RIP Glenn Andreotta

Killed in action April 8, 1968, Andreotta was one of the three-man crew who stopped the killing spree by fellow American soldiers who were raping and mutilating Vietnamese girls and women in the village of My Lai, and slaughtering ~500 innocent women, children, and old men on March 16, 1968.

Andreotta was killed shortly after the events at My Lai while serving in B Company (the "Warlords") of the 123rd Aviation Battalion of the American Division.

[...]

Hugh Thompson's description was "Glenn Andreotta - if there was a hero, I don't like that word, but if there was a hero at My Lai - it was Glenn Andreotta, because he saw movement in that ditch, and he fixed in on this one little kid and went down into that ditch. I would not want to go in that ditch. It's not pretty. It was very bad. I can imagine what was going through his mind down there, because there was more than one still alive - people grabbing hold of his pants, wanting help. [...] He found this one kid and brought the kid back up and handed it to Larry, and we laid it across Larry and my lap and took him out of there. I remember thinking Glenn Andreotta put himself where nobody in their right mind would want to be, and he was driven by something. I haven't got the aircraft on the ground real stable. He bolted out of that aircraft into this ditch. Now he was a hero. Glenn Andreotta gave his life for his country about three weeks later. That's the kind of guy he was, and he was a hero that day."

  HonorStates

Andreotta did not live long enough to be hailed as a hero by his country, as the other two of the crew, pilot Hugh Thompson and gunner Larry Colburn, finally were when the truth came out a year later, and instead died being reviled as a traitor by fellow soldiers.

The Army would later charge only 14 men, including [William] Calley, Captain Ernest Medina and Colonel Oran Henderson, with crimes related to the events at My Lai. All were acquitted except for Calley, who was found guilty of premeditated murder for ordering the shootings, despite his contention that he was only following orders from his commanding officer, Captain Medina.

[...]

Later investigations have revealed that the slaughter at My Lai was not an isolated incident. Other atrocities, such as a similar massacre of villagers at My Khe, are less well known. A notorious military operation called Speedy Express killed thousands of Vietnamese civilians in the Mekong Delta, earning the commander of the operation, Major General Julian Ewell, the nickname “the Butcher of the Delta.”