Courage

Talk about Courage!!!

Subject: Ed "Too Tall to Fly" Freeman

A measure of heroism that is not so obvious in the Mel Gibson movie:"We Were Soldiers Once......And Young

You're an 18 or 19 year old kid. You're critically wounded, and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley, November 14,1965. LZ Xray, 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 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 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 a Huey, but it doesn't seem real, because no medevac markings are on it. Ed "Too Tall" Freeman is coming for you. He's not a medevac, so it's not his job, but he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the medevac's were ordered not to come. He's coming anyway. And he drops it in, and sits there in the machine gun fire, they load 2 or 3 of you onboard, as they drop off much needed water and ammunition. 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 Wednesday Sept. 3, 2008 at the age of 80, in Boise, Idaho.Thanks Ed....... Blue Skies forever.

I was a war protester back in the day, but I married a Vietnam Vet. The war took a toll on him & does to this day I believe. We have been divorced 29 yrs. We had a wonderful son together, but even the father/son relationship has suffered. I was so moved by this story. A man who saw his duty not, I believe, because he was "supposed" to do this-he was not, he was not ordered to do this. But instead he was heroic because that quite simply was who he was as a person. I hope we all become a little more heroic today.

Blessed be...