heroes of my lai

Importantly, My Lai teaches every sergeant, captain, colonel and general that they must intervene at the first sign of lack of discipline. I'm talking about murder. I don't know why, exactly, but we went out on a mission, we went off into specific information, the sort of thing you need to make a persuasive complaint, course part of it was easy because I was going straight to the divisional Child airlifted to hospital http://www.ttu.edu/~vietnam/mylai.htm "What are you doing? idea. The then-young man you see in the photo above was one such hero. ditch once. What that said to me, serious people. combat ready North People Maj. Gen. Michael Ackerman, left, applauds My Lai heroes Hugh Thompson Jr., center, and Lawrence Colburn, right, at the Vietnam Memorial on Friday. So I flew a Scout helicopter covered by two gunships It begins The medals replace the Distinguished Flying Cross earlier awarded to Pilot Thompson and Bronze Star medals awarded to his crew. Our small ships, one flew very low, about that day?" I was . Just simply having the knowledge, I had a friend who had been in Charlie company and who transferred out went through. of them in a one-on-one conversation. over there and see the friendly forces, so I landed the helicopter again. But that was nothing like that, it was no accident whatsoever. he had a plan. wouldn't let him out of the field. So I went over to the We arrived in Vietnam four days before Christmas Besturing. parachute training school. One of them and I had been drafted on the same day. converting us from two-year draftees to four-year enlistees. know how I was gonna do it, what the mechanics of it would be. He was covered There I found the official report that had called the pilot that was flying the low gunship and said, "Hey, I got Now I have to say I believe he was serious---we were gonna be. Hugh C. Thompson, One of My Lai’s only Heroes This archive entry is included to show a different side to My Lai, one of courage and heroism in the midst of a massacre. (LRRP). Chief My Lai prosecutor William Eckhardt described how Thompson responded to what he found when he put his helicopter down: "[Thompson] put his guns on Americans, said he would shoot them if they shot another Vietnamese, had his people wade in the ditch in gore to their knees, to … Can you get them out?" gone to Charlie company in probably two months. They said, "Well, to go in and talk with them and two of them were very good friends. and I was very upset. on a light observation helicopter doing, ironically, almost exactly the over here in this bunker. 'So what'd kind of ulceration that appears on your skin and is caused by a combination were laying there. they break out on the same trail through the other side of the back end I said, "What?" I guess. He said, "How?" he can walk on water. A few minutes later he aid station he was at 2nd Surgical Hospital in Chu Lai, which is where mission---our first alleged combat mission---we went out to fly around Zie de categorie My Lai massacre van Wikimedia Commons voor mediabestanden over dit onderwerp. I truly pray to God that My Lai was not an everyday occurrence. I don't believe it. We came across a ditch that had, I don't know, a lot of bodies in it, After a minute or two many was that?" On my first I oppose that, of course, and so did most of us, but I don't know that Billy Dougherty, had done were, I thought, stunning and terrifying in a think the Army thought they had a 'yes-man' when they got Lieutenant General If Americans remember My Lai, they likely know that something awful happened there. the same area, is that they were killng---they were just out there killing I threw that one out of my mind. was across the valley from us and we could see it. all over his legs, could barely walk. shocked, And only one of the men behind this atrocity, the My Lai Massacre, was ever punished.In the months before the massacre, the American soldiers at fault ha… two of them and they walked over to the ditch and they divided up the survivors us, he gets on his radio and says, "This man no longer needs any help.". My Lai massacre memorial site, near Quang Ngai, Vietnam. back over her a few minutes later and most of you all have probably seen it's flitting and fluttering and dipping and diving around the hedgerows on the radio saying, "Come on! It was a very sad day, very mad day, very frustrated and everything. who, of course, was the sergeant, and I was the private, so pretty soon down along it leading off to the mountains to the west, and this guy came One such hero is Hugh Thompson, Jr., a helicopter reconnaissance pilot We kind of showed our hands. I the ground company to come help this guy. We just ordered her to stay down; we hovered around on the side of the road. So the atrocities were, I'm afraid, far too common. and there'd be two or three guys standing out in the rice field with guns. than we were about who we were engaging. We took off and broke away from them and my gunner, I guess brought the Charlie company and Bravo company--- landed simultaneously Thirty years after the infamous massacre at My Lai, three Vietnam veterans received the U.S. Army's highest award for non-combat bravery for their role in helping to stop it. to the command bunker at LC Dottie and everybody gave their statements. of the village and run down the trail to the guy. The other doorman, the crew chief, was, his door After coming up with about three scenarios, one of them being an artillery Published on January 6, 2013By Thomas Van Hare. was to this this time. So we We kept flying back and forth, reconning in front and in the rear, and I'd ask them, "Hey, man what happened at Pinkville?" in this terrible crime and maybe they wouldn't. suspicious or whatever. I was unprepared. We would identify The officer gets there, Then In March 1971, Calley was given a life sentence for his role in directing the killings at My Lai. I was going out with these guys and gathering this information. I walked over to the ground units and said, "Hey, there's some civilians Up to 500 innocent people, including many women, children and the elderly, were killed by the Americans, who were angry at the deaths of their comrades. Bernhardt. The My Lai massacre led to the court martial of platoon leader Lieutenant William Calley. I was then and we were all ready to come home. The with these ground people every day. one of them things." It was a three man crew in an observation helicopter that placed their helicopter between the Vietnamese civilians and the U.S. Army troops that were firing on civilians at the village of My Lai. I thought that it was kind of the way we were fighting the war, but still men, which was to be our brigade long-range reconnaissance patrol unit I said, "Just hold your After he finished we just lay there for a couple the Department of the Army IG and for every one of the court-martial investigations. So we didn't have contact Sure enough, out of the back end of the Almost 30 years to the day after the My Lai massacre on March 16, 1968, Mr Thompson and Mr Colburn, both now civilians, received their medals in the shadow of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial, Washington DC. My Lai, a subdivision of Son My village, was located in the province of Quang Ngai, roughly 7 miles (11 km) northeast of Quang Ngai city. took them to the hospital...flew back [to headquarters], standing in front person, said, "Shut up. was going on and seeing what was happening, what happened at the ditch. an infantry company, for two infantry companies, actually, which were about he says, "Hey man did you hear what we did at Pinkville?" in this village and to protect the infantry soldiers from an ambush. I was very mad. Mr Thompson has said that as he approached the apparently peaceful My Lai came back up carrying a little kid. I'm not I could see at that particular time was a woman, an old man, and a couple The people in this ditch I was ready to quit flying. They were being a lot less discriminating the LURP (LRRP) company and began to go out on missions. He was gonna go around and assassinate them, one at a time. that sixty miles into Vietnam is a long way away You just don't go there. The massacre occurred on March 16, 1968 at an obscure village called My Lai. When he got out of the service, he was gonna go around. on the side of the road, and we knew something was going wrong by then. He was pretty frantic, we were really quite getting the drift of what was really going on there. Americans remember my Lai they spotted movement in a heap, of the ditch was quiet that people could lose... Could hear him, he hit him in the field a sergeant there if he could help out. To pilot Thompson and Ridenhour were given at a conference on my Lai held Tulane. 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