Hugh Thompson Jr.
Hugh Clowers Thompson Jr. was a United States Army officer, serving as a warrant officer in the 123rd Aviation Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Division. He is credited with ending the Mỹ Lai massacre of the South Vietnamese village known as Sơn Mỹ on March 16, 1968, alongside Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn.
During the massacre, Thompson and his Hiller OH-23 Raven crew, Andreotta and Colburn, stopped many killings by threatening and blocking American officers and enlisted soldiers of Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division. Additionally, Thompson and his crew saved a number of Vietnamese civilians by personally escorting them away from advancing United States Army ground units and assuring their evacuation by air. Thompson reported the atrocities by radio several times while at Sơn Mỹ. Although these reports reached Task Force Barker operational headquarters, nothing was done to stop the massacre. After evacuating a child to a Quảng Ngãi hospital, Thompson angrily reported to his superiors at Task Force Barker headquarters that a massacre was occurring at Sơn Mỹ. Immediately following Thompson's report, Lieutenant Colonel Frank A. Barker ordered all ground units in Sơn Mỹ to cease search and destroy operations in the village.
In 1970, Thompson testified against those responsible for the Mỹ Lai massacre. Twenty-six officers and enlisted soldiers, including William Calley and Ernest Medina, were charged with criminal offenses; many were either acquitted or pardoned, notably excepting Calley, who was convicted and served a commuted sentence of three-and-a-half years under house arrest. Thompson was condemned and ostracized by many individuals in the United States military and government, as well as the public, for his role in the investigations and trials concerning the Mỹ Lai massacre. As a result of what he experienced, Thompson experienced post-traumatic stress disorder, alcoholism, divorce, and severe nightmare disorder. Despite the adversity he faced, he remained in the Army until November 1, 1983, then continued to make a living as a helicopter pilot in the Southeastern United States.
In 1998, 30 years after the massacre, Thompson and the two other members of his crew, Andreotta and Colburn, were awarded the Soldier's Medal, the United States Army's highest award for bravery not involving direct contact with the enemy. Thompson and Colburn returned to Sơn Mỹ to meet with survivors of the massacre at the Sơn Mỹ Memorial in 1998. In 1999, Thompson and Colburn received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award.
Early life
Hugh Clowers Thompson Jr. was born on April 15, 1943, in Atlanta, Georgia, to Wessie and Hugh Clowers Thompson. His family was from the Province of Georgia and Great Britain. He identified his paternal grandmother as being of Cherokee descent.Hugh Clowers Thompson Sr. was an electrician and served in the United States Navy during the Second World War.
In 1946, the Thompson family relocated from Atlanta to Stone Mountain, Georgia. Thompson's brother and only sibling, Tommie Norman Thompson, was born in 1938 and served in the United States Air Force during the Vietnam War. Thompson was a member of the Boy Scouts of America and his family was actively involved in the Episcopal Church. Hugh Clowers Thompson Sr. educated his children to act with discipline and integrity. The Thompson family denounced racism and ethnic discrimination in the United States and assisted many ethnic minority families in their community. Coming from a working-class family, Hugh Clowers Thompson Jr. plowed fields and later worked as an assistant for a funeral mortuary to support his family during his adolescence.
Thompson graduated from Stone Mountain High School on June 5, 1961. Following graduation, Thompson enlisted in the United States Navy and served in a naval mobile construction battalion at Naval Air Station Atlanta, Georgia, as a heavy equipment operator. Thompson married Palma Baughman in 1963. In 1964, Thompson received an honorable discharge from the Navy and returned to Stone Mountain to live a quiet life and raise a family with his wife. He studied mortuary science and became a licensed funeral director.
When the Vietnam War began, Thompson felt obliged to return to military service. In 1966, Thompson enlisted in the United States Army and completed the Warrant Officer Flight Program training at Fort Wolters, Texas, and Fort Rucker, Alabama. In late-December 1967, at the age of 25, Thompson was ordered to Vietnam and assigned to Company B, 123rd Aviation Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Division.
Mỹ Lai massacre intervention
On March 16, 1968, Thompson and his Hiller OH-23 Raven observation helicopter crew, Lawrence Colburn and Glenn Andreotta, were ordered to support Task Force Barker's search and destroy operations in Sơn Mỹ, Quảng Ngãi Province, South Vietnam. Song My Village was composed of four hamlets, Mỹ Lai, Mỹ Khê, Cổ Lũy and Tư Cung, and was suspected by the United States Army Military Intelligence Corps to be a Viet Cong stronghold.Army intelligence concerning the presence of Viet Cong in Sơn Mỹ was inaccurate, however, and the village's population was predominately composed of neutral, unarmed rice-farming families. Reconnaissance aircraft, including Thompson's OH-23 crew, flew over the Sơn Mỹ vicinity but received no enemy fire. At 07:30, following a short artillery and helicopter gunship barrage, Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment of Task Force Barker, led by Captain Ernest Medina, was landed by helicopters and moved into Sơn Mỹ.
Upon entering Sơn Mỹ, officers and soldiers of Company C moved through the Song My Village and vicinity, murdering civilians, raping women, and setting fire to huts. 1st Platoon of Company C, commanded by Lieutenant William Calley, forced approximately 70–80 villagers, mostly women and children, into an irrigation ditch and murdered the civilians with knives, bayonets, grenades, and small arms fire.
Thompson recounted at an academic conference on Mỹ Lai held at Tulane University in December 1994: "We kept flying back and forth, reconning in front and in the rear, and it didn't take very long until we started noticing the large number of bodies everywhere. Everywhere we'd look, we'd see bodies. These were infants, two-, three-, four-, five-year-olds, women, very old men, no draft-age people whatsoever."
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 villagers after a wounded civilian woman they requested medical evacuation for, Nguyễn Thị Tẩu, was murdered right in front of them by Captain Medina, the commanding officer of the operation. According to Lawrence Colburn,
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." Thompson spotted movement in the irrigation ditch, indicating that there were civilians alive in it. He immediately landed to assist the victims. Lieutenant Calley approached Thompson and the two exchanged an uneasy conversation.
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!
As Thompson was speaking to Calley, Calley's subordinate, Sergeant David Mitchell, fired into the irrigation ditch, killing any civilians still moving. Thompson 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. He turned to Colburn and Andreotta and ordered them to shoot the men of the 2nd Platoon if they attempted to kill any of the civilians. Thompson then dismounted to confront 2nd Platoon's leader, Lieutenant Stephen Brooks. Thompson told him he wanted help getting the civilians out of the bunker:
Thompson: Hey listen, hold your fire. I'm going to try to get these people out of this bunker. Just hold your men here.
Brooks: Yeah, we can help you get 'em out of that bunker – with a hand grenade!
Thompson: Just hold your men here. I think I can do better than that.
Brooks declined to argue with him, even though as a commissioned officer he outranked Thompson. After coaxing the 11 Vietnamese out of the bunker, Thompson persuaded the pilots of the two UH-1 Huey gunships flying as his escort to evacuate them. While Thompson was returning to base to refuel, Andreotta spotted movement in an irrigation ditch filled with approximately 100 bodies. The helicopter again landed and the men dismounted to search for survivors. After wading through the remains of the dead and dying men, women and children, Andreotta extracted a live boy, Do Ba. According to Trent Angers in The Forgotten Hero of My Lai: The Hugh Thompson Story,
Do Ba was pulled from the irrigation ditch and after failing to find any more survivors, Thompson's crew transported the child to the ARVN hospital in Quảng Ngãi where he left the child under the care of a nun. After transporting the child to the hospital, Thompson flew to the Task Force Barker headquarters, and angrily reported the massacre to his superiors. 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.