American Courage

One of my heroes died last week. If a friend hadn’t pointed me to an article in the newspaper about it I wouldn’t have known. 1st Lt. Hugh Thompson Jr. was the pilot who landed his helicopter in the line of fire at My Lai in 1968 and stopped a massacre. He and his crew got out and risked their lives pointing their rifles at an American platoon run amok. That done, they turned their attention to terrified Vietnamese civilians and began evacuating wounded. Thompson was widely vilified for years because he had exposed an incident that gave credence to malicious anti-war propaganda spread by the likes of John Kerry. I didn’t see it that way. Lt. William Calley and his platoon were the villains at My Lai. They disgraced themselves and every soldier who ever served the nation honorably. I can’t say that what happened there was an isolated incident because I don’t know. I do know I never saw anything like it in my two tours in Vietnam and I know that Calley and his men were not representative of the Army I served. The Thompson crew were. Their kind of courage is what we all dream of seeing in our children. Thompson did the right thing knowing he was placing himself in serious physical danger, and not expecting any thanks for it.
I loved the Army and still do. The people I met there were by and large people I was proud to be associated with. We had our misguided of course, our sycophants and just plain bad actors. But mostly we had people who saw themselves as serving their country, people who were determined to do their duty as best they saw it. They believed in what they were doing. I believed in what I was doing. Leaving the Army was probably the most difficult decision I ever made. In the end I didn’t think I had a choice. I hadn’t yet been married four years and had spent two in Vietnam. I came home to two small children and a young wife who was a virtual stranger. We had almost no opportunity at all to establish a marriage. It wasn’t working. I had to do something different. So I chose my family over my career. I would make the same choice again and again through the years with no regrets but I do miss the Army.
I don’t know why the Calley platoon did what they did. I know from personal experience combat can bring out the best in people, and the worst, sometimes both in the same person. Maybe some sort of mad blood lust came over Calley and his men. It can produce heroism of an unsettling kind, as depicted in the Mel Gibson movie The Patriot. The character played by Gibson frees his son from British captivity in a wild rage and brutally kills an entire British squad. Blood lust is better known for producing the kind of massacre that occurred at Wounded Knee, the kind that was in progress at My Lai.
Whatever happened with the Calley platoon, the real story of My Lai is Lt. Thompson’s. It made me proud to be an American. I suppose atrocities occur in any war on both sides. That isn’t news. The news is that we Americans hold ourselves to a higher standard. Every now and then one of our own reminds us of our ideals. That’s what Lt. Thompson and his crew did for me at My Lai. They reminded me what I was fighting for. God bless you Hugh Thompson.