MANCHESTER – A retired Army officer whose wing man in a Vietnam helicopter mission was awarded the Medal of Honor in 2001 has also been named to receive the nation’s highest military decoration.
Retired Maj. Bruce Crandall, a native of Olympia, was told Friday that he would receive the award from President Bush in a ceremony at the White House on Feb. 26. An announcement also was posted on an Army Web site.
More than 3,400 service members have received the Medal of Honor since it was first issued in 1861.
“It’s a wonderful honor,” Crandall, who turns 74 on Saturday, told The Olympian newspaper. “It’s the finest thing that can happen to you if you’ve been in the service. I appreciate it.”
Crandall, previously inducted into the Army Aviation Hall of Fame and the Air Force Gathering of Eagles, was named to receive the Medal of Honor for his heroics at Landing Zone X-Ray on Nov. 14, 1965, at Ia Drang, Vietnam.
In the first battle of the war between U.S. and North Vietnamese forces, he flew an unarmed helicopter on 14 missions to rescue soldiers with the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment and resupply them with ammunition, despite intense enemy fire and closure of the landing zone because of the danger.
He and his wing man, Capt. Edward Freeman, were credited with rescuing more than 70 injured soldiers.
Freeman, now of Boise, Idaho, was presented the Medal of Honor in 2001.
Retired Col. Ramon Nadal, who commanded the battalion, said in an Army news story that without the pilots’ heroics, his troops might have been overrun.
Crandall, an All-American high school baseball player, dreamed of playing for the New York Yankees but instead was drafted into the military during the Korean War in 1953 and eventually helped design the helicopter assault procedures he used in Vietnam.
Two months after his heroics at la Drang, Crandall rescued a dozen wounded men without using search or landing lights during a nighttime battle.
His second tour in Vietnam ended in January 1968, when Air Force bombs detonated too close to where he was flying and his helicopter went down in the midst of another rescue attempt, leaving him with a broken back and other injuries. He retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel in 1977.
Crandall later worked as a city manager in Dunsmuir, Calif., and as public works manager in Mesa, Ariz., and was credited as a helicopter consultant in the 2002 film “We Were Soldiers,” a depiction of the Battle of Ia Drang in which he was portrayed by Oscar-nominated actor Greg Kinnear.
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