On 16th March, 1968 Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jnr was flying helicopter reconnaissance for an attack on an alleged North Vietnamese-controlled village at My Lai.
As the ground attack developed below, Thompson realised he was in fact witnessing something something else:
A massacre.
He decided to act. /1 🧵 #history #histodons
At first Thompson and his crew, Lawrence Colburn and Glen Andreotta thought the wounded Vietnamese they saw below them were the result of artillery fire.
They dropped a green flare near a wounded civilian, expecting the infantry to help. Instead, Captain Medina of Charlie Company walked over and shot her in the head. /2
Horrified, Thompson spotted similar scenes unfolding at an irrigation ditch nearby. He immediately landed his helicopter, attempting to stop the murder.
“These are human beings!" He yelled at the Lieutenant there, leading the killing. "Unarmed civilians sir!”
The Lieutenant told Thompson he was stepping outside his authority and ordered him back into his helicopter. /4
From this point on, it was clear to Thompson and his crew that nobody was going to restrain the ground forces.
Thompson had no direct radio to those on the ground, nor to their commanders back at base, so began demanding the other aerial forces present - who did have radio communications with them - intervene.
They stayed silent. /5
While Thompson continued to demand intervention, his crew spotted 2nd Platoon Charlie Company, under Lieutenant Brooks closing on a group of fleeing women, children and old men to the north.
Thompson immediately threw his scout helicopter round and towards them. He grounded it between the advancing soldiers and the terrified civilians. /6
Jumping out of the helicopter with only his side arm, he turned to Colburn, who was on the helicopter's fixed machine gun, and issued him an order Colburn later said he would never forget.
Thompson told him that if Charlie Company fired on Thompson OR the civilians...
“Open up on ‘em. Blow ‘em away.”
With Thompson and the helicopter now blocking Brooks' path to the civilians, Brooks demanded Thompson and his crew move.
He refused. /7
For the next 20 minutes, an angry standoff took place on the ground. The helicopter crew starred down 2nd Platoon, while Thompson continued to beg and swear over the radio at the other units in the air, demanding help.
Eventually, two helicopters broke away and landed behind them, ushering the civilians onboard to safety.
Thompson recognised them as friends of the crew. /8
Low on fuel, Thompson' realised the only chance of stopping the massacre was direct intervention from Army HQ at LZ Dottie. They took to the air and aimed the helicopter towards it, hoping to get word out and the killing stopped.
Passing over the irrigation ditch again, Andreotta saw movement below among the dead.
They landed. Thompson covered his crew with the machine gun as they pulled a 3yr old boy out alive. /9
At LZ Dottie, Thompson stormed into HQ loudly announcing to all present what was happening at My Lai.
"It's mass murder out there. They're rounding them up and herding them in ditches and then just shooting them."
Other officers told him to calm down and not get involved. He would not be quieted. Despite efforts to stop him, he forced his way into operational command. /10
There, Thompson raged loudly that the American soldiers on the ground were acting no better than Nazis. It caused enough of storm that, spooked, the Task Force’s commander radioed through an order that all operations at My Lai should cease immediately. Any killing should stop.
Now fully refuelled, Thompson and his crew returned to make sure it did. /11
Whereas others tried to whitewash what had happened, Thompson’s post-operation report into the incident held back nothing.
My Lai was now becoming uncomfortable for the US forces. Rumours were circulating. Thompson's account was problematic.
They quietly issued him a Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded for "bravery under crossfire." in hope it would quieten him.
He threw it away. That fire was from his own countrymen killing civilians. /12
Eventually, Thompson was seriously wounded in action and sent back to the US where he continued to serve, but lost contact with his former crewmates Colburn and Andreotta.
Still an officer, under continuing pressure to stay silent and unwilling to break his oath of loyalty to the Army, he remained vocal internally but felt unable to to go public with what he had seen. /13
This changed the moment the first public account of the massacre appeared. Thompson broke cover.
He refused to keep quiet or minimise the crimes committed, despite pressure from press, the military and a hostile Congress determined to cast him as a traitor.
He stood up. He testified at the public enquiry. He was vilified by many. /14
Thompson was forced to watch as those involved in the massacre, including Medina, were publicly cleared and presented as heroes in difficult circumstances.
Meanwhile, Thompson and his family received death threats. Dead animals were left on his porch. He was threatened with court-martial for ordering his crew to draw weapons on Charlie Company.
All this, he was told privately, would go away if he changed his account.
Thompson refused, but was forced to retreat from public life for safety /15
Twenty years later in 1988 Michael Bilton, a British filmmaker, was trying to make a documentary about My Lai. He kept coming across Thompson's name, and his account and eventually managed to track him down.
Bilton asked Thompson if he would go on camera and tell people what happened. Would he risk going through all that again, to tell the truth?
Thompson agreed, without a moment of hesitation. /16
Thompson's first appearance is about 29mins in. Colburn, his former gunner, makes an appearance as well. Bilton had managed to track him down, too.
This was the to the delight of both Thompson and Colburn, who had been trying to find each other for years.
Their friendship was immediately renewed. /18
The process of official acknowledgement and apology for My Lai remained frustratingly slow. But Thompson, now reinvigorated, became a key voice pushing for it to happen as part of "Veterans for Peace".
"My Lai…was no accident whatsoever." He would say. "Pure, premeditated murder. Are we too big to apologize?" /19
In 1989 David Egan, a professor at Clemson University, launched a letter-writing campaign to encourage the government to honour Thompson’s heroism at My Lai.
Ten years later, they finally decided to award him the Soldier’s Medal, the highest non-combat award in the US army. /20
When Thompson learned that he - and ONLY he - would be issued the Soldier's Medal he warned the US army that he would publicly refuse it.
He demanded Colburn and Andreotta (who had since died) both be awarded the medal as well, for their own actions that day. The crew stood together that day, he said, the crew should be recognised together.
Fearing a PR backlash, the army relented. All three were recognised. /21
@garius as a vet, myself, I keep asking why more US Military vets are *not* standing up for the US Constitution 😡
*The oath does not expire after leaving the service.*
Yet the USA continues to oppose the International Criminal Court in case its service members get prosecuted for war crimes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_International_Criminal_Court
The horror of this situation is beyond understanding. I would like to say, as an American born well after this event, that Thompson and his aircrew are heroes for standing up to the out of control ground forces. I thank them for that. And, with the heat of a thousand white hot suns, I also feel that Medina and every last one of his marauding ground force should still be serving life sentences for their crimes. In my humble opinion.
@perigee @ailbhe That is absolutely not the intention here, and I do feel a misreading.
If anything it's the opposite. To highlight just how entrenched that idea was, how incorrect and the disastrous consequences of that.
In terms of 'white saviour'. The documented proof is that Thompson's actions were the ones that brought what was happening to an end. That this was true, and the enormous cost to him of doing so, shows again how horrific US imperialism had become.
@perigee @ailbhe ultimately, the implicit assumption that the US presence in Vietnam was just is precisely the excuse everyone else present was using for themselves, and continue to use to this day.
Indeed it's notable that Thompson remains a figure the US Army teaches about internally, but largely fails to in any way acknowledge publicly. Because doing so would require highlighting their complicity and that of individuals who are now senior there or in politics.
@annietime When the Army reluctantly agreed to investigate My Lai, Powell was one of the investigators.
The report - unsurprisingly - was largely a whitewash, which went with the classic 'a few bad apples' narrative.
In Powell's words:
“although there may be isolated cases of mistreatment of civilians and POWs, this by no means reflects the general attitude throughout the division.”
@annietime Powell would later testify to congress and minimise the events there and elsewhere, and push the narrative that if things HAD got out of control at My Lai it was an unfortunate one off etc. etc.
As you can probably imagine, his efforts in this area were both noted and appreciated by the Army and those within the political establishment.
@annietime as I remember something saying at the time, when it was suggested Powell wouldn't lie about WMDs given the risk to his reputation/conscience/honour etc:
"Well he's lied about atrocities before."
"the general attitude throughout the *division*" is a particularly clever way of using averages to obscure reality. Because, I'm sure he's right that the general attitude of the DIVISION (of which Charlie Company was a small part) weren't bent toward massacre. But, where it is dishonest, IMHO, is he is using a unit of 10,000 soldiers as a lens to analyze the actions of a specific and tiny portion of that division on a specific day. It uses the general to rationalize the specifically terrible.
If that makes sense? You're totally right about Powell's report sounding like a white wash. And his use of a blind like that makes me think he was also given a speech about how he could help his career if he just slow pitched his findings. So, kudos on the reporting and background. I've never seen the whole story like this before, thanks!
You are correct, I guess that use of scale as an intentional obfuscation stood out to me as egregious. And It took typing that all out to figure my thoughts out, sorry, lol.
@perigee @ailbhe I don't disagree with you at all.
And I agree it's important to find and celebrate Asian heroes from the same conflict.
But those aren't my areas of historical study. This is, so it is something I can write reasonably authoritatively about, so that's what I've done and tried to frame it in context that ensures it's not seen as if a "few bad apples" were responsible that day.
Thompson's role, and post-event experience, shows the opposite is true. And that's worth highlighting.
@perigee @ailbhe it's something i'd LOVE to learn, but - realistically - there are too many barriers in the way. From work, to family, but most critically to language and availability of sources here in London.
This is, ultimately, one of the pragmatic problems with studying history. You're always going to be viewing things through a window of both culture and access. All you can do (as a historian) is try and be aware of that, and not see only history through that window as valid.
@perigee @ailbhe also finances comes into it.
There are some INCREDIBLE photo collections from photographers embedded within North Vietnam, which present a very interesting contrast with the type of imagery that was encouraged/pushed as part of the American narrative.
But to share them here I'd need copyright permission. And the cost on that is prohibitive.
@perigee @ailbhe tbh one of the things I do try and avoid when doing information threads like this on here or twitter is falling into the trap of covering figures that have been covered extensively by others. Where I CAN highlight someone doing something else.
At some point I'll have enough info to cover Abdol Hossein Sardari, for example, who was critical to saving the Juguti (Central Asian Jews) community in France during the Holocaust. But unpicking the info is slow work. Eventually though!
I, for one, would just like to thank you for all the research and writing work, which you've provided to us all for free, today.
It was a very long thread, and I'm sure the numerous books and the doc link you provided, supply additional perspectives that you did not have room for.
I would encourage my fellow beneficiaries of your gift, to turn there, rather than hinting that you should have done even more for us today.
Myself, I greatly benefited from Nick Turse's "Kill Anything that Moves" has a lot on My Lai, and did provide much wider perspective, how common many smaller massacres were, how many were just done with artillery, leaving nothing. And Turse was able to travel to Vietnam and gather many stories from the survivors.
Googling the several My Lai books, I noted a tourist story, that when Colbourn died in 2016, Hanoi held a day of mourning.
@perigee tbh i wasn't sure the best way to approach it. I've tried to deliberately avoid describing the massacre in detail, leaving that for people to follow up on if they wish.
I've also deliberately made sure all the subsequent tweets are "unlisted" so shouldn't appear unexpectedly in people's feeds.
I'm absolutely happy to take on board feedback though if the consensus is a warning is useful as well.
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