“Don’t do the right thing looking for a reward, because it might not come.”
–Hugh Thompson
Hugh Thompson died yesterday, at 62. He saved Vietnamese civilians from being massacred by USA soldiers at My Lai, on March 16, 1968.
He ordered his helicopter gunner and his crew chief to shoot any American soldiers who opened fire on the civilians. Wow!
He faced ostracism for his heroism. It took the Army 3 decades to give him a commendation for his action that day.
We need more Hugh Thompsons.
Billy
No more double posts–especially about the My Lai Massacre
Thanks for posting this! I hadn’t heard about this before, but as soon as I post this I’m going to start making sure other people hear about it too.
Fantastic post. I absolutly agree with the quote. Just for fun, try to go do something really nice for someone, without telling anyone about it afterwards, it’s difficult, or I’m weak, or both. Ultimatly, it’s better though.
Speaking of, I’m going to post about “pay it forward” I think…
It’s my experience that if I am nice to people then people are nice to me. Strangely it may not always be the person who I was nice to who will be nice to me. (And by ‘nice’ I mean do something that I don’t have to do for somebody else).
This helps me not to feel too guilty if I can’t repay someone for thier kindness. For instance, the mother of one of sam’s friends has him after school on three days a week. We didn’t ask her to, she offered because she decided that sam was unhappy in FunClub (he’s not). But there’s no way that I can have her son like that, I work until 6pm every day. I can’t have him round every weekend cos he doesn’t want to come and we have other things to do. And she wont take any money.
On the other hand there is a lady down the road who has been depressed and now she is thinking of leaving her husband. Even though I did not even know her name she told me about her depression one day, and the next day and so on (I am a good listener and people often tell me thier problems, especially at work - oh yeah, it’s my job) Anyway, I am happy to listen to this lady’s problems and ask nothing in return.
Somehow things seem to even out across the world of niceness.
Cathy
I thought the same thing when I read Cathy’s posting. Cool.
Billy
I’ve heard of him before and thought he was a very respectable man. He was a good soldier and he will be missed.
He was no Lewis “Chesty” Puller though 