Who was Hugh Thompson and what did he observe from his helicopter at My Lai?

Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson was a U.S. Army pilot who flew a scout helicopter over My Lai during the My Lai Massacre on March 16, 1968.

While flying at low altitude, Thompson observed U.S. soldiers killing unarmed Vietnamese civilians. He initially marked the locations of wounded civilians with smoke grenades, hoping ground troops would provide medical aid, but he returned to find those individuals had been killed. Upon spotting a squad of soldiers preparing to fire on a group of women and children, Thompson landed his aircraft between the civilians and the soldiers. He ordered his crew—door gunner Lawrence Colburn and crew chief Glenn Andreotta—to man their weapons and assist in ferrying the civilians to safety.

Thompson’s courageous intervention directly challenged the indiscriminate violence occurring on the ground. He later reported the massacre to his superiors, though his accounts were initially dismissed and suppressed by military leadership. In 1998, Thompson and his crew were awarded the Soldier’s Medal for their extraordinary bravery in protecting noncombatants.12