By Mickey Z
“We weren’t there to kill human beings, really. We were there to kill ideology.” (Lt. William Calley)
Officially
termed an “incident” (as opposed to a “massacre”), the events of March
16, 1968 at My Lai – a hamlet in South Vietnam – are widely portrayed
and accepted to this day as an aberration. While the record of U.S. war
crimes in Southeast Asia is far too sordid and lengthy to detail here,
it’s painfully clear this was not the case.
Not even close…
In fact, on the very same day that Lt.
William Calley entered into infamy, another company entered My Khe, a
sister sub-hamlet of My Lai. That visit has been described as such:
“In this ‘other massacre,’ members of this separate company piled up a body count of perhaps a hundred peasants – My Khe was smaller than My Lai – ’flattened the village’ by dynamite and fire, and then threw handfuls of straw on corpses. The next morning, this company moved on down the Batangan Peninsula by the South China Sea, burning every hamlet they came to, killing water buffalo, pigs, chickens, ducks, and destroying crops. As one of the My Khe veterans said later, ‘what we were doing was being done all over.’ Said another: ‘We were out there having a good time. It was sort of like being in a shooting gallery.’”
Colonel Oran Henderson, charged with
covering-up the My Lai killings, put it succinctly in 1971: “Every unit
of brigade size has its My Lai hidden someplace.”
Of the 26 U.S. soldiers brought up on
charges related to My Lai, only Calley was convicted. However, his life
sentence was later reduced to three and a half years under house arrest.
Never forget, comrades: This is what we’re up against.
But let’s also never forget the actions that day of a man named Hugh Thompson.
hugh_thompson_jr.__2
Hugh Clowers Thompson, Jr. wanted to fly
choppers so badly that after a four-year stint in the Navy, he left his
wife and two sons behind to re-up into the Army and train as a
helicopter pilot. Thompson arrived in Vietnam on Dec. 27, 1967 and
quickly earned a reputation as “an exceptional pilot who took danger in
his stride.”
In their book, Four Hours at My Lai,
Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim also describe Hugh Thompson as a “very
moral man. He was absolutely strict about opening fire only on clearly
defined targets.”
On the morning of Mar. 16, 1968, Thompson’s sense of virtue would be put to the test.
Flying in his H-23 observation chopper,
the 25-year-old Thompson used green smoke to mark wounded people on the
ground in and around My Lai. Upon returning a short while later after
refueling, he found that the wounded he saw earlier were now dead.
Thompson’s gunner, Lawrence Colburn, averted his gaze from the gruesome sight.
After bringing the chopper down to a
standstill hover, Thompson and his crew came upon a young woman they had
previously marked with smoke. As they watched, a U.S. soldier, wearing
captain’s bars, “prodded her with his foot, and then killed her.”
What Thompson didn’t know was that by
that point, Lt. Calley’s Charlie Company had already slaughtered more
than 560 Vietnamese. Most of the victims were women, children, infants,
and elderly people. Many of the women had been gang-raped and mutilated.
All Thompson knew for sure was that the U.S. troops he saw pursuing
civilians had to be stopped.
Bravely landing his helicopter between
the charging GIs and the fleeing villagers, Thompson ordered Colburn to
turn his machine gun on the American soldiers if they tried to shoot the
unarmed men, women, and children. Thompson then stepped out of the
chopper into the combat zone and coaxed the frightened civilians from
the bunker they were hiding in.
With tears streaming down his face, he evacuated them to safety on his H-23.
Never forget, comrades: This is how we can choose to be.
#shifthappens
***
Mickey Z. is the author of 11 books, most recently the novel Darker Shade of Green. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be found on a couple of obscure websites called Facebook and Twitter. Anyone wishing to support his activist efforts can do so by making a donation here
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