With all the political rhetoric going on, I though that a true American Hero should be recognized:
BOISE (USA) HERO ED FREEMAN
You're an 18 or 19 year old kid. You're critically wounded, and dying in the
jungle in the Ia Drang Valley, Vietnam
Your Infantry Unit is outnumbered 8 - 1, and the enemy fire is so intense,
from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the
MediVac helicopters to stop coming in.
You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and you know you're
not getting out. Your family is 1/2 way around the world, 12,000 miles away,
and you'll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out, you
know this is the day.
Then, over the machine gun noise, you faintly hear that sound of a
helicopter, and you look up to see a Huey, but it doesn't seem real, because
no Medevac markings are on it.
Ed Freeman is coming for you. He's not MediVac, so it's not his job, but
he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the MediVacs were
ordered not to come.
He's coming anyway. And he drops it in, and sits there in the machine gun
fire, as they load 2 or 3 of you on board.
Then he flies you up and out through the gunfire, to the Doctors and Nurses.
And, he kept coming back...... 13 more times..... and took about 70 of you
and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.
Medal of Honor Winner Ed Freeman has died at 80, in Boise, ID.
None of that is Hollywood fiction.
God Bless Ed Freeman
Ed W. "Too Tall" Freeman (November 1927 - August 20, 2008) was a United
States Army fixed- and rotary wing aircraft pilot who received the Medal of
Honor on 16 July 2001 for his actions in the Battle of Ia Drang in 1965. As
a helicopter pilot, he flew through gunfire more than 20 times during a
single, ferocious battle, bringing supplies to a trapped battalion of United
States soldiers and flying more than 70 wounded soldiers to safety. Freeman
flew wingman for Major Bruce Crandall who also received the Medal of Honor
for the same missions. He is also honored in the film We Were Soldiers and
is played by Mark McCracken.
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