Ed 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 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 alive. 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 is coming for you. He's not Medi-Vac, so it's not his job, but he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Medi-Vacs 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 last Wednesday at the age of 80, in Boise , Idaho. May God rest his soul .

I bet you didn't hear about this hero's passing, but we sure were told a whole bunch about some Dirtball Hip-Hop coward beating the crap out of his "girlfriend" or the inane drivel about Michael Jackson!



Medal of Honor Winner
Ed Freeman!
Shame on the American Media

I got this in email,why don't the media report this? I didn't know for sure if it was true/real,so much stuff out there that isn't~~ yes I am still green, an learning~

The media was to busy worrying about the designer clothes worn by M Jacksons family or what they would find in his brain. Great post Rosco

well,I guess it is up to us what is important. news is news!
The media has to much power, we have to decipher what is the Good,Bad,or the ugly

I agree to a certain extent with Roscos post..

How can you not agree with the post, it is about an American hero. What is there to doubt about his service and heroism ?

I don't doubt the individual,,(hero)or the aspect of war,I would much rather we strive for peace than war. it is much harder to create,strive, for continuity.

MY WORDS : ok let me clear this up.i should have checked the email first, although the story is true. the date he died is not, so MJ news had nothing to do with a story of his death, here is a part of his story from an article of his life on google, sorry for not checking this. i should have . and i know better, sorry,

i had thought it was about the mel gibson movie and i was correct on that, but again here is part of his story, i should have checked the date of his death,,

MOH Recipient Ed Freeman Dies
August 21, 2008
Idaho Statesman

As Ed "Too Tall" Freeman lay ill in a Boise hospital over the past few weeks, many came to pay their respects to the 80-year-old national war hero and former helicopter pilot.

One unexpected visitor offered a very personal thank you to Freeman, a veteran of three wars and recipient of the highest military award -- the Congressional Medal of Honor -- for his actions on Nov. 14, 1965, at Landing Zone X-Ray, Ia Drang Valley, Vietnam.

"A guy came into the hospital and said, 'You don't know me, but I was one of those people you hauled out of the X-Ray,'" said Mike Freeman, 54, one of Ed's two sons. "He said, 'Thanks for my life.' "

Freeman died Wednesday.

His Medal of Honor citation credits him with helping save 30 seriously wounded soldiers in 14 separate rescue missions in an unarmed helicopter.

Since the Medal of Honor was created during the Civil War, 3,467 have been awarded, according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.

The heroics of Freeman and the others involved in the Ia Drang campaign are immortalized in the Mel Gibson movie "We Were Soldiers," which is based on the book "We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young." A sequel, "We Are Soldiers Still," was released this month.

Freeman, a Mississippi native who married an Idahoan, began his military career at 17 with a two-year stint in the Navy during World War II.

"He joined the Navy and hated it. The ocean thing was not his bag," Mike Freeman said.

So he joined the Army, serving four years in Germany before getting deployed to the Korean conflict.

The 6-foot-4 tell-it-like-it-is Southerner got the name "Too Tall" because he was told he was too tall to be a pilot. That didn't stop him from pushing to fly.

"He was tenacious about getting into flight school. He drove them insane until they let him in," Mike Freeman said.

He proved his mettle by becoming one the Army's most heralded helicopter pilots. Two streets at Fort Rucker, Ala., where Freeman trained to be a helicopter pilot, were recently named in honor of Freeman and Maj. Bruce P. Crandall, his commanding officer in the Ia Drang campaign.