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Helicopter hero to receive Medal of Honor
Retired lieutenant colonel will be honored by president
BY MICK WALSH
Staff Writer
More than four decades after repeatedly avoiding intense enemy fire while rescuing and resupplying besieged 1st Cavalry soldiers in Vietnam's Ia Drang Valley, former helicopter pilot Bruce Crandall is finally getting his due.
The retired lieutenant colonel from Manchester, Wash., will receive the Medal of Honor from President Bush at a White House ceremony Feb. 26.
"It's a wonderful honor," Crandall, 72, told his hometown Olympia, Wash., newspaper upon hearing the news. "It's the finest thing that can happen to you, if you've been in the service."
Crandall will become the third soldier from the November 1965 battle at a remote landing zone in Vietnam's Central Highlands to be awarded the nation's highest military decoration. Fellow UH-1 Huey pilot Ed "Too Tall" Freeman and then-2nd Lt. Walter Marm, a platoon leader with A Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, were the prior recipients.
Crandall and Freeman were members of the 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion and wingmen at Ia Drang, the first major ground battle of the war.
Crandall, Freeman, Marm and the rest of the 1st Cav trained at Fort Benning from 1963-65, prior to deployment to Vietnam.
"He deserves the award," said author/columnist Joe Galloway, whose book "We Were Soldiers Once... and Young," chronicled the three-day Ia Drang battle. "He is a true American hero and is loved by those who survived that battle. I flew into and out of the battlefield on Bruce's Huey, and he's been my hero ever since."
Galloway, who now lives in Texas, and retired Lt. Gen. Hal Moore of Opelika, Ala., who co-authored the book on Ia Drang and commanded the 1st Battalion, will attend the White House ceremony.
Crandall, then a major and commander of his unit, led a flight of 16 helicopters in support of Moore's battalion, which was out of water and medical supplies, running dangerously low on ammunition and engaging about two regiments of North Vietnamese army infantry determined to overrun and annihilate them.
Despite heavy enemy fire, Crandall, known as Snake, and Freeman are credited with saving more than 70 wounded soldiers by transporting them to safety.
Freeman received the Medal of Honor for his efforts in July 2001, thanks in large part to a letter of recommendation from Crandall.
In that same year, Crandall came back to Fort Benning to watch the movie made from Galloway and Moore's book. In the film, actor Greg Kinnear portrayed Crandall. The fun-loving Crandall cracked that he would have preferred Madonna in that role, adding that he wasn't all that sure who Mel Gibson was (Gibson played Hal Moore in the film).
During a second tour in Vietnam, in 1968, Crandall was downed during another rescue attempt and spent five months in the hospital with a broken back. He resumed his military career, retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 1977. He was inducted into the Army Aviation Hall of Fame at Fort Rucker, Ala., in 2004 and was the seventh Army inductee into the "Gathering of Eagles," a U.S. Air Force organization that honors contributors to aviation.
After receiving the Medal of Honor, Crandall will be counted among 111 other living recipients of the award, 60 of them awarded for actions in Vietnam, according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.