you?" He said that he was "just devastated" but that she finished her sentence: "So we could forgive them." He later told a reporter, "I'm not man enough to do that. I'm sorry. I wish I was, but I won't lie to anybody. I'm not that much of a man." Thompson and Colburn lit incense sticks and placed them in an urn by a stone marker at the irrigation ditch where many were murdered. They also dedicated a new elementary school for the children of the village. Thompson later served as a counselor in the Louisiana Department of Veterans Affairs, and gave a talk at the United States Naval Academy in 2003 and at West Point in 2005 on Professional Military Ethics. He also spoke at the United States Air Force Academy and to United States Marine Corps officers at Quantico. Thompson gave his first lecture to a U.S. Army audience, discussing physical and moral courage, at the U.S. Army Medical Department Center and School, Ft. Sam Houston, Texas, in 1998. Thompson and his crew's actions have been used as an example in the ethics manuals of U.S. and European militaries. Thompson received an honorary degree from Emory University and The Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University holds a collection relating to the life and careers of Hugh Thompson and Lawrence Colburn. In 2005, he retired from Louisiana Veterans Affairs. Recognition for actions at Mỹ Lai In 1998, exactly 30 years after the massacre, Thompson and the two other members of his crew, Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn, were awarded the Soldier's Medal (Andreotta posthumously), the United States Army's highest award for bravery not involving direct contact with the enemy. "It was the ability to do the right thing even at the risk of their personal safety that guided these soldiers to do what they did", then-Major General Michael Ackerman said at the 1998 ceremony. The three "set the standard for all soldiers to follow". Additionally on March 10, 1998, Senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.) entered a tribute to Thompson, Colburn and Andreotta into the record of the U.S. Senate. Cleland said the three men were "true examples of American patriotism at its finest". In 1999, Thompson and Colburn received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award. Later that year, both men served as co-chairs of STONEWALK, a group who pulled a one-ton rock engraved