Sources:
– Christian G. Appy, Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides
– Howard Jones, My Lai: Vietnam 1968, and the Descent into Darkness
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Three airmen act on their consciences
25-year-old Hugh Thompson was piloting a small observation helicopter. He had 20-year-old crew chief SP 4 Glenn Andreotta and 18-year-old gunner SP 4 Lawrence Colburn on either side of him. Their primary task was to fly just above the treetops to draw enemy fire and to help accompanying gunships locate and destroy their targets.
25-year-old Hugh Thompson was piloting a small observation helicopter. He had 20-year-old crew chief SP 4 Glenn Andreotta and 18-year-old gunner SP 4 Lawrence Colburn on either side of him. Their primary task was to fly just above the treetops to draw enemy fire and to help accompanying gunships locate and destroy their targets.
THOMPSON REMEMBERS
As he flew back and forth, Thompson began to notice that there were “bodies everywhere” — mostly little kids, women and old men.
Thompson told his crew, “This isn’t right these are civilians. There’s people killing civilians down here. …We gotta do something about this. Are you with me?”
THOMPSON LANDS HELICOPTER FOR FIRST TIME
“We came across a ditch that had, I don’t know, a lot of bodies in it, a lot of movement in it. I landed, asked a sergeant there if he could help them out, these wounded people down there. He said he’d help them out, help them out of their misery, I believe.
I thought he was joking. We took off and broke away from them and my gunner said, “My God, he’s firing into the ditch.”
THOMPSON LANDS A SECOND TIME
Later on, Thompson and his crew spotted civilians hiding in a bunker. He alerted the men on the ground and asked for help getting them to safety.
They replied, “Well, we’re going to get them out with a hand grenade.”
Thompson landed and told his crewmen to train their machine guns on the soldiers. He guided the civilians to where he could protect them and radioed a helicopter gunship which landed and took the villagers to safety.
THOMPSON LANDS HIS HELICOPTER AGAIN
Lawrence Colburn remembers: “We flew over the ditch where more than a hundred Vietnamese had been killed. Andreotta saw movement so Thompson landed again.”
“Andreotta went directly into that ditch.
He literally had to wade waist deep through people to get to a little child…. [who] was still holding on to his mother, but she was dead.
Glenn came over and handed me the child, but the ditch was so full of bodies and blood he couldn’t get out. I gave him the butt of my rifle and pulled him out.”
The kid wasn’t even wounded, but he was covered in blood from his family members in the ditch. They flew Do Hoa to an orphanage, where Colburn was reunited with him 33 years later.