Medal of Honor Recipient Ed Freeman died Wednesday [August 20, 2008]

ausrere

ausrere

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Lisa
I just learned about this today, some of you may have already known he passed away. If you have seen the movie We Were Soliders, this man was one of the huey pilots and was awarded the Medal of Honor.

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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.

You’re lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns and mortars, and you know you’re not getting out. Your family is half 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 noise of all hell, 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 torrent of 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 and intense mortar fire, and loads 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 Wednesday [August 20, 2008] at the age of 80, in Boise , ID… May God rest his soul… May we never forget those that love America so much and make America so beloved.


http://www.military.com/news/article/moh-recipient-ed-freeman-dies.html
 
Wow Lisa thanks for posting that. If there were and Icon for a salute I'd post it here. So I'll just say I salute you Mr. Freeman and believe that there is a special place in heavan for folks such as yourself.
 
Lisa, thank you for posting this story. I read We Were Soldiers Once - and Young in the early 1990s, and that was one of the most riveting stories I've read on war, and I'm a student of history.

For the record, I believe that the Mel Gibson movie We Were Soldiers Once was one of the more accurate portrayals of the Vietnam war, and an excellent depiction of the valor of these men, including the 1st Cavalry pilots.

Bless them all.
 
ausrere said:
Medal of Honor Recipient Ed Freeman died Wednesday [August 20, 2008] at the age of 80, in Boise , ID…
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Which would make him around 40 already when he was doing this brave stuff. Unusual guy, for sure. Most of us guys get much more cautious as we get older and are more reluctant to take awesome chances like that. We need more Ed Freemans.

Another good read: Chickenhawk, whose author I can't remember. Flying Hueys into insane places in 'Nam to extract grunts. One tale tells of the overloaded helicopter that couldn't climb out of the tiny clearing on a forested mountaintop with too many on board, so the pilot flew THROUGH the trees until he was headed downhill and could climb out of them. Slender trees, for sure, but I bet those rotor blades were junk when he got home. World's biggest weedeater...

Dan
 
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