Lawrence Colburn

Lawrence Manley Colburn (July 6, 1949 – December 13, 2016) was a United States Army veteran who, while serving as a helicopter gunner in the Vietnam War, intervened in the March 16, 1968 Mỹ Lai massacre.

Born in Coulee Dam, Washington, Colburn grew up in Mount Vernon, with his father (a veteran contractor from World War II), mother, and three sisters, where he would serve as an altar boy for four years while attending Immaculate Conception Catholic School.

Colburn (whose M60 faced 2nd Platoon) replied, "You got it boss, consider it done."

He turned his weapon to face the American soldiers and exchanged stares with them, but privately was uncertain if he could actually fire on his fellow countrymen.

Thompson then dismounted to confront 2nd Platoon's leader, Lieutenant Stephen Brooks.

Thompson told him he wanted help getting the peasants out of the bunker:

Brooks declined to argue with him, even though as a commissioned officer he outranked Thompson.

After coaxing the 11 Vietnamese out of the bunker, Thompson persuaded the pilots of the two UH-1 Huey gunships (Dan Millians and Brian Livingstone) flying as his escort to evacuate them.

(Gunships would ordinarily never land in a combat zone.) While Thompson was returning to base to refuel, Andreotta spotted movement in an irrigation ditch filled with approximately 100 bodies.

The helicopter again landed and the men dismounted to search for survivors.

After wading through the remains of the dead and dying men, women and children, Andreotta extracted a live boy.

Thompson flew the survivor to the ARVN hospital in Quảng Ngãi where he left the child under the care of a nun.

Upon finally returning to their base at about 11:00, Thompson heatedly reported the massacre to his superior officer, Colonel Oran Henderson.

Thompson's allegations of civilian killings quickly reached Lieutenant Colonel Frank Barker, the operation's overall ground commander.

Barker radioed his executive officer to find out from Captain Medina what was happening on the ground.

Medina then gave the cease-fire order to Charlie Company to "knock off the killing".

After dropping out of Mount Vernon High School, he joined the army at age 17 in 1966 and was assigned to train at Fort Lewis followed by a stint at Fort Polk.

He was then sent to Fort Shafter in Hawaii, where he earned his GED before being sent to Vietnam in December 1967.

In the early morning hours of March 16, 1968, during Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, Americal Division's assault on a hamlet known on U.S. military maps as My Lai 4, Colburn's OH-23 helicopter surprisingly encountered no enemy fire while hovering over this suspected headquarters of the Viet Cong 48th battalion.

Spotting two possible Viet Cong suspects, Thompson forced the Vietnamese men to surrender and flew them off to the rear for tactical interrogation.

He also marked the location of several wounded Vietnamese with a green smoke marker, a signal that they needed help.

Returning to the My Lai area at around 09:00 after refueling, the crew noticed that the people they had marked were now dead.

Out in a paddy field beside a dike 200 meters south of the hamlet, they marked the location of a wounded young Vietnamese woman.

Thompson and his crew watched from a low hover as Captain Ernest Medina (Charlie Company's Commander) came up to the woman, prodded her with his foot, stepped back, and then shot and killed her.

(At his court martial, Medina claimed that he had turned away from her and then, startled by the sound of sudden movement behind him, spun back around and shot her, thinking she had been hiding a weapon under herself.)

Thompson then flew over an irrigation ditch filled with dozens of bodies.

Shocked at the sight, he radioed his accompanying gunships, knowing his transmission would be monitored by many on the net: "It looks to me like there's an awful lot of unnecessary killing going on down there. Something ain't right about this. There's bodies everywhere. There's a ditch full of bodies that we saw. There's something wrong here."

Movement from the ditch indicated to Thompson that there were still people alive in there.

Thompson landed his helicopter and dismounted.

David Mitchell, a sergeant and squad leader in 1st Platoon, Charlie Company, walked over to him.

When asked by Thompson whether any help could be provided to the people in the ditch, the sergeant replied that the only way to help them was to put them out of their misery.

Second Lieutenant William Calley (1st Platoon Leader, Charlie Company) then came up, and the two had the following conversation:

Thompson took off again, and Andreotta reported that Mitchell was now executing the people in the ditch.

Furious, Thompson flew over the northeast corner of the village and spotted a group of about ten civilians, including children, running toward a homemade bomb shelter.

Pursuing them were soldiers from 2nd Platoon, Charlie Company.

Realizing that the soldiers intended to murder the Vietnamese, Thompson landed his aircraft between them and the villagers.

Thompson turned to Colburn and Andreotta and told them that if the Americans began shooting at the villagers or him, they should fire their M60 machine guns at the Americans: "Y'all cover me! If these bastards open up on me or these people, you open up on them. Promise me!"

In South Vietnam he was assigned to the 161st Assault Helicopter Company (later reorganized as the 123rd Aviation Battalion) with the rank of Specialist Four.

Serving as a door-gunner on an OH-23 Raven observation helicopter, his crew chief was Specialist Four Glenn Andreotta and his pilot was Warrant Officer One Hugh Thompson Jr.

Thirty years after the fact all three men were decorated with the Soldier's Medal for their heroic actions at My Lai.