Ed Freeman

Received in an email forward that is going around now:

You're a 19 year old kid. You're critically wounded and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley.
November 11, 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 Medi-Vac 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.
You look up to see an unarmed 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 anyway. Even 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! He made 13 more trips!!

He 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.

This email will claim that some celeb event covered up Ed Freeman's death in the media coverage. While this might have been true, we should get the date correct. Ed Freeman passed away in August 2008.

He died in August 2008, not around the same time as Chris Brown beating up Rhianna, nor around the same time that Michael Jackson died. He died at the ripe old age of 80. So, just to be clear, while I am sure in 2008, the media did not give this hero his due, there is no conspiracy or pop-icon overshadowing this event.

That being said, we need to address something about Ed Freeman.

Why did this man have to wait until 2001, to be awarded his Medal of Honor? Why am I only now, in a misleading email, learning about this man?

The tragedy is not that the media mismanaged their coverage of Freeman's death to cover some event in pop culture, the tragedy is that this man was a living Medal of Honor winner, and so few people knew about him.

In the midst of a tragic war fought half-heartedly by a hemming and hawing, indecisive President (sound familiar?), here was a man, ignoring danger and near-certain death to do what was right. Unlike so many of us here at home, he refused to abandon and leave behind our soldiers fighting and dying in Vietnam.

So many Americans, many of whom are sitting in Congress and even the White House now, abandoned, in spirit, word, or deed, our troops while in the midst of battle, both then and now. On November 14, 1965, Ed Freeman refused to leave our men behind, and he took action.

From 1965 until 2001, Freeman's 14 separate flights into the heavy firefight went virtually unnoticed and unheralded. He did not mind. Like so many of our soldiers not named John Kerry, he took great pride in his work in the military, and saw his heroism as nothing more than simply doing the right thing. Heroism on the battlefield to him was not something to brag about, to celebrate, or to be rewarded for; it was his duty.

Ed Freeman is a hero. The tragedy is that today, November 16, 2009, is the first time I have learned of his story. Ed Freeman is one of countless stories of heroism that go unnoticed and unappreciated by so many people in this country. It his very sacrifice, and the sacrifice of countless others, that provide the very freedoms that allow those to sit ungrateful and full of apathy.

So, today, when you bow your head to pray for your needs, wants, and desires, take a moment to thank God for men like Ed Freeman. Thank God for men and women who put their lives on the line to do what is right; to risk their lives for the lives of others. Thank God that you are a free person and able to pray without government persecution.

Ed Freeman is a hero. Please remember him and the thousands of other heroes that have protected us from foreign enemies.