Newest Medal of Honor Winner

[Brand X Hog Fan]

LtC Bruce "Snake" Crandall was awarded the Medal of Honor yesterday, 2-26-07, for heroic actions taken as a dust off helicopter pilot during the evacuation of wounded personel from LZ Xray, Idrang Valley, Vietnam. He was characterized in the 2002 movie "We Were Soldiers" and in the book We Were Soldiers Once, and Young by Col Hal Moore.

Thank you, sir.

[cowboyhomer22]

LtC Bruce "Snake" Crandall was awarded the Medal of Honor yesterday, 2-26-07, for heroic actions taken as a dust off helicopter pilot during the evacuation of wounded personel from LZ Xray, Idrang Valley, Vietnam. He was characterized in the 2002 movie "We Were Soldiers" and in the book We Were Soldiers Once, and Young by Col Hal Moore.

Thank you, sir.

Hoowa

[netteltonhog]

I wonder what took so long???

[msudawgs64]

he most definitely deserved it.

netteltonhog, I know that the giving of the MOH is now a painstaking process, especially for those who are actually still alive.  It comes from back in the Civil War days where they just handed them out to everyone and their brother, thus making them quite not so special.  That has changed.  My guess without reading up on it was that he got the DSM but after some serious research, it was upgraded to the MOH.  Generally this happens when paperwork is found that documents that it should have in fact been the higher award.   I think when his wingman was awarded the MOH in 2001, they started the ball rolling for him to receive this award.  Plus there was a change in the laws on awarding the MOH, it used to be a 2 year statute of limitations, but not anymore.

[Blue35]

I wonder what took so long???

The underlying reason why it took so long was because of the general unpopularity of the Vietnam War and the total indifference the American public had and still has for the Vietnam Veteran .  A lot of this credit goes to John Kerry and his testimony to the congress in 1971 that inferred that soldiers and marines in the Vietnam War committed atrocities on a daily basis. His testimony and the media report of that testimony swayed public opinion against the war and especially the men who were fighting the war. An entire generation of honorable men were indicted and it has taken over forty years for people to begin to see what a disservice was done to those servicemen and women.

There are still soldiers and marines missing and unaccounted for and only a minimal effort has ever been put forth to bring the remains of those men home.  On January 9, 1968, a gunship in the air cavalry troop in which I was serving, was shot down in the Que Son Valley.  A rescue attempt was beaten back by the North Vietnamese Army and to this day the remains of that crew are still  scattered on the north slope of a small hill in the western edge of that  valley.   The mother of the pilot passed away about two years ago still waiting for her son to come home. Nobody cared.

[vol_in_ar]

That's awesome, I actually met a MOH recipient while I was stationed at Ft. Bragg....

[slopinhogs]

thank you sir! :razorback:

[H&D]

http://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/smith/citation/index.html

I was deployed to Baghdad International Airport (BIAP) (hence the "Camp Sather 2003" in my sig line).  That day my fire team was building a C-wire enclosure on the north side of the camp to house EPW's once they came off of the helos.  We heard the gun fire from the prison camp and my first thought the army was having a range day.  Once the mortars started coming in we started running the mile, mile and a half toward the prison camp.  By the time we arrived reinforcements from the army started arriving and things started to calm down.   We took up some defensive positions and help resecure the area.  After getting the stand down, that is when stories about what SFC Smith had done for his men, even though I never met SFC Smith I felt to lose coming from his men that day.  I feel honored to have been there that day, I feel even more saddened for the lose for the Smith family.