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 MediVac helicopters to stop coming in.You're lying there, listening to the enemy machineguns, and you know you're not getting out. Your family is halfway 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. 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 machinegun fire after the Medi-Vacs were told not to come. He's coming anyway. And he drops it in, and sits there in the machinegun 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 keeps coming back...... 13 more times..... taking out more than 30 of you and your buddies who otherwise never would have gotten out.
Medal of Honor Recipient Ed Freeman died on a recent Wednesday in Boise , ID, at the age of 80. May God rest his soul.....
Oh yeah, Paul Newman died the same day. I guess you knew that. He got a lot more press than Ed Freeman
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