On March 16, 1968, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, his crew chief, Spec4 Glen Andreotta, and door gunner, Spec4 Lawrence Coburn, watched from above as Captain Ernest Medina, commanding officer of C Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, Americal Division, shot and killed a woman . . . a woman already wounded and marked for medical evacuation by Thompson's team minutes earlier.

The crew watched as one soldier systematically killed similarly marked wounded civilians. Then they flew over an irrigation ditch.

Thompson radioed in the clear, "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."

He landed and immediately confronted a senior officer, Lt. William Calley, the CO of Captain Medina's first platoon. "Just following orders," Lt. Calley told him. ". . . Get back in that chopper and mind your own business."

A short time later Thompson put his OH23 Raven down between a group of Americans soldiers and fleeing Vietnamese, women, children and old men. As he dismounted he told Andreotta and Coburn to be prepared to fire on their own troops if the Americans fired on him or on the Vietnamese civilians.

All three risked court martial or worse.

Not until 1998 were they were awarded the Soldiers' Medal, the Army's highest award for courage in action not involving direct conflict with the enemy. Andreotta's award was posthumous.

Perhaps some day we'll learn the names, and celebrate the courage of men and women who, like Thompson, Andreotta and Coburn, stood up to those who counseled, committed or covered up torture and other war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and a dozen other god-forsaken top-secret jails around the world.

For the moment, it seems we're doomed to hear mostly about those on the other side: the guilty, the fearful, those scrambling for legal cover, those who sought to provide it, and worst of all those all too vocal few who believe that men like Thompson, Andreotta and Coburn were the soldiers who were really in the wrong.

Thompson and his men knew better . .. and so should we. "Something ain't right about this . . . Something's wrong here."