You’re a 19 year old kid. You’re critically wounded and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang  Valley, on 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 a helicopter.  You look up to see an un-armed Huey. But…it doesn’t seem real because there are no MediVac markings on it. Ed Freeman is coming for you.  He’s not MediVac so it’s not his job, but he’s flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire anyway. Even after the MediVacs 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.  20 more times, give or take. He took seventy of you and your buddies out who would never have gotten out if it weren’t for him and his astounding bravery and dedication.  Leave no man behind.

Medal of Honor Recipient, Ed Freeman, passed away in August 2008 at the age of 80, in Boise, Idaho.

May God Rest His Soul.

Snopes has more information on the real life heroism of this inspiring man.  It’s all true, fools.  I wish I could have bought this man a beer.

5 Responses to “The True Definition of Hero”