An Ordinary Man

September 21, 2008 | By TonyfromOz |

was saddened to read this morning of the passing of a fine old gentleman in Boise Idaho. Coming from an Australian, this may sound a little odd, because, really, in the whole population of more than 300 million in the US, probably only 100 or so people will note his passing.
What it did however was cause me to reflect on what it is that makes ordinary men do extraordinary things.

It’s part of a bigger picture, and that’s what gave me cause for reflection. The gentleman was a soldier once. He was trained to do his job, and he did that job in I feel sure a manner he would call routine. However, at one time he did something extraordinary, and without thought of the consequences.
That’s the way it is with all people in the Military. They do what they have to do.

I cannot understand how people complain so loudly about the job that the military has to do.
Not the actual people themselves, but the overall picture. People loudly proclaim that we must bring home the troops from what they call a failed war.

Not once has the US declared war on another Country, and invaded them preemptively. Each of those times the US has entered a war, it has been a reaction. Before all you anti Iraq people go off the brain at me, Iraq was a reaction. To assist with the hunt for the WMD, to put down a dictator, and to assist the local people in an effort to put down religious sectarian violence, and place a real democracy in place.
Since that time, people have sought to make it something else, and in the main they have done this for personal political advantage, or for their own personal agenda.

In nearly every one of those conflicts, the US has resolved the situation. People may look upon Vietnam as a failed war, but even that played out strategically. Had the US not gone in at the request of others, after the French failed there and left, the Country would have fallen into Communist hands more quickly, and those surrounding Countries would also have fallen more quickly as well, backed so strongly as they were by China at the time
.
As other conflicts have played out over the last 100 years, it has been the US that has assisted in resolving those situations.
Just one time, I’d like to see the US say, “No. Fix it yourself.” I would like to see every US military person come home to the US, and just hang out on their bases for a year, and not do anything to help out with things that do happen around the World.
A situation like this is akin to the Police just staying in their offices, not attending to the things that they do, without any thanks mind you. There would be anarchy on the streets. Crime would run out of control. The roads would be chaos. The same applies for the Fire Department. Just hang out in the Stations. Don’t answer any call outs for fires. Don’t enter building on fire and attempt to climb 85 flights of stairs to get at the base of the fire with no thought of any consequences.

The same applies for the Military.
We complain so loudly and so bitterly, but without these people, the World would be in as much anarchy as the streets at home would be without the Police and the Fire Departments. We take so much for granted the work these people do to make the World a safer place.

We all revere the actual men who wear the uniforms of the Military, but we hate the situations they are in. See the incongruous thing there. Those people actually wearing the uniforms and doing that dirty work turn their eyes back home and see how much protesting there is, and they obviously feel most offended, and that it is directed at them specifically. It happened most in the Vietnam conflict. The actual men who did that dirty work were in the main despised for it. Only recently has opinion changed. However, at the time, they returned at night, were spat upon, called baby killers, and roundly hated. The same happened here in Australia. Soldiers returning to Australia did so in the middle of the night, and went back into the community afraid to mention that they were soldiers, and even more afraid to mention where they had been.
At a much later date, those soldiers finally got their coming home commemorative marches, and some acceptance, but it seemed almost hypocritical that people who hated them at the time now turned around and said thanks guys for the work you did.

No!
Everyone wants to complain about the Military, but no one wants to do the job they do. They’ll thank them and then forget them.

Rock and a hard place.
Come home from all points and stay on your bases keeping in readiness, but don’t answer any calls for help, and pretty soon, everyone will be saying, ‘Where’s the Military when you need them?’

The World will be in anarchy without a strong US military. The US is the only Country on the Planet that can be called upon to resolve a situation, like those we have in play at the current point in time. The UN can only handle things at a diplomatic level, and then call on member nations to supply disparate forces to go into areas of small tension, but on a big scale, the only Nation that can be called upon for help is the US, and in virtually every case, the US has said, ‘yes, we’ll lend a hand.’

That’s the big picture. The overall view.

When something like this happens and men go off to do what they are asked, what then makes ordinary men do extraordinary things, and to do them in a similar fashion to a guy on the street just crossing the road.

Here in Australia, the highest award for Valor is the Victoria Cross. In the history of Australia, it has only been awarded to 96 men. The first was in The Boer War in South Africa in 1899, and the last was in Vietnam in 1969.
I have a book detailing every one of them. It’s only a small book, of less than 200 pages. Every single one of those men was ordinary. True, the task involved killing people, but that’s distilling it down to the lowest common denominator. They did what had to be done at the time, and they did it in an unassuming manner, with no thought of any glory that might be attached to that situation, and nearly half of them died in the act of doing it.

I like reading about some of the conflicts that especially Australians have been in, not because I’m voyeuristically warmongering by nature, but things like this are part of the tapestry of a Nation. They are part of a proud history. True, I served in the Royal Australian Air Force for 25 years, so you might think that qualifies me as being inclined in that direction, but not so. Ordinary men come from ordinary situations, do extraordinary things, and then go back to an ordinary life.

My son gave me a book a few years back. The book was written by a three star Lieutenant General, Hal Moore with a journalist Joe Galloway.
The book was called ‘We Were Soldiers Once And Young.’ They made a movie out of it, but as you might expect, the full story cannot be told in one 90 minute movie, no matter how close it might be to the book.
In the main, the book dealt with one action in Vietnam, that of the Ia Drang Valley.(That’s pronounced Ya Drang) The action took place over only 4 days in November of 1965, but it was one of the first major battles when US forces took on the might of the People’s Army of Vietnam, (PAVN or sometimes called the NVA) and not just isolated attacks by the VC. It was one of the first major actions for the 7th Cavalry, a unit raised to transports soldiers to hot spots in a manner faster than the old way of soldiers just marching off to that area. Units of the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 7th Cav and 1st Battalion of 5Cav were flown into Ia Drang. The transport of choice here was the Bell UH 1B Iroquois mostly, the legendary Huey. The battle lasted 4 days. It was fierce, day and night.
I won’t go into body counts because that was a concoction of the media to accentuate their reporting and sell papers.
If any soldiers were wounded during field campaigns like this, those same ‘Huey’ helicopters flew in and then out with the wounded. These were called Medevac, or Medical Evacuation. Medevac choppers were marked distinctly with the Red Cross. Part of their mission was to only land in areas that were not considered to be hot spots, meaning that there was to be no ground fire in that are for a continuous 5 minute period.
Because all the landing zones at Ia Drang, and there were seven of them, but only the two closest ones were used, X Ray and Albany. The ground fire was continuous and intense, so the unarmed Medevac choppers just could not get in at all. However the ground forces, engaged in a constant battle needed to be resupplied, so pilots of the Aviation Division of the 1st Cav needed to keep those supplies up to the engaged ground forces. They flew into an emergency landing zone close to the battle itself, flying in supplies and taking out the wounded on the return flight. They were under concentrated and intense fire on every occasion. Without this relief many more soldiers would have died, and perhaps the whole ground force, vastly outnumbered as they were. Two of those helicopter pilots were Ed Freeman and Bruce Crandall. They flew 14 missions each into that intense fire.
For those actions, Ed Freeman was presented 36 years later with The Medal Of Honor in 2001, and six years later in 2007, Bruce Crandall was also presented with the Medal Of Honor.

That old gentleman at the top of the story, the one from Boise Idaho, an unassuming man who did extraordinary things. That was Ed Freeman, who sadly passed away on Wednesday. He did those things without thinking.

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Tagged with 7th Cav, Bruce Crandall, Ed Freeman, Ia Drang, LtGen Hal Moore, Medal of Honor, South Vietnam |

Filed Under: American Heros

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