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Notes from the Boonies

By Paul Wisovaty

During the twenty years that I've lived in Tuscola, I've penned a few dozen articles for the local paper. I never got paid for any of them, but it would have been nice to have gotten five bucks at least once. I could then have called myself a "professional journalist." So I was obviously flattered when, a couple of years ago, the publisher asked if I'd be interested in doing some work for which I would actually be paid. I was flattered up until the point at which he explained that he needed somebody to write obituaries. It seems that the last obit writer had, I guess fittingly, died. I respectfully declined. As they say, pride goeth before a fall.

But I'd like to do one now. I just hope that I do it justice. Hugh Thompson was always one of my heroes, you know.

He has also been a minor footnote in history. I work with a thirty-six-year-old Marine (there are no ex-Marines) who has never heard of him. My officer's a pretty smart guy, but as I suggested, Hugh Thompson isn't exactly a household name. I would venture to guess that about one in fifty people in Tuscola has any idea who he was, and I don't know whether that percentage would increase if you took a poll walking down a street in New York City. For the uninitiated, here's a quick bio.

My Lai, South Vietnam, March 16, 1968. Thompson and two crew members were helicoptering over the village, expecting to draw fire from enemy forces. Instead, they saw several hundred Vietnamese civilians, dead or dying, piled in an irrigation ditch. Putting the chopper down, they came to a quick and accurate conclusion: American soldiers had killed them, and were in the process of finishing off any who were left alive. There was no indication of the presence of enemy forces in the area.

Thompson noticed several children and elderly adults trying to run away. He placed his chopper between the soldiers and the fleeing civilians, and gave an extraordinary order to his crewmates: If the soldiers fire at the civilians, shoot the soldiers. It didn't come to that, but let's push "pause" for a second. If the Americans fire at the Vietnamese, shoot the Americans. I realize that most readers don't work in the court system, but we have a legal phrase for that sort of behavior. It's called having really big brass balls.

Thompson and his crew succeeded in saving the lives of several of the Vietnamese, and he immediately reported the incident to superiors. Predictably, nobody cared. A year later, one of those rascally whistle-blowers did what his caste heroically does, and the rest is history. Of course, one man's history is another man's whitewash. To this day, there are those who think that Lt. "Rusty" Calley, who was in charge of the Americal Division platoon that day in 1968, was the real hero, viciously scapegoated by the Army. I don't entirely disagree with the second half of that assessment, although it'll be a sober day in Dick Cheney's office before I label Calley a hero. Hugh Thompson, along with his surviving crewmate, Lawrence Colburn, was awarded the Soldier's Medal on March 6, 1998. I had never heard of this medal, but I'm told that it's several notches above my Good Conduct Medal.

I have briefly summarized what happened at My Lai and thereafter, but you know what? I can't get Mr. Thompson's order out of my mind. "If the Americans fire at the Vietnamese, shoot the Americans." If he had just called Calley a son of a bitch and quoted the Geneva Convention, I'd have been impressed. If he had stuffed a mama-san under his flak jacket and medevaced her out of harm's way, I'd have given him a medal based on that. But that wasn't what he did. "If the Americans fire at the Vietnamese, shoot the Americans." Did this guy have a death wish? Did he consider for a moment what he'd just said, and what might happen in the next thirty seconds? Didn't he realize he was dealing with a platoon of charged-up, burnt-out, frustrated, scared and pissed-off grunts with loaded M-16s? What the hell was this guy thinking?

I don't know. I just know what he did. Hugh Thompson died this year, too young and way too unheralded. As an old enlisted man, I guess the best eulogy I can offer is this: It would have been an honor to have served under you, sir.