You're an 18 or 19 year old kid. You're critically wounded, and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley, 11-14-1965. LZ Xray , 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.Rest well Captain.
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 o u t, 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 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.....
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
From the In Box
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9 comments:
Godspeed
I raise my glass to him.
May God Rest his soul
Rest in Peace SIR. I stand and salute you, you are MORE than deserving.
You do have a way with words, it's men like Captain Freeman that made this country great. I imagine he just thought that somebody had to get those boys out, & he was there.
But that is how real heros are.
Absent Companions...
How could anyone not be proud of such a man? Not just brave but really, really lucky.
I talked with a dust-off pilot once who told me when he got a hot LZ warning he would always think "How can I not pull them out when they warned me?" and in he'd go.
Where do we keep finding such men?
Thanks for sharing, JR.
A true hero. Rest in Peace, may we never forget you.
No Greater Love.
I always get teary reading stuff like this, I never get used to it. What a Man.
It is plain to see that America has lost one of it's most brave and selfless sons. A true American in every sense of the word. May God rest his soul.
While I am sure this man never claimed to be perfect, and most likely never was or wanted to be, I am sure Obama could find SOMETHING wrong with him.
flutedchamber
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