What A Coincidence

Mel Gibson produces a film, 'When We Were Soldiers', about the battle of La Drang valley. In this travesty Mel portrays two Jewish helicopter pilots, as the heroes of the battle. The first pilot Ed Freeman amazingly got a Medal of Honor six months before the film is made, and the second Jewish hero got his medal after the film was released.

Thanks to a special law stating Jewish veterans are to be given Medals Of Honor, these two received their medals forty one years after the events.

Certain aspects of the film are heavily dramatized and edited. The final bayonet charge by the American troops on the North Vietnamese base camp is somewhat over-dramatized, and was supported by fixed-wing aircraft rather than by Hueys flown by Bruce P. Crandall and Ed Freeman. (Their own Hueys were configured as troop carriers and could not have been reconfigured as gunships in the time frame depicted.) Historically, the battle ended with the withdrawal of North Vietnamese forces and subsequent extraction of 1/7 by helicopter after they were relieved by 2nd/7thCav which had marched overland from LZ Falcon to LZ X-Ray.