anxiety, of what's happening, you can hurt somebody, including those around you, you make mistakes. so stick to your lesson plan and fly the ship at all costs. do not -- to the last second, continue to handle your equipment as you needed to to make a successful approach in to where you was going. and sometimes that can be pretty tough, because of the terrain and tall trees everywhere. that was the lz x-ray trees about 260 feet tall surrounded. and it was less than just a little short of the size of a football field the area was. >> so it was very tight? >> very tight. and very confining because you had to have some skill, had to have a lot of skill to get in and out of there successfully without damaging the aircraft, against obstacles. >> was fear a part of your day? >> absolutely.

but, controlled fear, if you made -- if you don't, it will devour you. and again, go back to i can't change things. >> right. >> and another thing i had, i didn't expect to survive, because i had been in a tremendous battle before, and who am i to say i'm the chosen one and i will be spared. but i'll tell you, two things in the situation of combat. you need some skills, and you need some luck. it's like playing texas hold 'em. >> mm-hmm. >> and i do that. i play texas hold 'em, as well. but both of those are involved, and i think they equally -- they play an equal part, possibly. but the skill is a must if you're going to successfully perform the duties that have been assigned to you and do it safely. >> right.

>> because it would be a shame to splatter a load of troops all over the hill if your mission was to get them into battle. at least get them in there and let the enemy take care of the rest of the problem. >> when did that hit you? you're probably not going to survive this. when did you have this realization? >> say it again? >> when did you have this realization that i'm not going to survive this? i'm not the chosen one. did you have that conscious thought during on the 14th? on that sunday? >> i had it when i walked down the pier in mobile, alabama, i walked down the pier and got on a baby flat top and i had been to a war before, and i explained to my wife, i says there's a good chance that i won't return, make sure you take care of the kids, and hopefully i'll see you, but don't expect any miracles. and i walked away. and my oldest brother was with me. and he says, it must be awful exciting knowing you're going off to war. i says, yes, i'm about to pee in my pants. i was so excited.

but he meant well. and it was exciting. in -- the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me is to be in a formation of 100 helicopters going to battle. i've never smoked marijuana, but if you want a high, try that one. of 100 ship formation. >> tell me about sunday november 14th, and how that day evolved, and what you and bruce did. >> it was a normal, supposingly, operation. and we did everything the same. we prepped the area with artillery. and we was to arrive 30 seconds after the last white phosphorus hit the ground. and that was -- and we did that exactly. >> and you were -- were you mapping the earth at that point? >> yes, right, absolutely. and we -- and this is the first -- first sight, first landing in that area. >> mm-hmm. >> and we did this, and come

charging in, and of course, again, we were just not disappointed but surprised that nobody was firing back at us. >> right. and you were number two behind crandall? >> always number two in that slot. thank you. >> so moore was in the first chopper moore and dill lon plumly. >> he was in bruce crandall's chopper. >> who was there with you, do you remember? >> i had company commanders and i'm not sure the names of any of them. >> right. >> but there was a number of them. four or five. four i think it was. they're all uniformed. that's the first uniformed soldiers we saw in the country. before that it was guys in pajamas, black pajamas they call this vc and they were rice farmers during the day and vc at night and they'd lay down their holes and get their ak-47, go harass the americans. >> mm-hmm. what do you remember, coming in on the fifth time, then it gets hot. colonel moore was at this point at the cp, and you all were

beginning to extract at this point? or were you still landing, going back? >> no. >> when did you start -- >> we were -- after the fifth landing. >> yes. >> we all left and went back to the pickup point, and he called, colonel moore did and says no more helicopters can come in to the landing zone. you can't survive. well, i'm a little smarter than i know that he had to vamp have ammunition. because basic load was about 100 rounds per person. and it doesn't take long to empty 100 rounds of ammunition in an m-16s. so i -- somebody says it ain't going to work. somebody's going to have to go back in there if them people are going to survive. because without ammo, ammunition, the enemy would have methodically killed every member of the organization once they ran out of ammunition, right?

>> mm-hmm. >> so, we licked our wounds and decided what helicopters could fly and which ones couldn't, and got everything rearranged and assigned, okay, this will work and i'll take it back in, and you take this one and we assigned the pilots, you know, helicopters, if theirs was beyond flight, unsafe flight. >> right. >> and about probably 45 minutes, if i remember the time, in a time kind of blurry. >> mm-hmm. >> we got a call from colonel moore. he says, i need one volunteer to come in zone x-ray, bring ammunition, water and medicine and haul out my wounded. and there was probably 30-plus pilots standing there. now we're talking young, 20-year-old officers, never heard shot fired in anger and had just come out of the fierce fight that we would come out of,

and not a soul moved a muscle. and i don't blame any of them and i says i got it and i started walking towards my helicopter. and it was already loaded because i had planned -- >> mm-hmm. >> that this had to happen. and as i crawled in and hit the starter, frank moreno, angel and james all started crowding into my helicopter. that was my crew. my crew chief, my gunner and frank being my co-pilot. i don't call him a co-pilot i call him a shared cockpit with me. >> mm-hmm. >> and i says get out of the helicopter. and he says, no, sir, we're crew and we're going with you. and i finally looked at frank and i says, you know, frank, this will probably be the longest day of your life. he says, yes, sir, i know that. i says, frank, it may be the last day of your life. he says, yes, sir, i know that.

i says, you still going? he says, yes, sir. i says, lock 'em up, let's roll. and 14.5 hours after that i shut it down. but i missed a gap here. as i did this, bruce crandall came running out, he says i'm going, too. and i said, bruce, what's going to happen to the company when you get zapped? he said, we'll worry about that when it happens. and -- and we joined up, and formation, and we -- our last flight was at 10:30 at night. >> the two of you? >> the two of us over the top of them 250 foot trees with a kid standing with a flashlight holding that flashlight. and let me tell you about a flashlight. back up just one minute. >> sure. >> i was an instructor for two years in hueys. and one of my tests was to bury a six-cell flash light, six-cell flashlight in the ground and turn it on and put it near the runway, off the side of the runway at a training field we had and turn the light on and

take the helicopter to 1,000 feet above the terrain and give it to the student and shut the engine down. and his job was to do a 360 degree turn, and when he stopped, i wanted to see that light shining up between his feet. and if you didn't do it you got a pink slip that day and you the air force individual knows about pink slips don't you captain? anybody that's ever flown. >> so you were prepared. >> so i was prepared, because i i wanted to train and i wanted to be in total charge of that piece of equipment. and i could make it almost talk. and i still felt bruce crandall, i'm the world's greatest helicopter pilot and he's second. but we'll argue about that. and i was prepared and i could make it do what it was capable of doing. and that was what i require of my students because that is called insurance. >> mm-hmm.

>> if you know your machine and you know it well, and you know how to operate it well and you know anything that happens in between that everything is good, you can identify it and take action to prevent a catastrophic failure of whatever. >> yes. how many -- when you two took back off, how many lifts did you do in 14 1/2 hours? >> you do the math. it was 13-minute flight each direction. and we flew 14.5 hours. >> eight. >> i don't remember but somewhere in my citation they -- they put a number of about 30 that i evacuated. >> 28, 30, mm-hmm. >> and i -- of course i couldn't count but i tell you what i was in that hospitality room today and about 20 guys walked up to me and says thank you, ed, if it hadn't been for you i would have died in lz x-ray and i says i wish i could have remembered your name. i can't even remember your face. >> you come in, you wait for them to do their work in the back? offloading, onloading, and you

go? >> yeah. >> are you -- you're holding in the cockpit? >> yeah. never got out of it. i stood on the skid and took a leak and did the controls while frank ate a can of beanie weenies and he did the same for me while i ate a can of beanie weenies. you never know what is hit because it's going to break or come loose a little later. >> sure. >> so if it's doubtful, you just go ahead and drop it, let the maintenance people look at it and figure it out. >> mm-hmm. >> but obviously sometimes they take a rotor off. not in my case. but we had tail rotors shot off. we've had fuel lines and always in the belly of the fuel but we had a self-sealing fuel system and it would only go down to a third of a tank and it would seal itself. and if you ever been in a helicopter and nothing but fumes of jet fuel hit you in the face, well it's a matter of seconds

until we hit a big ball of fire and it's over with. because that's exactly what you're thinking. >> mm-hmm. >> and why it doesn't blow up i don't know. because it's spewing fuel and we're running an engine up here at 900 degrees centigrade. and that's quite a bit of fire up there. >> um-hum. >> but fortunately it didn't. >> tell me more about as you, that day goes through you're coming in and going out and dusk is falling, can you describe the evolution of that day, after you and bruce decided to continue to go back? what happened? >> give me that question again. >> as you go through that day, when you and bruce make the decision to go back, and start flying, those 14 1/2 hours together, what happened on the ground of x-ray? what were the differences? what did you see as the day went on and then into the night? >> well, the night was probably the biggest fireworks that you've ever laid eyes on.

i mean, of course we we would ask to lay down protective fire on when we'd come on short final and the infantry would start shooting at the enemy to try to keep their heads down while we were on the ground, offloading and loading the injured soldiers. but it was a blur basically, i can't even recall 15 hours other than the fact just to cut the times of the eat and the sea rations and taking leak from standing on the skid and jumping back in and going. because we would not waste any time, because they needed every round of ammunition and every band-aid, every first aid kit that we could muster, and all the water that we could haul and those troops needed that bad. so we wasted no time in shoving in and out. >> what do you remember about colonel moore as that day went on? was he -- he was on the horn with bruce. were you talking with him as well? >> absolutely.

absolutely. i monitored all communications. now we didn't exactly tell other pilots that, because it gets cluttered if you get too many people chatting at the same time. >> sure. >> so we say take over 1,400 pounds of fuel that followed us and don't talk. you know. because you -- you don't describe everything to him, because it's just probably better. >> right. >> but yes, we discussed -- that he would -- colonel moore would tell us if the lz was hot, or warm, or whatever. >> mm-hmm. >> and advise us, and sometimes he'd say, move to the west side a little bit, because we have had a push coming in to the east or whatever. >> right. >> so he'd air traffic controller so to speak. >> uh-huh. >> and then the last flight in

at 10:30, he says, don't come back in, he says, i can survive 'til daylight, and i wanted to get out and go kiss him but i knew better you know. don't tell thing, you know. >> right. >> but i didn't. but, we went back in and landed, and bruce vomited, and i was at about the same thing. and at daylight, first day, crack of day bruce started it all over again and we flew all day that day, and the following day. we did this for three days. >> in the movie it portrays bruce vomiting and then he's accosted by this other gentleman. did that happen? >> yes. >> tell me about it. >> that was the medevac pilots that refused to go in -- in to the landing zone because it was hot. but i mean in defense of medevac pilots, i know some good ones, and it was not their policy, it was the headquarters policy and i wanted to transfer, because if you couldn't land in a hot lz i wanted to be in that outfit.

>> sure. >> but i thought why are you here if you can't land in a hot lz? that don't make any sense at all. >> mm-hmm. >> but i didn't blame the individual. i blamed the people that made it. but bruce was going to go over and i think maybe shoot him and i took the gun away from bruce and explained that we didn't shoot our own and that i was going to shoot both of them if they kept screwing around and i was pissed, too. so, they -- it -- it -- it blew over and nothing came of it, and but bruce was very hot. and i can understand. and i was pissed but sometimes you can't change things. change things if you can. wisdom to know the difference. >> right. november 15th. this is colonel moore said yesterday, this is one of the worst days that he's ever experienced in combat. it was the most difficult time of the entire three-day battle. that dawn attack was tremendous.

>> mm-hmm. >> you went out first light. what did you see when you got there? >> just a sea of people killing each other. everywhere you looked. they were killing each other. and the fire was just -- it was just solid. it -- it -- the -- the -- tracers, you know, it was as if you could walk on them it appeared. and it was a strange, eerie feeling knowing that you were going in to where they were very close range to us. but again, they didn't keep their heads up too long. because the infantry tried, they knew that helicopter was their life line and they worked hard to keep them people from trying to kill us if they could. and some of them got through, of course. >> mm-hmm. >> but, and we always seemed like always took some rounds.

but, it was a -- it was an eerie feeling. >> tell me about exhaustion, and sleep deprivation, and how you worked through that stress. >> you know, i wasn't exhausted because i -- i -- my mind wasn't working well. >> mm-hmm. >> i couldn't remember that -- that -- that i had just finished. i went in and laid down, and immediately, i was in some la la land, drifting. >> mm-hmm. >> and i -- it seemed like i was there ten minutes, or less, and somebody says, ed, daylight, gotta go. and we started all over again. and i felt a little better. but not a hell of a lot. >> mm-hmm. >> but it is -- combat is a strange animal. it's a strange thing. and it does strange things to different people. it treats people different.

>> sure. >> not all are the same. >> how did it treat you? >> again, i called on my experience from korea and i accepted the fact that this was probably the end. and i think i got through it a little better than i would have if i had been -- if it would have been the first time. >> what do you remember about broken arrow? were you around? >> i certainly was there. >> what did it look like? can you describe it? >> well, it -- they -- the airplanes come from all sides. and some was ridiculous because a jet come by and a bomb would scoop completely across the area in to la la land someplace else, the jets was -- is not close air support machine. and the man on his head and he agrees. it is entirely too fast to support troops on the ground. because they miss the target and i don't -- i think the f-104s or whatever you had at that period

of time, they screamed through there, and i'm sitting right there watching them do this -- and the bombers do this. you can see it skip down through the bushes. i thought it was an almost end of the world because they -- they were stacked up, stacked. but still, the a-1e 'twas most effective of the whole group i could see. i don't know who put the napalm out. the japanese -- >> yes. >> his mother called me probably a we are ago. i didn't know what to say. he died the next morning.

>> the first time she called you? >> yeah. but it was chaos. it was a -- it was almost like a -- a movie scene. >> mm-hmm. >> you know, with amount of aviation that was trying to get in there to support that operation. >> mm-hmm. >> and they were a lot of them dead. and there was a lot of damage done to the -- to the enemy. >> mm-hmm. tell me about joe galloway. what kind of contact did you have with him? >> i didn't have much contact with joe until it was all over with. >> mm-hmm. >> and of course, we used to drink a beer or two together. and i've known him, of course, all them years. he's a straight arrow, straight shooter and a very bright man, very clever. very cagey. very intelligent. good person. good human being. >> okay. hal moore after this battle you said he took you into the tent. what do you remember about those troopers, and him on the 16th

when they came out of there? did you -- you looked them up, correct? >> oh, absolutely, yeah. we looked at every one of them just the same as we'd lifted them in. we come in empty and extracted them, which we did a lot. of times. there was a different look about the young gis in their eyes. general moore, i don't think he ever changed expression. tight jaw, big square jaws. but he -- he -- i think he's a good actor, maybe. he don't show very much emotion, and certainly not among his troops. i think he just -- just steely eyed and just squared away. >> mm-hmm. >> when it comes to that. because he don't want to -- to let any of this emotion move, you know, shed off and get on into his troops. >> yes, sir. >> and i believe that may be right on that.

but, joe was a happy go lucky guy as a general rule. and still is. >> mm-hmm. >> the other night at the phoenix, medal of honor society meeting. >> yes, sir. >> 77 of us was showed up by the way and we presented joe with a -- a journalism award from the medal of honor society. and he got up and made his speech and he says, and by the way -- oh, he the army gave him a bronze star. >> yes, sir, yes, they did. >> he said by the way i should have got another medal for riding around with that freeman all over vietnam. and i forgot to tell him i was going to make him walk the next trip. >> tell me about the movie. how has that changed things for you? because you're a prominent part of this movie? >> well -- >> of course bruce is really the focus there. >> well, bruce was down there. bruce was the more aviation

adviser to the -- they called him wanted me to come down, too. but i hadn't lost nothing in fort benning, georgia, except a lot of sweat and blood and tears when i was stationed there. so i decided to have bruce go down and i didn't need to go. but, i -- i thought it was very well done. i enjoyed it. it was about 85% accurate in my book. and i think most people that i talk to will give it a at least 80% or 85% accuracy. they sent me a copy of the script, and asked for comments. and the big comment i had was, get rid of some of the profanity, in my case, i have had two young grandchildren -- granddaughters, and they probably heard it before but i didn't want them to come hear it out of the movie. >> sure. >> and i don't think that they paid any attention to me because you probably seen the movie. >> yes, sir. >> and you noticed they didn't -- waste of effort when i made my comments. but i thought that did a pretty good job of making it. i didn't approve of some of the things, but most of it was accurate.

>> how about the ending when bruce came in, greg kinnear character, bruce, comes in and takes out on that morning -- on the third morning on the 16th. >> he and i in the gunships? >> yeah. >> not true. >> yeah. >> first place, you can't use a gunship when you've got your own troops on the ground. see the only time we could fire our machine guns, m-60s, was on the side of each of our helicopters, would be on initial trip in. >> right. >> for the first trip in, we could -- we'd hose everything down hoping we'd get any stragglers. but, other than that, you can't come in there -- you got to have some pretty open area. >> right. >> to hose them down with, otherwise your own troops will get it. >> mm-hmm. >> so that was a good -- it looked good on the movie.

>> right. >> but didn't happen. >> okay. >> and we did not stack bodies up. we didn't touch them. and you could walk on them. because they were thick. it was very thick with bodies. >> mm-hmm. mm-hmm. >> we didn't stack them up. we didn't urinate on mortar tubes either. and the big chinook didn't come in with all the women reporters. >> uh-huh. uh-huh. okay. well, this 40th anniversary reunion, what's it been like for you? >> i've -- i've -- i've raced it through my mind a few times and you know replayed it maybe. reruns. >> mm-hmm. >> but i -- i haven't seen the movie, i don't think, since the premiere, maybe i caught it a little on tv one night, maybe the end of it, showing it last year or whatever. >> mm-hmm. >> but i think it was excellent they did that, and i think it showed the if we had a good side, i think at least helped the troops. because the troops took it in the shorts.

our troops did not smoke marijuana. first place, we were in a barbed wire entanglement with 23,000 men. and you didn't get out of there except in our helicopters. >> right. >> we didn't go to the town, there was no village, there was a village ten miles away but there was nothing there. >> mm-hmm. >> so this is -- and i'm not saying that people didn't do this in saigon and whatever. or not picking on saigon. but we didn't have an opportunity to do that. but we had good troops. and they were good american soldiers. and they were vicious fighting men. and i admired them very much. but i think they took a bum rap and i hope this effort helps show the public a little bit that we had some hard -- some tremendous young men on our side. >> mm-hmm. okay. 100 years from now someone's going to be watching this, listening to this. what do you want to tell them about battles of the ia drang valley? what do you want to tell them about the men there, about

yourself? >> i would hope that somebody finds a solution other than war. but i don't believe they will. i'll tell you a quick story about my grandson when he was in -- he's my fishing buddy, and he's now schoolteacher. he went to college, and scholarship, and playing baseball and all that. but he teaches. and when he was about 9 years old, he and i are going up the road fishing in my truck, and out of the blue sky he says grandpa, did they fight wars on weekends? i says, yes. and we drove on around a couple more curves in the rocky road, he says, grandpa, did they fight wars on holidays? i said, yes. another few minutes and he says, grandpa, did they fight wars at night? i says, yes. he didn't say nothing for quite some time. he turned around and looked at me dead in the eye and said, grandma, why did they fight wars?

he knew just enough about war that he knew i had been there, but nothing else, because i kept my military life tried to keep it away from my children. >> mm-hmm. >> it was just a job. and i tell you, i wished i would have known what to say to him. but i've stumbled through something like the fact that i -- a difference of opinion, of beliefs, of two different governments, and they don't agree on certain items. >> right. >> and i says but that doesn't make it right, does it? >> well, major freeman, wow, we're about out of time. and i want to thank you for participating in this -- in this oral history. >> you're more than welcome. >> it's our honor. >> i hope i didn't bore you. >> not at all, sir. you're watching american history tv where every week we bring tv where every week we bring you witness accounts of the people and events that shaped our