Close to Nowhere - Linda Jones


Thursday, Decemeber 10, 2009
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Close to Nowhere
By Linda Jones

Ed Freeman - Hero

God bless Ed Freeman

Funny how email changes your images of the world and the people in it.

Tuesday morning, I received the following email and of course, the first thing I did was Google it -- I was sure it was another hoax.

It’s not. It’s a wonderful tribute written to a U.S. veteran and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient.

Ed Freeman died Aug. 20, 2008. I’m sorry that it took so long for me to ‘know’ him. I’m even sorrier that his passing didn’t recieve even a blurb on the national news.

This is for Ed...

“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 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 halfway 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 un-armed 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, 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 two or three 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.
“Medal of Honor Recipient, Ed Freeman, died August 20, 2008, at the age of 80, in Boise, Idaho…may God rest his soul.”

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