My Lai Hero Hugh Thompson Dies At 62

Rescued Vietnamese Civilians From Fellow GIs During 1968 Massacre

(AP) 
Author Seymour Hersh won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for his expose of the massacre in 1969 while working as a freelance journalist. The massacre became one of the pivotal events as opposition to the war was growing in the United States.

Hersh called Thompson "one of the good guys."

"You can't imagine what courage it took to do what he did," Hersh said.

Although Thompson's story was a significant part of Hersh's reports, and Thompson testified before Congress, his role in ending My Lai wasn't widely known until the late 1980s, when David Egan, a professor emeritus at Clemson University, saw an interview in a documentary and launched a letter-writing campaign that eventually led to the awarding of the medals in 1998.

"He was the guy who by his heroic actions gave a morality and dignity to the American military effort," Tulane history professor Douglas Brinkley said.

For years Thompson suffered snubs and worse from those who considered him unpatriotic. He recalled a congressman angrily saying that Thompson himself was the only serviceman who should be punished because of My Lai.

As the years passed, Thompson became an example for future generations of soldiers, said Col. Tom Kolditz, head of the U.S. Military Academy's behavioral sciences and leadership department. Thompson went to West Point once a year to give a lecture on his experience, Kolditz said.

"There are so many people today walking around alive because of him, not only in Vietnam, but people who kept their units under control under other circumstances because they had heard his story. We may never know just how many lives he saved."