I'd never heard of Hugh Thompson until he died - I happened to read his obituary in some paper, and couldn't believe that I'd never read about him before.  This guy was a hero; a true-blue, balls-to-the-wall hero who risked his own life in the absolute worst of circumstances to help some innocents who were about to be slaughtered by the people he called ‘friends'.  Most have heard of the situation that he was involved in, but I'm willing to bet that few remember his name, which is a pretty heinous crime.  Thompson was a pilot in the Vietnam War, flying one of those iconic Huey helicopters that everyone associates with the conflict in question.  One day, just a few months after he started flying, he happened to pass over the tiny village of My Lai (pronounced MEE-lie).  What he saw - and what he did - is straight of out some insane action movie, except that the hero here was a 25-year old kid who used to manage a funeral home.

As he looked down on the village, he noticed that, for some reason, American troops seemed to be murdering an awful lot of unarmed civilians - most of them women, children and old men.  From a BBC report:

"Soldiers went berserk, gunning down unarmed men, women, children and babies. Families huddled together for safety were shown no mercy. Those who emerged with hands held high were murdered.  Women were gang raped; Vietnamese who had bowed to greet the Americans were beaten with fists and tortured, clubbed with rifle butts and stabbed with bayonets. Some victims were mutilated with the signature "C Company" carved into the chest."

"It looks like a bloodbath down there! What the hell is going on?" someone said over the radio.

The whole story is horrifying and quite complex, but the crux of the incident, at least for Thompson, was when he noticed a group of women and children taking shelter inside a small bunker, unarmed and terrified for their lives; a few hundred feet away, a group of heavily-armed American soldiers were closing in, plainly intent on killing them all.

Thompson, seeing enough, landed his helicopter between the bunker and the approaching GI's, and said to his men in the copter, "Y'all cover me! If these bastards open up on me or these people, you open up on them. Promise me!" He then got out and confronted the leader of the approaching squad, Stephen Brooks, and told him to hold his men off for a minute while he evacuated the people in the bunker.  Brooks didn't agree, but he didn't disagree either.  Thompson then coaxed 11 people out of the bunker and into his helicopter and two others that he had called in to help the evacuation, and made sure they got away safely.

The ManKeep in mind, now, that this is all going on underneath the thumping of helicopter rotors, burning fires, screaming, dying people, gunfire and explosions, and in front of a squad of already-riled up GI's with itchy trigger fingers.  He made sure everyone was on board his helicopter and then flew it up out of hell.

And if this weren't enough, Thompson landed again on the way back to check a ditch full of bodies that he saw from overhead, where one of his men rescued a baby girl, covered in blood but otherwise unharmed.  They managed to get everyone back to the city and into a hospital.

As expected, the military tried to cover it up, but Thompson never backed down.  He was criticized by his superior officers and members of the House Armed Services Committee, who said he should be court-martialed.  He received death threats, hate mail and even mutilated animals left on his doorstep.  When all was said and done, the My Lai Massacre played an integral role in the shaping the anti-war movement of the 60's and 70's.

Eventually, Thompson's heroism was recognized, and he received several awards, medals and commendations; he even met some of the people he saved that day.  He died from cancer on January 6, 2006.

This, my friends, is the very definition of hero; I still think it's a damned crime that his biography isn't required reading for every kid in the free world.

The event was best summed up in Song for Hugh Thompson, by David Rovics, the last two verses of which go:

"Train your weapons on the G.I.'s," and his 'copter crews obeyed
And he stood among the children, tattered and afraid
The whole town had been murdered, but for some kids and widowed wives
And Hugh Thompson made sure that those remaining would survive...
It was a fifteen-minute stand-off in a knee-deep sea of red
Amidst the moaning of the dying and the silence of the dead
Hugh Thompson was a soldier and he served his country well
On that day he saved the lives of a dozen kids in hell...