When the Killing Stopped

By SETH LIPSKY

One of the important things to comprehend about the massacre that took place at the hamlet of My Lai in Vietnam is that not only was it committed by Americans but it was also stopped by Americans. It is true that elements of an American task force operating in Quang Ngai Province went on a rampage and slew 504 Vietnamese, including hundreds of noncombatants -- old women, young children and infants -- in a classic war crime. It is also true that an American helicopter pilot, who suddenly grasped what was happening on the ground, brought his chopper down amid the carnage, had his door gunners train their weapons on American GIs and brought the killing to a halt.

And saved the honor of his country.

That is the story recounted in "The Forgotten Hero of My Lai: The Hugh Thompson Story" (Acadian House, 247 pages, $19.95). The book, by a Louisiana newspaperman named Trent Angers, is a jewel of reporting. Mr. Angers tells not only of Mr. Thompson's actions on that day in 1968, when a contingent of poorly led GIs set out essentially to kill all the inhabitants of a series of villages around which the communist enemy had been operating. He also tells of how those actions were only the beginning of a quest in which Mr. Thompson spent years helping to bring the perpetrators of these crimes to justice.

Mr. Angers traces such heroism to Mr. Thompson's upbringing in Stone Mountain, Ga. His father, whose paternal ancestors were Cherokees, had a tendency to stand up for the underdog, once protesting the segregation of Native Americans at an archery tournament. Hugh was taught: "Do your chores. Don't lie. And don't run if you're about to get a whipping." He left home at 18 to get married, eventually joining the Army. Mr. Thompson's crew, Glenn Andreotta and Larry Colburn, both joined the Army after quitting high school. The two called Mr. Thompson "boss," though the decision to intervene to try to stop the massacre at My Lai was a joint one, made in the chaos of battle.

The day started out routinely, with Messrs. Thompson, Colburn and Andreotta flying scout in support of Task Force Barker, which had been organized to drive the Viet Cong from an area around the village of Son My, one of whose hamlets was called My Lai. "Some of the people of Son My welcomed the VC," Mr. Angers writes tersely. "Others did not."

All but a few of the Viet Cong soldiers who spent the night in the village were up and gone by dawn of March 16, Mr. Angers relates, and at 7:24 a.m. the western part of the community came under U.S. artillery fire. Minutes later, Charlie Company, under the command of Lt. William Calley, landed by helicopter. By 8 a.m., as villagers tried to hide or flee, the massacre was under way. Villagers were shot individually or in groups, as they ran, as they tried to surrender, or as they lay in ditches.

The evil unfolding dawned on Mr. Thompson and his crew in stages as they buzzed the area, looking for the enemy. Mr. Thompson landed more than once in an effort to stop the slaughter, at one point ordering his door gunners to shoot the Americans if they made a move to kill either the Vietnamese civilians or Mr. Thompson himself.

When Mr. Thompson flew over a ditch full of what turned out to be 170 dead or dying Vietnamese women, children and old men, Glenn Andreotta shouted that he could see something moving. Mr. Thompson set down his helicopter. Mr. Andreotta went into the ditch and lifted out, from beneath a bullet-riddled corpse, a five-year-old girl who was whimpering with fear. With a dying woman clinging to his leg, Mr. Andreotta had trouble carrying the little girl out of the ditch: He couldn't get his footing in all the gore.

Breaking radio silence, Mr. Thompson frantically reported the massacre to his superiors and gained a cease-fire. Mr. Angers believes, after sifting through testimony and evidence, that had Mr. Thompson not stopped the massacre, hundreds, even thousands, of Vietnamese in nearby hamlets would have been killed.

But Mr. Thompson was not able to halt the cover-up of the massacre. Mr. Andreotta was killed in action three weeks after My Lai, and Mr. Thompson himself was eventually wounded seriously enough to be sent home.

The cover-up would not be unraveled until a courageous former GI, Ron Ridenhour, who had heard about the massacre from some of its participants, broke the story of My Lai by writing to President Nixon, the military authorities and Congress in March 1969. Mr. Thompson himself would spend a good part of the next few years as virtually a full-time witness, before Congress and courts martial. Only one of the perpetrators, Calley, was ever convicted, and his sentence was reduced by President Nixon. Mr. Angers concludes that two congressmen of the era, F. Edward Hebert and L. Mendell Rivers, used their power to frustrate the Army's efforts to prosecute.

Several years ago, a campaign was begun by a professor of architecture at Clemson University, David Eagan, to have the Soldier's Medal awarded to Mr. Thompson. It finally was -- on March 6, 1998, at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. After the ceremony, Mr. Thompson and Larry Colburn went back to visit My Lai on the 30th anniversary of the massacre and to meet some of those who were alive because of their actions. It makes a particularly poignant chapter in an extraordinarily moving book.

In his telling of the My Lai story, Mr. Angers pulls no punches with respect to the Army coverup. But neither does he seek -- as some have -- to portray Lt. Calley as typical of the American GI and the massacre as a metaphor for the entire American war effort. In fact, if Mr. Thompson's heroism at My Lai is a metaphor for anything, it is for the American expedition itself, which, after all, was designed to rescue millions of South Vietnamese from perishing in a communist conquest of their country. One doesn't have to look for metaphors, though, to treasure this volume.