http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4589486.stm
Last Updated: Friday, 6 January 2006, 20:03 GMT
My Lai massacre hero dies at 62
It was 30 years before the US military honoured Thompson (left)
Hugh Thompson Jnr, a former US military helicopter pilot who helped stop
one of the most infamous massacres of the Vietnam War has died, aged 62.
Mr Thompson and his crew came upon US troops killing civilians at the
village of My Lai on 16 March 1968.
He put his helicopter down between the soldiers and villagers, ordering
his men to shoot their fellow Americans if they attacked the civilians.
"There was no way I could turn my back on them," he later said of the
victims.
Mr Thompson, a warrant officer at the time, called in support from other
US helicopters, and together they airlifted at least nine Vietnamese civilians
- including a wounded boy - to safety.
He returned to headquarters, angrily telling his commanders what he had
seen. They ordered soldiers in the area to stop shooting.
But Mr Thompson was shunned for years by fellow soldiers, received death
threats, and was once told by a congressman that he was the only American who
should be punished over My Lai.
A platoon commander, Lt William Calley, was later court-martialed and
sentenced to life in prison for his role in the killings.
President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence to three years' house
arrest.
Lobbying
Although the My Lai massacre became one of the best-known atrocities of
the war - with journalist Seymour Hersh winning a Pulitzer Prize for reporting
on it - little was known about Mr Thompson's actions for decades.
My Lai heroes honoured
In the 1980s, Clemson University Professor David Egan saw him interviewed
in a documentary and began to campaign on his behalf.
He persuaded people including Vietnam-era Secretary of State Dean Rusk to
lobby the government to honour the helicopter crew.
Mr Thompson and his colleagues Lawrence Colburn and Glenn Andreotta were
finally awarded the Soldier's Medal, the highest US miltiary award for bravery
when not confronting an enemy.
Mr Thompson was close to tears as he accepted the award in 1998 "for all
the men who served their country with honour on the battlefields of South-East
Asia".
Mr Andreotta's award was posthumous. He was killed in Vietnam less than a
month after My Lai.
Mr Colburn was at Mr Thompson's bedside when he died, the Associated
Press reported.
Mr Thompson died of cancer. He had been ill for some time and was removed
from life support earlier in the week
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