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Ingratitude Was All These People Got For Doing the Right Thing

Khalid Elhassan August 28, 2023 32 min

Ingratitude - Ignaz Semmelweis washing his hands in chlorinated lime water before operating — Ignaz Semmelweis washing his hands in chlorinated lime water before operating. NPR

Attempts to Stop an Atrocity

An OH-23 Raven, similar to that flown by Hugh Thompson Jr. Wikimedia

Hugh Clowers Thompson, Jr. (1943 – 2006) was part Cherokee, descended from survivors of the Trail of Tears. Raised in Georgia, he was a Boy Scout from a religious family whose children were taught discipline and integrity. In the segregated South, the Thompsons stood out for their opposition to racism, and for standing up for and helping people of color.

As a teenager, Thompson, Jr. plowed fields and worked in a funeral home to help his family make ends meet, before he joined the US Navy in 1961. He was honorably discharged in 1964, returned to Georgia, studied to become a licensed funeral home director, and settled in to raise a family.

Women and children at My Lai, seconds before they were murdered. The woman to the right rear is adjusting her clothes after she was violated. Library of Congress

Thompson felt obligated to serve his country when the Vietnam War heated up, and enlisted in the US Army in 1966. He was trained as a helicopter pilot, and sent to Vietnam. On March 16^th, 1968, Thompson flew an OH-23 Raven observation helicopter in support of a search-and-destroy operation near Son My when he realized that a massacre was taking place below.

He landed and tried to get some soldiers to help wounded civilians, but they offered to finish them off, instead. Their commanding officer, Lieutenant William Calley, brushed Thompson off. So he took off in his helicopter, frantically radioed the chain of command about the ongoing massacre, and tried to save as many people as he could.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.