In a cemetery near Margraten, about six miles from the city of Maastricht lie buried 8,301 American soldiers who died in "Operation Market Garden" in the battles to liberate the Netherlands in the fall and winter of 1944-5. Everyone of the men buried in the cemetery, as well as those in the Canadian and British military cemeteries has been adopted by a Dutch family who tend the grave and keep alive the memory of the soldier they have adopted. It is the custom to keep a portrait of "their" American soldier in a place of honor in their home. Annually on "Liberation Day", Memorial Services are held for the men who died to liberate the Netherlands.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Market_Garden

God bless all of the soldiers who lost their lives. But also God bless those Dutch families who adopted and tend to the graves of the fallen.

Ed Freeman, Retired Major, U.S. Army

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 half 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.

Capt. 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 ... at least 21 more times ... and took about 70 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.

Medal of Honor recipient Ed Freeman died Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 80, in Boise, ID.

None of that is Hollywood fiction!

God Bless Ed Freeman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Freeman.