It is with great pride and yet humbleness that I write you Great American Soldiers!
As a Blue Star Mother, it was on May 25,2008 that I faced and received that horrific news that my son,SSG Frank Gasper was killed and ultimately paid the price for Freedom! That was the day that changed my life completed, and also made me A Gold Star Mother! But, I find myself that even as broken as I feel,yet I feel a sense of duty and responsiblity to preserve the legacy of my son, Frank . And also to
remember those before him, and those after him. I am honored to say that in the midst of the letters he wrote me, he left me pieces of history. He gave me
places, dates and situations yet,so little information. Yet as he expressed and shared, you could not help but feel somewhat of what he was feeling. As the tears run down my face, as I reflect on his writings,I sense the urgency of not letting this legacy “die”. I will not let it sit on a shelf and collect dust, nor will it go in the family heirloom chest. But, rather it is being told to everyone I come in contact with.
You are but the history book, the “talking history book”, that the world needs to hear. It is a great price that
you have paid,or are paying and it must not be forgotten!

It’s you,that goes without rest,or when you do rest your head, your mind is full of the weariness.The days’
hell that you went through,the meals you missed,the days that you didn’t get a shower, the adrenaline that
rushed through you chest as you watched for your brother’s back, yet there’s nothing you could do,when
the worst faced you! the wounded solider up in the Hospital,the Veteran that was snuck back into the
Country after war,the suicides that many committed,the silent wounded Soldier that tries to fit in yet,finds it
hard to,the holidays spent away from home,the steps you never witnessed or the birth of your first born
child, the girlfriend that left you for just a civilian,the far away rumbles of the bombs going off afar, all the
Soldier’s huddled together,praying God keep us safe! the news that your unit just got orders to deploy
again,the vacation that you will not get to take with the family,and so many more!! this is the price for
Freedom,that must not go unforgotten! It is because of you great American Soldier’s that our RED,WHITE
and BLUE flag still waves in the wind,and stands so strong!

These are the stories that I have a burden to preserve, and not let go unforgotten! Yet, I am humbled by
your courage,your strength,your integrity and dedication,your battle wounds,those unseen, and those
seen that each of you American Soldier’s share in common. Yet, you do not expect anything in return, nor
do you do it for the medals, not even a “thank you”, but for your comrades, your brothers, who fight next to
you, the innocent people that are oppressed, and for the duty that calls within you!

I am humbled and in awe to think that I know such Great men as yourself and I have to “salute” you. I don’t
even know if it’s proper, or if it’s politically correct ! but, I just have to “salute” you.
Just as your soul will not rest,until freedom reins in the land! Neither does my soul rest and I will make sure
that the price of Freedom is not Forgotten!

May God Bless you! Keep you safe! and until we meet again,may your heart begin to write our world’s
history so it will not be forgotten!

I pray you find the strength to write at least one line a day, to write down the things that you feel and go
through on a daily basis. You will be surprised just one line a day,with a date or even a time how it will
bring healing to you,as it has to me. I have started to write my life’s journey as a Gold Star Mother.There’s
days,I look back and read the struggles,even of a day or two ago and some days I can honestly say, it’s
what got me through the day!

Stand tall, Stand proud, and don’t let the guilt,shame and regrets of today rob you of tomorrow! You are
an American Soldier, part of this great history and the price that was,and is paid for Freedom!
I will pledge to each of you,that all I can do is pray for you,write to you, send you packages,and I will even
be an ear for you. I will stand in support of you at a Rally. I will place my Blue/Gold Star flag up so
proudly,yet so humbly! I will even shed a tear at the thought of the price of Freedom! but I will promise to
you,that the Price for Freedom will not be forgotten!

With all my love and prayers! My heart is so filled with graditude for each of you for your service to me,and
our Country!

Anita Richards
Proud Gold Star Mom of SSG Frank Gasper
Share this with any American Soldier! or Vet!

Writings In My Heart
To All American Soldiers and Vets
By Anita Richards, Gold Star Mother
Sgt. Frank J. Gasper, KIA 25 May 2008

You’re an 18 or 19 year old kid.
You’re critically wounded,
and dying in the jungle in the
Ia Drang Valley, 11-14-1965.

LZ Xray, Vietnam.

Your Infantry Unit is outnumbered 8 – 1,
and the enemy fire is so intense,
from 100 or 200 yards away,
that your own Infantry Commander
has ordered the Medi-Vac helicopters to stop coming in.

You’re lying there,
listening to the enemy machine guns,
and you know you’re not getting out.
Your family is 1/2 way around the world,
12,000 miles away,
and you’ll never see them again.
As the world starts to fade in and out,
you know this is the day.

Then, over the machine gun noise,
you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter,
and you look up to see a Huey,
but it doesn’t seem real,
because no Medi-Vac markings are on it.

Ed Freeman is coming for you.
He’s not Medi-Vac, so it’s not his job,
but he’s flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire,
after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come.

He’s coming anyway.

And he drops it in,
and sits there in the machine gun fire,
as they load 2 or 3 of you on board.

Then he flies you up and out through the gunfire,
to the Doctors and Nurses.

And, he kept coming back…… 13 more times…..
and took about 30 of you and your buddies out,
who would never have gotten out.

Medal of Honor Winner Ed Freeman died yesterday Aug 20
at 80, in Boise, ID.

None of that is Hollywood fiction!

God Bless Ed Freeman.

——————————–

Medal of Honor
FREEMAN, ED W.
Rank and organization: Captain, U.S. Army, Company A, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion,
First Cavalry Division (Airmobile)
Place and date: Ia Drang Valley, Republic of Vietnam, 14 November 1965
Born: 1928
Citation:
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Captain Ed W. Freeman, United States Army, distinguished himself by numerous acts of conspicuous gallantry and extraordinary intrepidity on 14 November, 1965, while serving with Company A, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, First Cavalry Division (Airmobile). As a flight leader and second in command of a 16-helicopter lift unit, he supported a heavily engaged American infantry battalion at landing zone X-ray in the Ia Drang Valley, Republic of Vietnam. The infantry unit was almost out of ammunition, after taking some of the heaviest casualties of the war, fighting off a relentless attack from a highly motivated, heavily armed enemy force. When the infantry commander closed the helicopter landing zone, due to intense direct enemy fire, Captain Freeman risked his own life by flying his unarmed helicopter through a gauntlet of enemy fire, time after time, delivering critically needed ammunition, water and medical supplies to the underseige battalion. His flights had a direct impact on the battle’s outcome by providing the engaged units with timely supplies of ammunition critical to their survival without which they would almost surely have experienced a much greater loss of life. After medical evacuation helicopters refused to fly into the area, due to intense enemy fire, Captain Freeman flew 14 separate rescue missions, providing life- saving evacuation of an estimates 30 seriously wounded soldiers, some of whom would not have survived, had he not acted.All flights were made into a small emergency landing zone within 100 to 200 meters of the defensive perimeter where heavily committed units were perilously holding off the attacking elements. Captain Freeman’s selfless acts of great valor, extraordinary perseverance and intrepidity were far above and beyond the call of duty or mission and set a superb example of leadership and courage for all of his peers. Captain Freeman’s extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit and the United States Army.

—————————————-

Bush awards Medal of Honor to Vietnam helicopter pilot

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush on Monday, July 16, 2001, presented the nation’s highest military honor to an Army chopper pilot who is credited with evacuating wounded soldiers and delivering supplies to a battle zone during the Vietnam War.

Thirty-six years ago, Capt. Ed W. Freeman, a flight leader and second-in-command of a 16-helicopter lift unit, flew his unarmed helicopter through enemy fire to deliver ammunition, water and medical supplies to an infantry battalion engaged in battle in what was then the Republic of Vietnam.

“He served his country and his comrades to the fullest, rising above and beyond anything the Army or the nation could have ever asked,” Bush said.

The president draped the Medal of Honor around the neck of Freeman, of Boise, Idaho, in a brief ceremony before other medal winners, Freeman’s family, government officials and members of Congress.

According to the citation, Freeman “supported a heavily engaged American infantry battalion” in the la Drang Valley.

The infantry unit “was almost out of ammunition, after taking some of the heaviest casualties of the war, fighting off a relentless attack from a highly motivated, heavily armed enemy force,” the citation reads.

“When the infantry commander closed the helicopter landing zone, due to intense direct enemy fire, Capt. Freeman risked his own life.”

According to the citation, “his flights had a direct impact on the battle’s outcome by providing the engaged units with timely supplies of ammunition critical to their survival without which they would almost surely have experienced a much greater loss of life.”

The citation said Freeman flew 14 separate rescue missions, “providing life-saving evacuation of an estimated 30 seriously wounded soldiers, some of whom would not have survived, had he not acted.”

Monday’s ceremony was the first time Bush has handed out the Medal of Honor.

“God gives us memory so we can have roses in December.”  – J. M. Barrie

There is a place you can go to feel the war in Iraq. You can’t experience it living in everyday America. We are shopping and playing golf and watching soap operas and complaining about the price of gas but we don’t feel this war. Those of us who don’t have a friend or a child in uniform in Iraq have a hard time understanding the pain being caused by this conflict in our country and in Iraq.

This is essentially what confounded Austin, Texas advertising executive Chris Greta. As a man who came of age during Vietnam, Greta was baffled by how little the war touches the rest of us and he wanted to change that odd dynamic in our culture. He also was very interested in honoring the men and women who are serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. And he took an old-fashioned approach that has drawn an overwhelming response.

Greta created Hero Bracelets and launched the web site herobracelets.org They are similar to the POW-MIA bracelets worn by many of us during the Vietnam era. On each is a name and a hometown and other information about a member of the armed services. The bracelets are designed to commemorate either their lives lived and lost or to serve as a talisman for families and friends who are sending good thoughts to those deployed.

About 70,000 of the bracelets have been sold and Greta has sent a significant portion of the proceeds to the Fallen Heroes Fund and the Intrepid Foundation, which recently opened a rehabilitation center in San Antonio for servicemen and women. Although he is personally against the war, Greta wanted to make certain we do not forget those among us who are called to the colors, regardless of the politics.

“It was different during Vietnam,” Greta explained. “There was a draft, so everyone coming of age had to be concerned and the draft crossed most of the socio-economic borders that separate us. It kept us all involved in the war and the politics. That’s not happening now. That disconnect is a part of what drove me to create Hero Bracelets.”

Something happened that Greta did not anticipate, however. His web site, designed to sell the bracelets, turned into a community for service members and their families and their friends. There is page upon page of stories about the fallen and surviving. They are maddeningly sad and intoxicatingly inspiring. And if you really care about what is happening in our country, you should read some of these letters and posts.

Read, for instance, the last letter written to Sgt. David Allen Ruhlen by his mother. She painstakingly describes his life and what he might have become as she slips between past and present tense in her narrative, clearly not yet accustomed to thinking of her boy as gone. She never once confronts his death in her loving note and only occasionally drops a phrase like “would have been” so that the reader has to surmise the mom who signed the letter is doing her best to make certain the boy she apparently raised alone has become a casualty.

There is also a note from a Major in Iraq explaining why he wears a Hero Bracelet bearing the name of a soldier he never knew.

“I wear it because in wearing it I honor his commitment, courage, and sacrifice in a place that sometimes does not remember it. I wear it because if the same fate should happen to me, I would hope someone would remember my name. I wear it because as Winston Churchill said ‘We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.’ His life for our freedom, rest in peace Matthew D. Bush.”

At herobracelets.org the living have been connected with the dead, the citizen with the soldier. Fern Smooke, who knows not a soul in the military, has found a hero in Sgt. Thomas E. Vandling, Jr. who died on January 7th of this year.

“Since wearing the bracelet I have had patients ask me about it. ‘Do you know Thomas Vandling?’ I reply, no but I do now. One little girl said, ‘I go to school with his sister.’ Another said, ‘I know his family.’ They told me about him and I’ve read articles from our newspapers to learn about him. I’ve even gotten to see a picture of him. He is my hero and I’m proud to wear his name.”

Melody Pigg, whose Marine son is deployed in Iraq, has written a dozen long narratives to the web site so that those of us without children in the war can get a better sense of that experience and, perhaps, make more well-informed decisions about our choices. She writes with an aching clarity about what it was like to send her boy back into combat on his second tour of duty in Iraq.

“This deployment will be harder than the last since I’m aware of the ‘near misses’ that he had during his first deployment. I asked Marshall if he’d like me to be there when he leaves. His response was, ‘Why would you want to be there on the saddest day of your life? You’ll just see me get on a bus and ride off.’ I just know that I love my son dearly and the thought of him being in harm’s way is extremely difficult.”

This Veterans’ Day, spend some time with the memories and loved ones of our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read some stories at herobracelets.org Buy a bracelet and remember. Feel what their families feel. Know what this war in Iraq is really all about.

And then go find a place where you can cry. Cry for them and their unlived lives, the children they will never know and the holidays they will not share with their loved ones and the dreams they will never realize. Cry for a loss that cannot be measured. And when you have finished crying for them, cry for our beloved country.