|
R.I.P.
Ed W. "Too Tall" Freeman
November 20, 1927 - August 20, 2008
|
You're a 19 year old kid, 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 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 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 , ID , at the age of 80.
May God rest his soul..... |
