Don’t exploit the sacrifice of veterans

Town Crier: Don’t exploit the sacrifice of veterans

by Dave Hardesty / For the Tracy Press
May 26, 2010


With Memorial Day approaching, a veteran friend sent me a short piece titled “Courage.” My reply was not what he expected.

“Courage” starts with a critically wounded soldier in a battle in the highlands of “VietNam” on Nov. 11, 1967.

It claims the commanding officer ordered “MedEvac” helicopters away because of the intensity of enemy fire.

Then, the piece milks the heartstrings of the reader with the wounded soldier’s thoughts of his family 12,000 miles away being returned to reality by sounds of an approaching Huey helicopter.

The story continues and introduces Capt. Ed Freeman, the pilot of the Huey who rescued not only this soldier but also 29 others while risking his crew and aircraft to enemy fire and also being wounded.

It concludes with the statement that Medal of Honor recipient Capt. Freeman, of the United States Air Force, died at the age of 70 in Boise, Idaho, and that our news media apparently failed to acknowledge this hero’s passing as they focused attention on the death of Michael Jackson and the philandering of Tiger Woods.
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Dont exploit the sacrifice of veterans

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ED W. FREEMAN

Captain, U.S. Army Company A, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile)

By the time the Korean War broke out, Ed Freeman was a master sergeant in the Army Engineers, but he fought in Korea as an infantryman.

He took part in the bloody battle of Pork Chop Hill and was given a battlefield commission, which had the added advantage of making him eligible to fly, a dream of his since childhood. But flight school turned him down because of his height: At six foot four, he was “too tall” (a nickname that followed him throughout his military career). In 1955, however, the height limit was raised, and Freeman was able to enroll.

He began flying fixed-wing aircraft, then switched to helicopters. By 1965, when he was sent to Vietnam, he had thousands of hours’ flying time in choppers. He was assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), second in command of a sixteen-helicopter unit responsible for carrying infantrymen into battle. On November 14, 1965, Freeman’s helicopters carried a battalion into the Ia Drang Valley for what became the first major confrontation between large forces of the American and North Vietnamese armies.

Back at base, Freeman and the other pilots received word that the GIs they had dropped off were taking heavy casualties and running low on supplies. In fact, the fighting was so fierce that medevac helicopters refused to pick up the wounded. When the commander of the helicopter unit asked for volunteers to fly into the battle zone, Freeman alone stepped forward. He was joined by his commander, and the two of them began several hours of flights into the contested area. Because their small emergency-landing zone was just one hundred yards away from the heaviest fighting, their unarmed and lightly armored helicopters took several hits. In all, Freeman carried out fourteen separate rescue missions, bringing in water and ammunition to the besieged soldiers and taking back dozens of wounded, some of whom wouldn’t have survived if they hadn’t been evacuated.
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