A Real American Hero (OT)

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Gary

Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
Topic Author's Original Post - Mar 16, 2018 - 03:16pm PT
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wiener-my-lai-hugh-thompson-20180316-story.html

Everybody's 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. When he arrived, American soldiers had already killed 504 Vietnamese civilians (that's the Vietnamese count; the U.S. Army said 347). They were going to kill more, but they didn't — because of what Thompson did.

"We started noticing these large numbers of bodies everywhere," he told me, "people on the road dead, wounded. And just sitting there saying, 'God, how'd this happen? What's going on?' And we started thinking what might have happened, but you didn't want to accept that thought — because if you accepted it, that means your own fellow Americans, people you were there to protect, were doing something very evil..."

Who were the people lying in the roads and in the ditch, wounded and killed?

"They were not combatants. They were old women, old men, children, kids, babies..."

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.



Then came the backlash. Calley had many supporters, who condemned and harassed Thompson. He didn’t have much support — for decades. It took the Army 30 years, but in 1998, they finally acknowledged that Thompson had done something good. They awarded him the Soldier's Medal for “heroism not involving actual conflict with an enemy.”

On the 30th anniversary of the massacre, Thompson went back to My Lai and met some of the people whose lives he had saved. "There were real good highs," he told me, "and very low lows. One of the ladies that we had helped out that day came up to me and asked, 'Why didn't the people who committed these acts come back with you?' And I was just devastated. And then she finished her sentence: she said, 'So we could forgive them.' I'm not man enough to do that. I'm sorry. I wish I was, but I won't lie to anybody. I'm not that much of a man."


RIP
SteveW

Trad climber
The state of confusion
Mar 16, 2018 - 04:22pm PT
Yep.
He was a real hero. We need more like him.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Mar 16, 2018 - 04:27pm PT
I was going to post this also. Good on you, Gary. The Wiki article on him is also worth a look.
I did take issue with the statement that a similar atrocity was committed every day, or some
such nonsense.
Bullwinkle

Boulder climber
Mar 16, 2018 - 04:53pm PT
Unfortunately the US military didn't stop murdering innocent civilians at My Lai. They've continued in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's one of the things we seem to be good at, murder and wars based on lies. . .df
Gary

Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
Topic Author's Reply - Mar 16, 2018 - 05:07pm PT
he did a very UNamerican thing that day and the moral universe thanks him for it

No, he and Andreotta and Colburn did a very American thing. The UNAmericans were Medina, and Calley and their goons.

Happiegrrrl2

Trad climber
Mar 16, 2018 - 05:41pm PT
I cannot imagine how difficult it would be, to be in a foreign country and feeling your fellow troops were pretty much your only tie to the possibility of ever returning to a life back home, and standing up against that very group when you know what you have witnessed is wrong. Yes, that man is a hero, for certain.

10b4me

Social climber
Lida Junction
Mar 16, 2018 - 06:06pm PT
Unfortunately the US military didn't stop murdering innocent civilians at My Lai. They've continued in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's one of the things we seem to be good at, murder and wars based on lies. . .df

Exactly. Those who forget history, are doomed to repeat it.
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