Gibber-gabber
Memorial Day
Stacy DeGraffenreid 2010-05-27 05:15:28 UTC

It’s November 11, 1967. The infantry unit is outnumbered 8 to 1 and the enemy fire (from less than 100 yards away) is so intense that your CO has ordered the Medevac helicopters to stop coming in. Landing Zone (LZ) X-ray is closed.

…You’re a 19 year old kid who is critically wounded and dying in the jungle of the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns and you realize 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 the sound of a helicopter. You look up to see a Huey coming in.
Captain Ed Freeman is coming in for you. As CO of an air assault unit, it’s not his job to evacuate wounded. But he heard the radio call and decided he’s flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire anyway.

And he drops it in and sits there in the machine gun fire, as they load three of you at a time on board. Then he flies you up and out through the gunfire to the doctors and nurses and safety.

Later you learn he kept going back – - – 13 more times!! He would not quit until all the wounded were out.

No one knew until the mission was over that Ed Freeman had been hit four times in the legs and left arm. He took 29 of you and your buddies out.

If not for Captain Freeman, some would later have left the LZ at some later point in a body bag. But not that day, thanks to Captain Freeman and his crew.