Ed Freeman...

Michael Jackson dies and it’s 24/7 news coverage. A real American hero dies and not a mention of it in the news.

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 MediVac 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 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 a helicopter and 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, 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, 13 more times, and took about 30 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.

Medal of Honor recipient Major Ed Freeman died on August 20th, 2008*, at the age of 80, in Boise, ID. May God rest his soul.

*When I received this email, it was dated 25 June, 2009, which was inaccurate. The rest of the text is factual, however, and the point of the email is still oh-so-pertinent. Our news media spares no effort to inundate us with news about celebrities, while often overlooking the actions of men and women like this. The actions of Major Freeman, and his commander, Bruce Crandall, who flew 22 missions that day and rescued 70 soldiers, were featured in the movie We Were Soldiers.