Meet Hugh Thompson... One of My Heroes

In Light of The Law....

I’m going to start this by letting you know that I do have a few heroes. My favorite hero of all time as a child was Underdog. I guess the reason being that Underdog was always able to overpower the bad guys. The bullies.

Underdog was an American Saturday morning animated television series that ran from October 3, 1964, to March 4, 1967, starting on the NBC network until 1966, with the rest of the run on CBS, under the primary sponsorship of General Mills, for a run of 62 episodes. So I watched him fight against Simon Bar Sinister every Saturday morning from the age of 10 up until just before my 13th birthday. He was my favorite cartoon.

My first run-in with a real life bully was in Elementary school. He was a boy a year older named Bobby Smith. He was a Patrol Captain who would make sure you crossed the street in a designated place OR ELSE. It was the or else that led him to bully me. Another bully I ran into was my 6th grade PE teacher. A man named Mr. Blenn. He didn’t like me because as a lanky tall 12 year old I wasn’t able to keep up with a lot of the class exercises. I was a slow runner and had to walk during part of the 600 yard run because I simply couldn’t do it. So what was Mr. Blenn’s gift to me the last day of 6th grade before I headed off to anther school? He had a paddle in his hand and told the class that everyone could give me a whack as a going away present. So what did this lanky 12 year old do? He walked up to Mr. Blenn as he was smugly sitting on a chair with the paddle in hand with his stupid smile on his face and punched him in the face as hard as he could! Yep, that’s the way I dealt with THAT bully! When brought down to the principals office, after she heard what had taken place, she sided with me. Well duh? But she really wasn’t happy I had punched the jerk. But that didn’t matter to me. Because I was happy.

Anyhow to get into the actual hero of this post is, I want you to know that there were many who wanted him to die for “treason”. That what he had done was totally unacceptable in a time of war. What war you may ask? The Vietnam “war” which was never declared by Congress and was considered a “police” action where the United States military and a few other countries invaded South Vietnam to “stop the spread of communism”. What a joke. A bad joke. A joke that caused the death of 56,000+ American servicemen who had been forced into combat by the “draft”. No one really knows the actual amount of casualties were inflicted on the Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians. Oh yea, we weren’t supposed to know about those other countries we got involved with. It was a secret. Well sort of. I think Mel Gibson found out at least.

Hugh Thompson was a hero. Why you may ask? Did he play football or basketball or was he an Olympic Medal winner for the United States? How many of you have ever heard of Hugh Thompson? Just curious. Hugh was actually a helicopter gunship pilot during the Viet Nam war that typically just did his duty as ordered by his “superiors”. That duty being to guard the troops involved in the Vietnam “conflict”. I can’t say war, because it was never declared one by Congress. Anyhow, In lieu of my recent post on “The Law 2024” I thought I would share the story to you about Hugh.

Did you ever hear of “Pinkville”? I bet not. Ever hear of My Lai? I bet you did. Pinkville was the “code name” for My Lai. The story that makes Hugh a hero in my mind is called the My Lai massacre. And it wasn’t the first and it wasn’t the last. Ever hear of Fullujah? A city in Iraq? We can talk about Fallujah later. The story of Hugh is what the subject of this post is really about.

I’m an American by birth. I love my country and the people in it. But frankly, I HATE those who are running it and tyrannizing American citizens all over the place. Hearing a man sit next to me in my home at dinner say “Sammy used to love homegrown green beans” and knowing who Sammy WAS causes righteous indignation to well up in my very soul.

The reason I call Hugh my hero is because he understood “the Law” because frankly friend…the LAW is written on your heart and the only way you can violate it is by refusing to acknowledge what it does to your conscience. And if you don’t have empathy and if this story doesn’t make the humanity in you well up, you may have some major issues with your lack of conscience and should become a politician. No, please don’t do that. Just go hang yourself or do as one bully policeman did that I had to deal with many years ago, just shoot yourself. That’s another story. He actually finally was fired from his position as a “law enforcement” officer and ended up pumping fuel in jets at Miami International Airport. I guess not being able to bully people finally got to him and he ended his decrepit life one evening at home according to his boss at the airport who I was friends with.

Anyhow let’s get back to Hugh…since this post is SUPPOSED to be about him.

The My Lai massacre reportedly ended only after Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot on a reconnaissance mission, landed his aircraft between the soldiers and the retreating villagers and threatened to open fire if they continued their attacks.

“We kept flying back and forth … and it didn’t take very long until we started noticing the large number of bodies everywhere. Everywhere we’d look, we’d see bodies. These were infants, two- three-, four-, five-year-olds, women, very old men, no draft-age people whatsoever,” Thompson stated at a My Lai conference at Tulane University in 1994.

Thompson and his crew flew dozens of survivors to receive medical care. In 1998, Thompson and two other members of his crew received the Soldier’s Medal, the U.S. Army’s highest award for bravery not involving direct contact with the enemy.

That my friends is why I call Hugh Thompson a hero. Because he was willing to risk everything. He was willing to lay down his own life to protect those people who were being massacred at My Lai. Thank our Creator that some of us will do the same for our fellow man. It didn’t matter to Hugh who the innocent were or where they were born or what color their skin was. What mattered to Hugh was the defense of innocent people.

Can Hugh be one of your heroes too? I hope so.

Thank you Hugh for being you! It troubles me that so many folks don’t understand that being an aggressor is WRONG. And those who defend themselves against the aggressor are RIGHT. C.L.

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