You're a 19 year old kid.
You're critically wounded and dying in the jungle
in the Ia Drang Valley, Vietnam.
November 11, 1965.
Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8-1 and
the enemy fire is so intense,
from 100-200 yards away,
that your own Infantry Commander has ordered
the Medi-Vac 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
the sound of a helicopter.
You look up and see an unarmed Huey. But...
it doesn't seem real because no Medi-Vac markings are on it.
Ed Freeman is coming to get you.
He's not Medi-Vac so it's not his job, but
he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire anyway.
Even after the Medi-Vacs were ordered
not to come.
He's coming anyway.
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!
Thirteen or fourteen more times.
He took about 30 of you and your buddies out
who never would have gotten out.
Medal of Honor Recipient Ed Freeman
died in 2008, at the age of 80,
in Boise, Idaho.
I bet you didn't hear about this hero's passing, but
we've sure seen a whole bunch about
Tiger Woods, Michael Jackson, Chris Brown, etc. etc. etc.
Medal of Honor Winner
Ed Freeman
5 comments:
It sure makes you think, however Ed Freeman died in August of 2008.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/freeman.asp
Anonymous is right! And I just did a post on Snopes. Does not change the fact that Ed Freeman was a real hero, and that the wrong kind of people are getting the attention of the media these days. Could you imagine a 60 minute show about this kind of man, weekly, instead of one about the "cribs" of rappers and athletes? No one would watch...
You are so right! That is horrible how we honor celebrities and forget real heros with real stories!
I totally agree (I was the one who posted to you about the actual dates being wrong and the snopes article). He was a hero in all ways! I read your blog post to my husband and couldn't get through it without crying. I only found the snopes because I wanted to read more about him! It's a shame who the media brings to our living rooms - garbage instead of stories like this.
I'm still glad I read your blog today because I never would have known about Ed Freeman - no matter when he died! :)
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