R_W_B
Senior Member
I recieved an email on the below subject matter. I wanted to pass along the verified content of it as I thought it deserved such.
This post in honor of former Amry Pilots Ed Freeman & Bruce Crandall. Some call the acts presented below as 'Love' others call it 'Bravery', others call it 'sheer guts', others will call it 'committment and duty', and I've even heard some call it 'just stone crazy'.
But whatever you want to call it, it is the stuff that makes this country great. And the more of it we have the greater we will be, or the less of it we have the lesser we will be. Whether these traits are applied in the business world, the political world or where ever. Not that we all are to be as brave and honorable or carry the love that these men did, since I would personally fall short of such character. But the more we desire and move in that direction of love and committment, the better we as a nation will be.
I personally researched all of the below facts on several Internet sources before posting this so as to root out all ambiguous data.
--Begin true story:
You're an 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 to 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 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 Medi-Vac markings are on it.
Ed Freeman & Bruce Crandall are coming for you. They are not Medi-Vacs, so it's not their job, rather Ed's the wing man pilot, and Bruce is the commander in a Huey. But they are flying their unarmed, lightly armored UH-1 Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come.
They are coming anyway. And their Huey drops it in, and sits there in the machine gun fire, as they load 2 or 3 of you on board.
Then they fly you up and out through the gunfire, to the Doctors and Nurses.
And, they kept coming back.... 13 more times..... by the time they landed their heavily damaged Huey back at their rear base, Captain Freeman had been wounded four times by ground fire.
Captain Freeman was also previously a non comissioned soldier in the Korean War. He later on became an officer and then entered pilot training, to go fight again in Viet Nam.
Medal of Honor Recipient , Ed Freeman , died August 20, 2008 at the age of 80, in Boise , ID.
Medal of Honor Recipient, Bruce Crandall currently resides in Washington state.
It may not have made front-page news, (and probably for sure was less than this highly honorable man deserved) but Freeman's passing on August 20, 2008 was commemorated in a special segment on the NBC Nightly News, an AP national wire story, and obituaries published in newspapers across the country.
----End
This post in honor of former Amry Pilots Ed Freeman & Bruce Crandall. Some call the acts presented below as 'Love' others call it 'Bravery', others call it 'sheer guts', others will call it 'committment and duty', and I've even heard some call it 'just stone crazy'.
But whatever you want to call it, it is the stuff that makes this country great. And the more of it we have the greater we will be, or the less of it we have the lesser we will be. Whether these traits are applied in the business world, the political world or where ever. Not that we all are to be as brave and honorable or carry the love that these men did, since I would personally fall short of such character. But the more we desire and move in that direction of love and committment, the better we as a nation will be.
I personally researched all of the below facts on several Internet sources before posting this so as to root out all ambiguous data.
--Begin true story:
You're an 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 to 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 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 Medi-Vac markings are on it.
Ed Freeman & Bruce Crandall are coming for you. They are not Medi-Vacs, so it's not their job, rather Ed's the wing man pilot, and Bruce is the commander in a Huey. But they are flying their unarmed, lightly armored UH-1 Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come.
They are coming anyway. And their Huey drops it in, and sits there in the machine gun fire, as they load 2 or 3 of you on board.
Then they fly you up and out through the gunfire, to the Doctors and Nurses.
And, they kept coming back.... 13 more times..... by the time they landed their heavily damaged Huey back at their rear base, Captain Freeman had been wounded four times by ground fire.
Captain Freeman was also previously a non comissioned soldier in the Korean War. He later on became an officer and then entered pilot training, to go fight again in Viet Nam.
Medal of Honor Recipient , Ed Freeman , died August 20, 2008 at the age of 80, in Boise , ID.
Medal of Honor Recipient, Bruce Crandall currently resides in Washington state.
It may not have made front-page news, (and probably for sure was less than this highly honorable man deserved) but Freeman's passing on August 20, 2008 was commemorated in a special segment on the NBC Nightly News, an AP national wire story, and obituaries published in newspapers across the country.
----End