Planetfurry BBS

[Karou WindStalker]

Walter Cronkite Dies at the age of 92.

I am old enough to remember watching him do the news.

[Aslaug]

I saw this morning on the Rachel Maddow show.

It's a sad day for journalistic integrity indeed.

[Frazikar]

You know, one has to wonder if Cronkite is trading quips (or just observations) with Morrow (Harvey?) on how the world has changed...

[Karou WindStalker]

His legacy of work will continue to speak volumes for what sort of man he was.

The events he witnessed and chronicled will continue to educate the future, his calm voice narrating the events for generations to come. That legacy alone will teach the coming generations about our history, and hopefully some of his integrity will rub off on some of those who do research on the man and what he witnessed.

[Nicolai Borovskaya]

I watched him on the evening news for many, many years. When he read the news, I believed, and still do, that what he said was what actually happened.

There is no one today, anywhere, in any media, that I would trust for anything more important than the time of day.

Integrity was Walter Cronkite's hallmark. Today, it is forgotten, a relic of no value. And that applies to a lot more than just the news.

A sad commentary on the state of the world today.

[Aslaug]

Another piece of history has vanished. A lot less hype about this guy, though ... but I think it isn't entirely out of line to mention it here. I wanted a few days to pass so not to muddle things up, but I think it should be mentioned by now.

A couple of days ago, Sigurd sent me an email. It was a chain-mail kinda thing and I'll say it right here and now ... I don't respond to those kinds of things. I don't mail them to others, no matter what dire consequences the letter says that'll have. It's one of my pet peeves, ranked right up there with people who hollow out the cheese and homophobes.

But this one chain-letter I didn't mind, and frankly, I thank Sigurd for sending it to me.

Why?

Because it told me of the death of a person deserving of respect and gratitude.

It told me that Sergeant Darrell Powers had died.

I never met Sgt. Powers, and I'm pretty sure no one else on this forum ever did, but it still struck me hard to hear he'd passed away. He died of cancer in Dickenson County, Virginia, on the seventeenth of June of this year, 2009.

Sgt. Powers was a warhero. A real, bonafide warhero. He served during World War II, in Easy Company, 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment.

He was known to his comrades in arms as "Shifty" ... and he was known as an outstanding marksman.

He jumped into war on the morning of June 6th, 1944 ... on D-day, and like most of his comrades in arms, he was miles away from where he was meant to be when he landed. Managing to locate a couple of buddies, he joined up with the survivors from the jump, and took part in the assault on Carentan during the D-day operations. He was involved in Operation Market Garden and he fought at Bastogne, during the Battle of the Bulge. He was involved in every major battle that his company fought in, from D-day till VE-day.

And that's only part of the story.

Some of it can be seen as part of the dramatized HBO-series "Band of Brothers" where I first heard his name. I have later done a little bit of digging (hey, this is me we're talking about) into that series and what ACTUALLY happened, and frankly ... while the series was dramatized, and while some things were inaccurate, the one thing that wasn't inaccurate was the heroism of the men it portrays.

Every one of them.

Including Sergeant Darrell "Shifty" Powers ...

There are so few of them left nowadays, and every year, more of them pass on.

I hope ... that in whatever afterlife Sergeant Powers has gone to ... he was received as the hero he was.

I hope that is true for them all.

Without him ... and without the hundreds of thousands of other men like him ... ordinary young men from America, England, France, Poland and a host of other countries ... I would not be here today.

And my country wouldn't be free.

Rest in peace, Shifty.

You earned it.

[Nicolai Borovskaya]

Thank you Filly. From, and for, every vet. Regardless of what country they served, or where, or doing what.

Walter Cronkite was an icon, and well deserving of the credit he has received. Yet the true heroes are seldom recognised, especially if their death is not a direct, and immediate, result of that heroism.

I sent an email about Sgt Darrell "Shifty" Powers to Sig a few days ago. That may be the one he sent to you, I don't know.

Here's another hero that died recently (and I have verified his story). I have simply pasted the email I received (minus a semi-gratuitous mention of a recently deceased pop star), and done some minor formatting cleanup. I have not edited it at all, so it is a bit long.


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 MediVac markings are on it.

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


Medal of Honor Winner Ed Freeman

Freeman was born in Neely, Perry County, Mississippi, the sixth of nine children. He grew up in nearby McLain and graduated from Washington High School. He served in World War II and reached the rank of master sergeant by the time of the Korean War. Although he was in the Corps of Engineers, he fought as an infantry soldier in Korea. He participated in the Battle of Pork Chop Hill and received a battlefield commission. The commission made him eligible to become a pilot, a childhood dream of his. However, when he applied for pilot training he was told that, at six feet four inches, he was "too tall" for pilot duty. The phrase stuck, and he was known by the nickname of "Too Tall" for the rest of his career.

In 1955, the height limit for pilots was raised and Freeman was accepted into flying school. He first flew airplanes before switching to helicopters. By the time he was sent to Vietnam in 1965, he was an experienced helicopter pilot and was placed second-in-command of his sixteen-craft unit. He served as a captain in Company A, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile).

On November 14, 1965, Freeman and his unit transported a battalion of American soldiers to the Ia Drang Valley. Later, after arriving back at base, they learned that the soldiers had come under intense fire and had taken heavy casualties. Enemy fire around the landing zones was so heavy that the medical evacuation helicopters refused to enter the area. Freeman and his commander, Major Bruce Crandall, volunteered to fly their unarmed, lightly armored helicopters in support of the embattled troops. Freeman made a total of fourteen trips to the battlefield, bringing in water and ammunition and taking out wounded soldiers.

Freeman was sent home from Vietnam in 1966 and retired from the military the next year. He settled in the Treasure Valley area of Idaho, his wife Barbara's home state, and continued to work as a pilot. He used his helicopter to fight wildfires, perform animal censuses, and herd wild horses for the Department of the Interior until his final retirement in 1991.

Freeman's commanding officer nominated him for the Medal of Honor for his actions at Ia Drang, but not in time to meet a two-year deadline then in place. He was instead awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. The Medal of Honor nomination was disregarded until 1995, when the two-year deadline was removed. He was formally presented with the medal on July 16, 2001, by President George W. Bush.

Freeman died on August 20, 2008 due to complications from Parkinson's disease. He was buried in the Idaho State Veterans Cemetery in Boise.

In the 2002 film We Were Soldiers, which depicted the Battle of Ia Drang, Freeman was portrayed by Mark McCracken. The post office in Freeman's hometown of McLain, Mississippi, was renamed the "Major Ed W. Freeman Post Office" in March 2009.

Medal of Honor citation
Army version of the Medal of Honor

Freeman's official Medal of Honor citation reads:

Captain Ed W. Freeman, United States Army, distinguished himself by numerous acts of conspicuous gallantry and extraordinary intrepidity on 14 November 1965 while serving with Company A, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). As a flight leader and second in command of a 16-helicopter lift unit, he supported a heavily engaged American infantry battalion at Landing Zone X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley, Republic of Vietnam. The unit was almost out of ammunition after taking some of the heaviest casualties of the war, fighting off a relentless attack from a highly motivated, heavily armed enemy force. When the infantry commander closed the helicopter landing zone due to intense direct enemy fire, Captain Freeman risked his own life by flying his unarmed helicopter through a gauntlet of enemy fire time after time, delivering critically needed ammunition, water and medical supplies to the besieged battalion. His flights had a direct impact on the battle's outcome by providing the engaged units with timely supplies of ammunition critical to their survival, without which they would almost surely have gone down, with much greater loss of life. After medical evacuation helicopters refused to fly into the area due to intense enemy fire, Captain Freeman flew 14 separate rescue missions, providing life-saving evacuation of an estimated 30 seriously wounded soldiers -- some of whom would not have survived had he not acted. All flights were made into a small emergency landing zone within 100 to 200 meters of the defensive perimeter where heavily committed units were perilously holding off the attacking elements. Captain Freeman's selfless acts of great valor, extraordinary perseverance and intrepidity were far above and beyond the call of duty or mission and set a superb example of leadership and courage for all of his peers. Captain Freeman's extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit and the United States Army.

[Frazikar]

Filly, Nicolai - was watching a COH documentary and the attitude that came through most of the survivors is "...it was just what needed to be done at the time...' with a large dose of "...OK, I got (danged) lucky..." and that most of those they considered 'heros' are the ones that didn't make it back...

'Nuff said...

[Aslaug]

I respect them for saying that. For saying the heroes were those who stayed behind.

But I wasn't there ... I look at it from the outside, with the benefit of hindsight and I think they were all heroes. Both those who died, and those who came home.