My Lai: When Loyalty Meant Defying Your Own Side

Cover: My Lai, March 16, 1968. U.S. Army photograph; still from the reel.

On 16 March 1968, American soldiers killed unarmed Vietnamese civilians in the Sơn Mỹ area of Quảng Ngãi Province. Among the victims were children, women and elderly people. When helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson and his crew intervened, the people they tried to protect were in danger from men wearing the same uniform as their rescuers. Their actions saved lives, but they did not undo the massacre. That is where this story must begin. Army inquiry findings, chapter 12; Thompson’s official recognition.

The people behind the number

My Lai is often used as a name for the wider massacre, although the Army investigation also examined killings in another hamlet and abuses during the surrounding operation. The memorial at Sơn Mỹ names 504 victims. Historian Howard Jones notes that more than half of those listed were younger than twenty. The Army’s Peers Inquiry, working with the evidence available to it, did not establish a definitive total. Those different records should be identified rather than blended into a falsely exact count. Howard Jones on the memorial; Peers Inquiry.

The inquiry described an operation aimed at an enemy force believed to be in the area. It found that orders and intelligence became distorted as they passed down the command structure, presenting civilians’ homes as an enemy camp. It also identified a permissive attitude toward mistreatment of noncombatants. These findings explain part of the setting in which the killings occurred. They do not turn the victims into combatants or excuse those who killed them. Peers Inquiry findings, chapter 12.

Military prosecutor William George Eckhardt describes villagers assembled and shot, houses burned and women subjected to sexual violence. His account also distinguishes what could be established about individual actions from contested testimony about orders. The massacre was a sequence of human decisions, not an unexplained accident that happened to a village. Eckhardt’s account, pages 7–9.

What the helicopter crew did

Thompson was flying with crew chief Glenn Andreotta and gunner Lawrence Colburn. Colburn later described seeing civilians who had been alive on a road lying dead or wounded when the aircraft returned. The crew’s understanding developed as they watched. They had not arrived knowing that American troops were carrying out a massacre. Colburn’s eyewitness interview.

At a shelter, Thompson put his aircraft between approaching American troops and Vietnamese civilians. He went forward to get the people out and told his crew to protect them, including by firing on the Americans if they fired on him or the civilians. Colburn’s recollection is precise about an often embellished detail. He said the crew kept their weapons pointed down during the confrontation. They did not shoot American troops. Another helicopter, flown by Dan Millians, helped evacuate the people because Thompson’s small aircraft could not carry them all. Colburn’s account of the shelter rescue.

Thompson’s eventual Soldier’s Medal citation also records a separate rescue from a ditch filled with bodies. The crew retrieved a wounded child, and Thompson flew the child to a hospital at Quảng Ngãi. His reports helped bring an order to stop the killing. The citation credits the intervention with saving at least ten civilians. Citation reproduced by Eckhardt, pages 48–49.

These were concrete acts. Landing made the crew vulnerable. Getting people out required someone to approach them. Evacuation required another pilot’s cooperation. Reporting required the men to accuse fellow soldiers of murder. Admiring their courage should not compress those choices into the comforting idea that one hero arrived and everything was put right.

The struggle to make the truth count

The massacre did not become widely known immediately. In March 1969, veteran Ronald Ridenhour wrote to public officials after gathering accounts from soldiers. Representative Morris Udall later placed his letter in the Congressional Record. Ridenhour had not witnessed the massacre himself. His contribution was to collect disturbing information and insist that officials investigate it. Ridenhour’s letter and Udall’s introduction.

The Army commissioned the Peers Inquiry in November 1969 to examine the earlier investigations and handling of information. The Library of Congress preserves its report, testimony, exhibits and investigative statements. The archive allows readers to examine a record larger than any single recollection. It also makes clear why asking what happened and asking why authorities failed to establish it promptly are separate historical tasks. Library of Congress collection guide.

Accountability remained limited. Lieutenant William Calley was the only person convicted in the resulting courts-martial. Thompson, Andreotta and Colburn received the Soldier’s Medal in March 1998, with Andreotta honored posthumously. Recognition arrived thirty years after their intervention. Eckhardt on prosecutions and recognition. The Department of Veterans Affairs also records the hostility Thompson faced for speaking against fellow Americans. VA biography.

Loyalty and the evidence

The reel uses genuine historical imagery, but its 1967 OH-23 training footage is not a film of the rescue. Colburn’s later interview is eyewitness recollection, not a recording made that morning. The inquiry and medal citation provide additional evidence while serving different purposes. Keeping those distinctions visible makes the story stronger.

My Lai exposes a conflict within the idea of loyalty. Supporting comrades can become protecting them from scrutiny. Respect for an institution can become refusal to believe evidence against it. Thompson’s crew chose to protect people their fellow soldiers were endangering. That choice does not redeem the massacre or make the Vietnamese victims supporting characters in an American story. It shows that refusing participation, intervening and reporting were possible, even under pressure to remain on the same side.

Historacle Question

When your own side kills civilians, what does loyalty demand?