Everybody's heard of the My Lai massacre — March 16, 1968, 50 years ago today — but not many know about the man who stopped it: Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot. When he arrived, American soldiers had already killed 504 Vietnamese civilians (that's the Vietnamese count; the U.S. Army said 347). They were going to kill more, but they didn't — because of what Thompson did.
Nobody likes the truth.
Some of us do want the truth. I've always admired this man for what he did and have no respect for the military people who would try and hide and cover up this action even today. I have a nephew who loves the military (although he couldn't serve) who told me, when we discussed this incident, that it happened "in the fog of war".