Скачать или смотреть How American Heroes Were Made ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE!

This story of a man who flew low over a Vietnamese village, saw an atrocity in progress, and chose to confront his own army. In the days, weeks and decades after March 16, 1968, that decision would make him a hero to some, a traitor to others, and a living witness to how a nation judges its own.
By early 1968, American involvement in Vietnam had reached a level few in the United States could ignore. The tactics used against an enemy that often blended with the civilian population placed enormous pressure on infantry units, and in many places the line between combatant and non-combatant blurred in the eyes of exhausted soldiers. The Charlie Company operation into the Song My (My Lai) area began as another sweep in a terrible neighborhood — pro-Viet Cong, booby traps, and the brutal reality of guerrilla warfare. That setting matters because it shaped how men acted on that day. It doesn’t excuse what they did — it explains, in part, the pathology that can emerge under stress.
Who was Hugh Thompson?
Hugh Thompson was a young Army helicopter pilot. He flew an OH-23 observation helicopter with crewmen Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn. The OH-23 was a light machine — not a gunship — but the crew had armaments on Andrewotta’s or Colburn’s weapons and, crucially, the presence of any aircraft overhead created a moral and practical pressure valve: pilots could see things ground troops could not, and intervene — sometimes with words, sometimes with weapons, sometimes with emergency radio calls. Thompson had the immediate advantage of aerial perspective, but not the authority to order ground troops around. On March 16, 1968, that advantage became morally decisive.


Subscribe    / @3worldwariii