Panel 3, East, at the Vietnam War Memorial has the names of the soldiers that died at LZ XRay in Ia Drang Valley.

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 helicopter, and you look up to see an un-armed Huey, but it doesn’t seem real, because no MedEvac markings are on it.

Ed Freeman is coming for you. He’s not MedEvac, so it’s not his job, but he’s flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the MedEvacs 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…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 Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at the age of 80, in Boise, ID…May God rest his soul.

Medal of Honor Winner Ed Freeman!

THANKS AGAIN, ED, FOR WHAT YOU DID FOR OUR COUNTRY.

The story of Ed’s heroic actions and the men who fought impossible odds in that battle is told in the movie, We Were Soldiers.