Minstrel
Hero Member
You're a 19 year old kid, critically wounded, and dying in the jungle in
the La Drang Valley, 11-
14-1965, LZ Xray, Vietnam. Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8 to 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 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 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 there are no
Medi-Vac markings 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 told 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 waiting doctors
and nurses.
And he kept coming back....... 13 more times..... and took over 30 of
you and your buddies out,
who would never have gotten out.
Medal of Honor recipient Ed Freeman died last Wednesday, in Boise,
Idaho, at the age of 80.
Oh yeah, Paul Newman died that day too.
But I guess you knew that. He got a lot more press than Ed Freeman.
the La Drang Valley, 11-
14-1965, LZ Xray, Vietnam. Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8 to 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 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 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 there are no
Medi-Vac markings 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 told 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 waiting doctors
and nurses.
And he kept coming back....... 13 more times..... and took over 30 of
you and your buddies out,
who would never have gotten out.
Medal of Honor recipient Ed Freeman died last Wednesday, in Boise,
Idaho, at the age of 80.
Oh yeah, Paul Newman died that day too.
But I guess you knew that. He got a lot more press than Ed Freeman.
