About a week ago, someone sent me an email attachment about a Vietnam War hero named Ed Freeman who died last August at the age of 80 at his home in Boise, Idaho. In July 2001, at a White House ceremony, he was presented with the Congressional Medal of Honor by President Bush. The medal, the highest honor the military can bestow, was awarded for heroism during the Battle of La Drang, one of the first major battles between the U.S. Army and the People’s Army of Vietnam. The battle was memorialized in 2002 in the movie, “We were soldiers,” starring Mel Gibson. When presenting the medal, Bush said, “By all rights, another president from Texas should have had this honor. It was the second year of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency that Army Captain Ed Freeman did something that the men of the 7th Cavalry have never forgotten.”

      The following is a dramatization of the events that earned Captain Freeman our country’s highest honor. “You're a 19 year old kid and you're critically wounded, and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley on November 14, 1965, LZ (Landing Zone) 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 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 he took about 30 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.” The attachment ended with the following sentence: “I bet you didn't hear about this hero's passing, but we sure were told a whole bunch about some Hip-Hop coward beating the crap out of his girlfriend.”

      Something terrible has happened to our country. A malignancy has crept into our thinking and turned us into self-absorbed misfits, many of whom have a blasé attitude toward those who have bled and died so that we could live in freedom and prosperity. I suppose an aberrant type of complacency implants itself into one’s subconscious when one’s safety and security have always been arranged from afar. If you, or a family member, never had to fight in a war zone and never learned the meaning of near-death experiences, you might tend to ignore those who suffered and died to spare you that nightmare. It doesn’t take much courage to speak loftily about the evils of war from the comfortable sanctuary of your living room, surrounded by family and friends. It’s easy to be against war; only a maniac would feel otherwise. However, recognizing that sometimes war is the only option available to keep the peace, takes a greater level of maturity and life experience. Without the Revolutionary War there would not have been a United States of America. If we had not entered World War 2 to fight the Axis Powers, we’d probably be speaking German and waiting our turn while the Fuhrer (probably his successor) was deciding if we had enough Aryan blood to allow us to live.

      Even the Civil War, which had Americans killing Americans, was necessary to preserve the Union and break the chains that held an entire race in bondage. Although we can wax philosophically about there being no winners in war, there would certainly have been losers if brave men and women didn’t stand up against evil tyrants. To paraphrase the sender of the email, “I think people like Mr. Freeman represent honor, integrity and courage. We live in a free country today because of the sacrifices made by him and countless numbers of other patriots.” I heartily concur.