A Real American Hero

Have you seen "We Were Soldiers"? If so, you will recognize this man. If not, you need to know what he did in VietNam.

Ed W. Freeman

You're a 19 year old kid. You're critically wounded and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley, 11-14-1965, LZ X-ray, Vietnam. Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8-1, and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own battalion commander has ordered the Med-Evac 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 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, and you look up to see an unarmed Huey, but it doesn't seem real, because no Med-Evac markings are on it. Ed Freeman is coming for you. He's not Med-Evac, so it's not his job, but he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Med-Evacs 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. He keeps coming back... 13 more times... and takes about 30 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.

Medal of Honor Recipient, Ed Freeman, died last Wednesday at the age of 80, in Boise, ID . . . May God rest his soul!

Medal of Honor Recipient

Ed W. (Too Tall) Freeman

Captain, U.S. Army, Co A, 229th Assault Helicopter Bn, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile)