Episode 107: Counting Coup, Part I - Winter Man

November is National Native American Heritage Month in the United States. Because of that, I am taking the opportunity to talk a little about the culture of the Plains Indians broadly and the Crow Nation specifically, setting up the story of a Crow warrior.

When children of the Crow Nation are four days old, an elder is asked to give then a name. When Joseph Medicine Crow was born, a visiting Sioux warrior was asked to do the honors and dubbed the child Winter Man (you can find out why in the above recording). Winter Man - who was later formally registered with the Crow Nation as Joseph Medicine Crow - was raised by his grandfather to be a warrior from an early age. Little did he know, his grandson would be given the chance to honor an ancient custom; not against traditional adversaries like the Sioux or the Cheyenne, but again a new enemy - the Nazis. But that is a story for next week.

 

Episode 106: Too Tall

 

As a young boy in Mississippi, Ed Freeman wanted three things: 1. escape from his home town, 2. to join the army, and 3. to learn to fly. He enlisted in the navy  during the final year of World War II, which got him out of Mississippi; he enlisted in the army after returning from World War II and finishing high school; he became a pilot after a battlefield commission during the Korean War, but only after the army raised its maximum height limit for a pilot. The first time he tried to fly he was told that at 6' 4" he was simply, too tall.

After flying mapping mission for nearly a decade, Freeman went to Vietnam as a helicopter pilot. On November 14, 1965, he helped dropped a battalion of cavalry troopers in the isolated Ia Drang valley, where they found themselves facing a much larger force that threatened to annihilate them. For the next 14 hours, Freeman and his commander, Bruce Crandall, were the only two pilots willing to fly into a hot LZ dropping off supplies and evacuating critically wounded personnel.

35 years later, in July 2001, the Distinguished Flying Cross that Freeman received for his efforts that day was upgraded to the Medal of Honor. He was the first person President George W. Bush bestowed the medal on.

It wasn't until the movie We Were Solders came out in 2002, that I learned that Freeman had lived around the corner from me for a decade. In 2005, I walked over to his house unannounced, asked him to autograph his photo in a book about living Medal of Honor recipients that I had bought for my dad, and ended up in an impromptu mentoring session between Freeman, a bona fide hero, and me, a lowly army cadet. I walked away with the autograph and a memory I will never forget.

Army Major Ed W. "Too Tall" Freeman, a navy veteran of World War II and an Army Veteran of Korea and Vietnam passed way in Boise, ID on August 20, 2008 at age 80. He was interred in the Idaho State Veterans Cemetery in Boise in Section 12-J-155.

Freeman's commander in Vietnam, then-Major Bruce Crandall, was the other pilot who spent 14 hours in 1965 trying to help the troopers in the Ia Drang valley survive the onslaught by a much larger force. 

He had to wait a little longer than Freeman, but in 2007, 40 years after the battle in Ia Drang, Crandall's Distinguished Flying Cross was also upgraded to the Medal of Honor.

Crandall, who retired a lieutenant colonel, but was promoted to colonel years later in 2010, is still with us as of this post, but his wife Arlene passed away in 2010, which is why we know that when his time does come, Colonel Crandall with join her at Arlington in Section 7A, Grave 1.

The commander of the battalion Crandall and Freeman support, then-Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore (seen above in an image taken during the battle in Ia Drang) advocated for the both pilots to receive the Medal of Honor for years, as did many other survivors of the battle.

Moore, who retired a lieutenant general, lived long enough to see his campaigning come to fruition and was present at both Freeman and Crandall's Medal of Honor ceremony.

When he passed away in 2017, he choose to be interred at the Fort Benning (Georgia) post cemetery, among many of his troopers who were killed in the Ia Drang in 1965.

In May 2023, Fort Benning, the home of the US Army's Infantry and Armor schools, was renamed Fort Moore.

Episode 105: The Ultimate Wingman

When he was a major, Air Force Colonel Bernard Francis "Bernie" Fisher volunteered for a tour in Vietnam when that conflict was just beginning to expand beyond US troops advising South Vietnamese fighters. 

In March 1966, the day after actions that would see him awarded the Silver Star, Fisher saw a fellow pilot shot down by enemy fire. Lieutenant Colonel "Jump" Myers survived the crash but was still in terrible danger. Thousands of enemy soldiers were quickly closing in on him and an evacuation helicopter would not be able to reach him in time. Unwilling to leave a comrade behind, Fisher landed his plane, pulled Myers up into the cockpit, and managed to take off again after his own plane took serious damage from small arms fire while on the ground.

The fallowing January, Fisher and his family traveled to the White House where the pilot was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

The Air Force became an independent service in 1947, but used the Army's design of the Medal of Honor until 1965. Bernie Fisher was the first Air Force pilot to receive the service's newly designed medal. He was also the first pilot in the Air Force's history to survive the action for which he was presented the nation's highest award for valor.

Fisher retired from the Air Force in 1974 as a colonel and settled in Kuna, Idaho, about 20 miles southwest of Boise. He remained active in the veteran community and often traveled to share the story about his Medal of Honor.

Colonel Bernard Francis Fisher passed away in 2014 at the age of 87. He was interred at the Idaho State Veterans Cemetery in Boise, ID in Section 12-1-142.

Episode 104: The Epitome of Army Aviation, Part II

 

Chief Warrant Officer 4 Michael J. Novosel, Sr. received the Medal of Honor for action in Vietnam, when he, under intense enemy fire, evacuated 29 stranded South Vietnamese soldiers, who were surrounded by thousands of enemy troops near the Cambodian boarder.

During his second tour as a medial evacuation pilot, Novosel had the unique opportunity to serve with his son, Mike, Jr. who earned his Army aviation wings 27 years to the day after his father. One of the more than 5500 troops Mike, Sr. evacuated from the battlefield was his own son, who was unwounded after his helicopter went down. A week later, Mike, Jr. repaid the favor and rescued his father after he also crashed.

When the senior Novosel left Vietnam for was everyone knew would be the last time, his call sign - Dustoff 88 - was officially transferred to Mike, Jr., who, like his father, would also serve a full career in the Army and retire a chief warrant officer 4.

On the day Novosel retired in 1984, he was the last WWII pilot still actively flying for the US military. That same day, a main street at the Army's helicopter training post, Fort Rucker, Alabama, was named after him.

Novosel passed away in 2006 at age 83.

He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, in Section 7A, Grave 178-C.  

Episode 103: The Epitome of Army Aviation, Part I

This week, we begin the story of Army Aviator Chief Warrant Officer 4 Mike Novosel, a guy who was too short to fly according to the military standards of the day, was forced out of the service against his will, and who eventually took a demotion, all because he wanted to pass his 20+ years of aviation experience on to the next generation of Army pilots. Instead, and much to his surprise, he was sent to Vietnam to serve in his third war.

Since he was in the Army Air Corps when the Air Force was created in 1947, he was automatically transferred to the new service, and served in it more than a decade, but try as I might, I couldn't find any photos of his online in an Air Force uniform. Most that are readily available are from his time in Vietnam. The above photo is the only one I could find of his WWII service in the Army Air Corps.

Episode 102: A Family Legacy in Korea

 

The Collins Family (Left to Right: Major General James L. Collins, Sr., General J. Lawton "Lighting Joe" Collins, Brigadier General James L. Collins, Jr., and Major General Michael Collins) are all honored on the front wall of the US Army's Second Infantry Division Museum at Camp Humphreys, South Korea.

James, Sr. (West Point Class of 1907) briefly commanded the Second Infantry Division before the outbreak of World War II.

MG James L. Collins, Sr. in buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 34, Grave 121-A

J. Lawton (West Point Class of 1917), James, Sr's brother, was the Army Chief of Staff during the Korean War. The Second Infantry Division featured prominently in that war and remains on the Korean Peninsula today, nearly 75 since that war broke out.

GEN J. Lawton Collins in buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 30, Grave 422

James, Jr. (West Point Class of 1939) rose to the rank of brigadier general before retiring. He was called back to active duty by the Army to become the service's Chief of Military History. He published several books in that capacity, including War in Peacetime: The History and Lessons of Korea in 1969.

BG James L. Collins, Jr. is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 34, Grave 970

Michael Collins (West Point Class of 1952) - James, Sr's son, J. Lawton's nephew, and James, Jr's brother - chose to join the Air Force after West Point and became a prominent NASA astronaut in the early days of the space race. He carried one of the Second Infantry Division patches his father wore while commanding 2 ID into space with him on the Apollo XI mission to the moon.

Maj Gen Michael Collins is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 51, Grave 2891.

Army Sergeant Robert Hopkins was captured by the German Army during the Battle of the Bulge. An enlisted chaplain, he used a makeshift US flag, constructed with two stolen flour sacks and died blue and red, to preside over the funerals of some 700 US POWs until he escaped captivity near the end of the war. After the war, he became a Methodist minister in Virginia and donated the flag to the 2ID museum in 1979. When he died in 2004, the flag was used one final time, draped over Hopkin's casket during his funeral. After the service, the flag was folded and returned to Korea.

SGT Robert Hopkins is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 69, Grave 3420

Episode 101: Vietnam POW's Five Years to Freedom, Part VII

It has been a long time coming, but after 1,891 days in captivity, Nick Rowe became one of only 37 prisoners to successfully escape from Vietcong prisons and make it back to friendly forces. This is the culminating event of his five years to freedom. The helicopter that picked him up radioed ahead and a large crowd gathered to welcome him home. After escaping, Rowe found out that he had been promoted twice in captivity and was now a major.

Less than a week after gaining his freedom, Major Rowe was back in the United States and reunited with his parents. He remained in the Army in 1972 when he retired but was called back to active duty as a lieutenant colonel in 1981 to help build a course for the Army to train personnel who had a higher-an-average change of finding themselves isolated or captured due to their specific jobs, like special forces or pilots. He helped create the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape course or SERE to help other potential prisoners return with honor like he did.

Following his promotion to colonel, Rowe was made chief of the Joint US Military Advisory Group in the Philippines where he partnered with the CIA and Filipino intelligence agencies to bring down communist insurgencies in that country. In April 1989, he was assassinated by one such group on his way to work.

Colonel James Nicholas "Nick" Rowe is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 48, Grave 2165-A but his legacy lives on today across the US Army, but no place more than Camp MacKall, North Carolina where SERE is taught and the school's obstacle course - arguably the toughest in the world - is named the Nasty Nick in his memory.