Events Portrayed In Film "We Were Soldiers"

After years of waiting, the call finally came recently for Bruce Crandall. A White House official told the retired Army helicopter pilot and Vietnam Veteran he would soon receive the Medal of Honor -- the highest military medal in the US.

USA Today reports Crandall and his wife, Arlene, were driving their Winnebago motorhome on the first leg of a planned cross-country trip when the call came in. As Bruce Crandall was driving, Arlene took the call -- and asked the official to call back in a few minutes.

"I didn't want him to get all excited and drive us off the road," Arlene Crandall said.

Crandall's efforts in Vietnam were chronicled in the Mel Gibson film "We Were Soldiers." Crandall (who was played by Greg Kinnear in the film) flew lead position in a formation of 16 Huey helicopters, flying troops to a landing zone in the Ia Drang Valley -- where a three-day battled pitted 450 American soldiers against 2,000 North Vietnamese troops.

The helicopters flew four sorties to Landing Zone X-Ray on that day in November 1965 -- ferrying in fresh troops, and evacuating the wounded. It was during the fifth mission when, as Crandall's longtime wingman Ed Freeman puts it, "all hell broke lose."

The North Vietnamese troops had surrounded the Americans -- some by as close as 30 yards. Orders came down to halt the airlift... leaving Lt. Col. Hal Moore's troops without water, ammunition or medical supplies.

"If the air bridge failed, the embattled men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry would certainly die in much the same way George Armstrong Custer's cavalrymen died at the Little Bighorn -- cut off; surrounded by numerically superior forces, overrun and butchered to the last man," Moore later wrote.

Crandall volunteered to continue the flights, and Freeman joined him. Over the next 24 hours, the men landed in the combat zone 22 times, bringing in much-needed supplies and evacuating at least 70 wounded soldiers. Crandall changed helicopters three times, when the birds became too damaged by enemy fire to fly.

"Any person who has children would understand what we were thinking," Crandall said. "If you were standing on a shore of a lake, and you saw your kids go through the ice, you would go out and try to get them even if you didn't know how to swim."

The "air bridge" held, and Crandall's airmen were able to resume flights the next morning. Moore's troops were able to beat back the North Vietnamese. The mission had been a success... but the full impact of what he had done didn't strike Crandall until the next day, when he saw crewmembers washing blood out of his Huey.

"I went around back of a building and vomited," he said. "You don't let your personal fears get into it. You can't. If you start thinking along that line, you become a reluctant warrior. And if you're a leader, you can't do that."

Freeman received the Medal of Honor for his efforts in 2001 -- but Crandall's name failed to appear, even when Congress allowed reconsideration of medal requests. Freeman says the fact Crandall hadn't received a medal cast a pall over his ceremony.

"I was hoping we could've stood on the podium together," said Freeman, who lives in Boise. "But that's all right. He's going to get it."

FMI: www.army.mil