Posted on 07/10/2009 10:57:52 AM PDT by iThinkBig
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 themachine 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 gave a speech in Toastmasters once about a prisoner of war experience and the unexpected response that flabbergasted me was from a graduate student....”we need to tell this to everyone so that they won't join the army and have to go through that.”
Print this article out and show it to your children or grandchildren or to the classes that you might teach....let some of our young Americans know and respect this extraordinary American....let them know there there are Americans who do extraordinary things under extraordinary circumstances for others: other than entertain.
Thank you, I updated the article on www.theburningplatform.com . This story brought tears to my eyes.
It should be noted that MoH Recipient Ed Freeman died in August of last year.
Amen --
On November 14, 1965, Freeman’s helicopters carried a battalion into the Ia Drang Valley for what became the first major confrontation between large forces of the American and North Vietnamese armies.
Back at base, Freeman and the other pilots received word that the GIs they had dropped off were taking heavy casualties and running low on supplies. In fact, the fighting was so fierce that medevac helicopters refused to pick up the wounded. When the commander of the helicopter unit asked for volunteers to fly into the battle zone, Freeman alone stepped forward. He was joined by his commander, and the two of them began several hours of flights into the contested area. Because their small emergency-landing zone was just one hundred yards away from the heaviest fighting, their unarmed and lightly armored helicopters took several hits. In all, Freeman carried out fourteen separate rescue missions, bringing in water and ammunition to the besieged soldiers and taking back dozens of wounded, some of whom wouldn’t have survived if they hadn’t been evacuated....
In the aftermath of the Ia Drang battle, his commanding officer, wanting to recognize Freeman’s valor, proposed him for the Medal of Honor. But the two-year statute of limitations on these kinds of recommendations had passed, and no action was taken. Congress did away with that statute in 1995, and Freeman was finally awarded the medal by President George W. Bush on July 16, 2001.
Freeman was back at the White House a few months later for the premiere of We Were Soldiers, a 2002 feature film that depicted his role in the Ia Drang battle. As he was filing out of the small White House theater, the president approached him, saluted, and shook his hand. “Good job, Too Tall,” he said.
Sounded like he was nuts in Vietnam. But dozens of men are alive because of him.
That graduate would have had a whole lot of words from me.
Ed “Too Tall” Freeman
Too tall is so many ways.....
ED FREEMAN, A true American hero.
big bump. God rest his soul.
RIP.
.
The rest of ED ‘Too Tall’ FREEMAN’s Story =
They are soldiers still
http://www.ArmchairGeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=66978
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bump
May the American people know the spirit of our brave Troops.
Bump for later reading
Man, he WAS tall! President Bush is not a short man, and this guy towered over him!
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