Ed "Too Tall" Freeman
You may or may not have heard about the passing of this great Soldier earlier this year. His actions were portrayed in the recent Mel Gibson movie, "We Were Soldiers." But, even that great movie doesn't do true justice to the extraordinary bravery exhibited in the 1965 Battle of the Ia Drang between the 1 / 7th Air Cav and a regiment of NVA infantry.
"A Soldier is not dead until he is forgotten." Part of our work is to ensure that Americans remember the great Soldiers who made it possible for them, and us, to live our lives as free men and women. Please take a moment to remember this hero again.
'Ed Freeman... A True Hero'
You're an 18 or 19 year old kid. You're 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 Medevac 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 Med-evac markings are on it.
Ed Freeman is coming for you. He's not Medevac, so it's not his job, but he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Medevacs 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 August 20, 2008 at the age of 80, in Boise, ID ......May God rest his soul.....
H/T Shelly
Thank you, sir.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that bothers me as a soldier is when someone calls me a "hero". I am not a hero. I do my duty; nothing more, nothing less.
Our fathers and grandfathers faced far worse than we do. They didn't have the weapons and technology that the modern soldier has.
We (the modern soldiers) stand on the shoulders of giants. They are the true heroes. We are nothing more than shadows of their greatness.
A true gentleman.
ReplyDeleteHe has earned his place in history.
Thanks for posting this.
At my University we had one gentleman who worked for the Plant Department (campus operations engineers) whose license plate read "Ia Drang." I noticed, who else did?
ReplyDelete