You're a 19 year old kid. You're critically wounded and dying in the
jungle in the Ia Drang Valley on
November 14th, 1965, LZ X-ray, Vietnam. Your infantry unit is outnumbered
8 - 1 and the enemy fire is so intense 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 that you will die.
Then - over the machine gun noise - you faintly hear
that sound of a helicopter!!! You
look up to see an un-armed Huey!!! But... it doesn't seem real because there
aren’t any 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 anyway - even 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!He took about 30 of you and your buddies out who
would never have gotten out if he hadn’t disobeyed orders and risked his life
multiple times, to pull those wounded and dying boys out of the jungle.
Medal of Honor Recipient, Ed Freeman, died August 20,
2009 at the age of 80, in Boise, ID. May
God Rest His Soul and may his memory serve to inspire us all.
BTW - I bet you didn't hear about this hero's passing because he died at the same time the media
was obsessing about the funeral of Michael Jackson.