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 a helicopter, and you look up to see an
Ed Freeman is coming for you. He's not
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.
Ed Freeman was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor on July 16th, 2001. He died Wednesday August 20, 2008 at the age of 80, in Boise, ID. In March 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution designating the U.S. Postal Service facility located at 103 West Main Street in McLain, Mississippi, as the 'Major Ed W. Freeman Post Office'. McLain was the hometown of Ed Freeman. Visit the obituary of Ed Freeman.