Medal of Honor Recipient, Ed Freeman

[Trip]

 

* *Ed Freeman..... MOH

 

This is a good read!

 

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Ed Freeman

You're a 19 year old kid.

 

You're critically wounded, and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang

Valley , 11-14-1965, LZ X-ray , 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 an un-armed Huey, but it doesn't seem

real, because no Medi-Vac markings are on it...

 

Ed Freeman is coming for you... He's not Medi-Vac, so it's not his job,

but he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the

Medi-Vacs 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

30 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.

 

Medal of Honor Recipient, Ed Freeman,died last Wednesday at the age of

80, in Boise , ID ........

 

May God rest his soul......

 

I bet you didn't hear about this hero's passing, but we sure were told a

whole bunch of shite about some one gloved idiot ..

 

Medal of Honor Winner Ed Freeman!

 

[gramma lois]

I hear ya trip...I have allot of kin in the States who served, and men like Ed Freeman are irreplaceable!

[MomM]

Thank you Trip. May God bless Ed abundantly.

[Midnightmom]

Freeman's 1965 heroics were largely unknown outside the military until the the definitive book on the battle, "Were Were Soldiers Once... and Young" was published in 1992.

 

The Mississippi native braved intense enemy fire in the Ia Drang Valley as he and his squadron commander, LtCol Bruce Crandall volunteered to fly numerous medevac and resupply mission Nov. 14, 1965, during what was considered one of the fiercest battles of the Vietnam War to that time.

 

After decades of effort by Crandall, and the Seventh Air Cav ground troops he supported and saved, Freeman's Distinguished Flying Cross was upgraded to the nation's highest honor.

 

Freeman was 73 when President Bush awarded him the Medal in 2001.

 

Both Freeman and Crandall were portrayed in the Mel Gibson film, "Were Were Soldiers Once".