division’s (CID) inquiry that the killings started without warning. He first observed a member of the 1st Platoon strike a Vietnamese man with a bayonet. Then, the same trooper pushed another villager into a well and threw a grenade in the well. Further, he saw fifteen or twenty people, mainly women and children, kneeling around a temple with burning incense. They were praying and crying. They were all killed by shots in the head.[32]
- When PFC Michael Bernhardt entered the subhamlet of Xom Lang, the massacre was underway:I walked up and saw these guys doing strange things…Setting fire to the hootches and huts and waiting for people to come out and then shooting them…going into the hootches and shooting them up…gathering people in groups and shooting them… As I walked in you could see piles of people all through the village… all over. They were gathered up into large groups. I saw them shoot an M79 [grenade launcher] into a group of people who were still alive. But it was mostly done with a machine gun. They were shooting women and children just like anybody else. We met no resistance and I only saw three captured weapons. We had no casualties. It was just like any other Vietnamese village – old papa-sans, women and kids. As a matter of fact, I don’t remember seeing one military-age male in the entire place, dead or alive.[39]6. One group of 20-50 villagers was walked to the south of Xom Lang and killed on a dirt road. According to Ronald Haeberle’s eyewitness account of the massacre, in one instance,There were some South Vietnamese people, maybe fifteen of them, women and children included, walking on a dirt road maybe 100 yards [90 m] away. All of a sudden the GIs just opened up with M16s. Beside the M16 fire, they were shooting at the people with M79 grenade launchers… I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.[40]
The killings went on until Warrant Officer One Hugh Thompson Jr intervened.
- Thompson and his crew, who at first thought the artillery bombardment caused all the civilian deaths on the ground, became aware that Americans were murdering the Vietnamese villagers after a wounded civilian woman they requested medical evacuation for, Nguyễn Thị Tẩu (chín Tẩu), was murdered right in front of them by Captain Ernest Medina, the commanding officer of the operation. According to Larry Colburn,
“Then we saw a young girl about twenty years old lying on the grass. We could see that she was unarmed and wounded in the chest. We marked her with smoke because we saw a squad not too far away. The smoke was green, meaning it’s safe to approach. Red would have meant the opposite. We were hovering six feet off the ground not more than twenty feet away when Captain Medina came over, kicked her, stepped back, and finished her off. He did it right in front of us. When we saw Medina do that, it clicked. It was our guys doing the killing.”[8]
2. Immediately after the execution, Thompson discovered the irrigation ditch full of Calley’s victims. Thompson then radioed a message to accompanying gunships and Task Force Barker headquarters, “It looks to me like there’s an awful lot of unnecessary killing going on down there. Something ain’t right about this. There’s bodies everywhere. There’s a ditch full of bodies that we saw. There’s something wrong here.”[2]:75 Thompson spotted movement in the irrigation ditch, indicating that there were civilians alive in it. He immediately landed to assist the victims. William Calley approached Thompson and the two exchanged an uneasy conversation.[2]:77
- Thompson: What’s going on here, Lieutenant?
- Calley: This is my business.
- Thompson: What is this? Who are these people?
- Calley: Just following orders.
- Thompson: Orders? Whose orders?
- Calley: Just following…
- Thompson: But, these are human beings, unarmed civilians, sir.
- Calley: Look Thompson, this is my show. I’m in charge here. It ain’t your concern.
- Thompson: Yeah, great job.
- Calley: You better get back in that chopper and mind your own business.
- Thompson: You ain’t heard the last of this!
3. As Thompson was speaking to Calley, Calley’s subordinate, Sergeant David Mitchell, fired into the irrigation ditch, killing any civilians still moving.[2]:78Thompson and his crew, in disbelief and shock, returned to their helicopter and began searching for civilians they could save. They spotted a group of women, children, and old men in the northeast corner of the village fleeing from advancing soldiers from the 2nd Platoon, Company C. Immediately realizing that the soldiers intended to murder the Vietnamese civilians, Thompson landed his helicopter between the advancing ground unit and the villagers.[2]:79 He turned to Colburn and Andreotta and told them he would shoot the men in the 2nd Platoon if they attempted to kill any of the fleeing civilians.[2]:81 While Colburn and Andreotta focused their guns on the 2nd Platoon, Thompson located as many civilians as he could, persuaded them to follow him to safer location, and ensured their evacuation with the help of two UH-1 Huey pilots he was friends with.[4]:138-139
4. Low on fuel, Thompson was forced to return to a supply airstrip miles outside the village. Before they departed the village, Andreotta spotted movement in the irrigation ditch full of bodies. According to Trent Angers in The Forgotten Hero of My Lai: The Hugh Thompson Story (2014),
“The helicopter looped around then set down quickly near the edge of the ditch. Andreotta had maintained visual contact with the spot where he saw the movement, and he darted out of the aircraft as soon as it touched the ground. Thompson got out and guarded one side of the chopper and Colburn guarded the other. Andreotta had to walk on several badly mangled bodies to get where he was going. He lifted a corpse with several bullet holes in the torso and there, lying under it, was a child, age five or six, covered in blood and obviously in a state of shock.”
The child, Do Ba, was pulled from the irrigation ditch and after failing to find any more survivors, Thompson’s crew transported the child to a hospital inQuang Ngai.[2]:215
After transporting the child to the hospital, Thompson flew to the Task Force Barker headquarters (Landing Zone Dottie), and angrily reported the massacre to his superiors.[4]:176-179 His report quickly reached Lieutenant Colonel Frank Barker, the operation’s overall commander. Barker immediately radioed ground forces to cease the “killings”. After the helicopter was refueled, Thompson’s crew returned to the village to ensure that no more civilians were being murdered and that the wounded were evacuated.[2]:89
After the incident, Hugh Thompson Jr filed an official report.
Thompson made an official report of the killings and was interviewed by Colonel Oran Henderson, the commander of the 11th Infantry Brigade (the parent organization of the 20th Infantry).[10] Concerned, senior Americal Division officers cancelled similar planned operations by Task Force Barker against other villages (My Lai 5, My Lai 1, etc.) in Quang Ngai Province, possibly preventing the additional massacre of further hundreds, if not thousands, of Vietnamese civilians.[2]:219-220
US Commanders tried and almost succeeded in covering up the massacre.
Initially, commanders throughout the American chain of command were successful in covering up the My Lai massacre. Thompson quickly received theDistinguished Flying Cross for his actions at My Lai. The citation for the award fabricated events, for example praising Thompson for taking to a hospital a Vietnamese child “…caught in intense crossfire”. It also stated that his “…sound judgment had greatly enhanced Vietnamese–American relations in the operational area.” Thompson threw away the citation.[4]:204-205
When news of the incident broke, Hugh Thompson started receiving death threats, hate mail and mutilated animals on his doorstep.
In late-1969, Thompson was summoned to Washington, DC to appear before a special closed hearing of the House Armed Services Committee. There, he was sharply criticized by congressmen, in particular Chairman Mendel Rivers (D-S.C.), who were anxious to play down allegations of a massacre by American troops.[4]:290-291 Rivers publicly stated that he felt Thompson was the only soldier at My Lai who should be punished (for turning his weapons on fellow American troops) and unsuccessfully attempted to have him court-martialed.[3] As word of his actions became publicly known, Thompson started receiving hate mail, death threats, and mutilated animals on his doorstep.[5]
30 years after the incident though, Hugh Thompson found recognition in his actions.
In 1998, exactly 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 (Andreotta posthumously), the United States Army’s highest award for bravery not involving direct contact with the enemy. “It was the ability to do the right thing even at the risk of their personal safety that guided these soldiers to do what they did,” then-Major General Michael Ackerman said at the 1998 ceremony. The three “set the standard for all soldiers to follow.” Additionally on March 10, 1998, Senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.) entered a tribute to Thompson, Colburn and Andreotta into the record of the U.S. Senate. Cleland said the three men were “true examples of American patriotism at its finest.”[22]
In the end, an estimated 347-504 civilians were killed in this massacre and that number would’ve been much more if it wasn’t for Hugh Thompson Jr’s actions. It must’ve taken tremendous courage for him to do what he did.
As I read this story, I’m reminded of a really famous quote:
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
While I pray that these massacres are never repeated again in future, I do hope that if they do, men like Hugh Thompson Jr will stand up against it.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space