The Helicopter Pilot Who Chose a Higher Authority

On the morning of March 16, 1968, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr. flew his OH-23 Raven helicopter low over the village of My Lai in Quang Ngai Province, South Vietnam. What he saw below made no sense. Bodies of unarmed civilians — women, children, elderly villagers — lay in irrigation ditches and along footpaths. American soldiers from Charlie Company were firing into groups of people who posed no threat.

Thompson landed his helicopter between a group of huddled Vietnamese civilians and the advancing soldiers. He turned to his door gunner, Lawrence Colburn, and his crew chief, Glenn Andreotta, and gave an order that could have ended his military career — or his life. If the American troops tried to harm these civilians, Thompson told his crew to open fire on their own countrymen.

Then he radioed for evacuation helicopters and personally escorted the survivors to safety. Andreotta waded into a ditch of bodies and pulled out a still-breathing child.

Thompson reported the massacre up his chain of command. For years he was shunned, threatened, and treated as a traitor. It took thirty years before the Army awarded him and Colburn the Soldier's Medal.