Landing Between the Living and the Dead

On March 16, 1968, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr. flew his OH-23 Raven helicopter low over the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai. What he saw below defied comprehension — American soldiers from Charlie Company were systematically executing unarmed civilians. Bodies of women, children, and elderly lay in irrigation ditches. Thompson spotted a group of Vietnamese civilians being herded toward a ditch by U.…