Glenn Andreotta

Glenn Andreotta was the crew chief of the OH-23 (helicopter) piloted by Hugh Thompson at My Lai. Larry Colburn was the door gunner. Andreotta served his first tour of duty in Vietnam as a radio repairman. He was half way into his second tour when he was killed in action–three weeks after My Lai–at the age of twenty. His name is on line 50 of panel 49E of the Vietnam Wall.

Hugh Thompson:

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. “I can’t help you. You’re too bad [off].” 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.