REALITY
Created from Email Contributed by John Perry
Featuring Video
Medal of Honor Winner, July 2001
********** CURRENT TIMES – 2010 **********
President Obama presents the Medal o f Honor to Army Staff
Sgt. Salvatore Giunta during a ceremony in the East Room of the
White House in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2010. Sgt. Giunta,
from Hiawatha, Iowa, is the first living veteran of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan to receive the award. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
******* REWIND – VIETNAM WAR – 1965 *******
Introducing
Captain Ed Freeman
You're
a 19 year old kid.
You're critically wounded and dying in
the jungle somewhere in the Central Highlands of Viet
Nam .
It's November 11, 1967.
LZ (landing
zone) X-ray.
Your
unit is outnumbered 8-1 and the enemy fire is so intense,
from 100 yards away, that your CO (commanding officer) 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 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.
You look up to see a Huey coming in. But
... It doesn't seem real because no MedEvac markings are on
it.
Captain Ed Freeman is coming in for you.
He's not
MedEvac so it's not his job, but he heard the radio call and decided
he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire anyway.
Even
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 3
of you at a time on board.
Then he flies you up and out
through the gunfire to the doctors and nurses and safety.
And,
he kept coming back!! 13 more times!!
Until all the
wounded were out. No one knew until the mission was over that the
Captain had been hit 4 times in the legs and left arm.
He took
29 of you and your buddies out that day. Some would not have made it
without the Captain and his Huey.
Medal of Honor
Recipient, Captain Ed Freeman, United States Air Force, died
last Wednesday at the age of 70, in Boise, Idaho ..
Video
May
God Bless and Rest His Soul.
I bet you didn't hear about
this hero's passing, but we've sure seen a whole bunch about
Michael Jackson, Tiger Woods and the bickering of congress over
Health Reform.
Medal
of Honor Winner Captain Ed Freeman
Why did the American media not report it ???
Ed “Too Tall” Freeman
Born: Nov. 20, 1927
Died: August 20, 2008
What Happened
On November 14, 1965, Freeman and his unit transported a battalion of American soldiers to the Ia Drang Valley. Later, after arriving back at base, they learned that the soldiers had come under intense fire and had taken heavy casualties. Enemy fire around the landing zones was so heavy that the medical evacuation helicopters refused to fly in to the landing zone.
Freeman and his commander, Major Bruce Crandall, volunteered to fly their unarmed, lightly armored UH-1 Huey in support of the embattled troops. Freeman made a total of fourteen trips to the battlefield, bringing in water and ammunition and taking out wounded soldiers under heavy enemy fire in what was later named the Battle of Ia Drang. By the time they landed their heavily damaged Huey, Captain Freeman had been wounded four times by ground fire.[5]
His awards include:
Bronze Star with Combat "V"
Air Medal with three silver oak leaf clusters and one bronze oak leaf cluster
National Defense Service Medal with one bronze oak leaf cluster
Korean Service Medal with three bronze service stars
Vietnam Service Medal with two bronze service stars
REFERENCES:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Freeman
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