Ed Freeman and Bruce Crandall

This story has been edited to reflect a remembrance of two Medal of Honor Recipients- Bruce Crandall, and his wingman 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 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 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 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 and Bruce Crandall are coming for you. They aren't Medi-Vac, so it's not their job, but they're flying helicopters down into the machine gun fire, after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come.

They're coming anyway.

And they drop thie helicopters in, and they sit 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... and took about 30 of you and
your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.