Vietnam-era pilot to receive highest U.S. honor

updated 3:42 p.m. ET Feb. 24, 2007

WASHINGTON - Bruce Crandall was a soldier once ... and young.

As a 32-year-old helicopter pilot, he flew through a gantlet of enemy fire, taking ammunition in and wounded Americans out of one of the fiercest battles of the Vietnam War, Army records say.

Now, a week after his 74th birthday, Crandall will receive the nation’s highest military honor Monday in a White House ceremony with President Bush.

“I’m still here,” he said of his 41-year-wait for the Medal of Honor. “Most of these awards are posthumous, so I can’t complain.”

Crandall’s actions in the November 1965 Battle at Ia Drang Valley were depicted in the Hollywood movie “We Were Soldiers,” adapted from the book “We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young.”

At the time, Crandall was a major commanding a company of the 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile).

“We had the first airmobile division ... the first one to use aircraft as a means of transportation and sustaining combat,” Crandall said. His unit was put together earlier that year to go to Vietnam and “wasn’t as thought out as things are today.”

‘Minimum resources’
He didn’t have gunners for his aircraft. That’s why he flew unarmed helicopters into the battlefield.

He didn’t have night vision equipment and other later technology that lessens the danger of flying.

The unit had “minimum resources and almost no administrative people” — thus the lack of help to do the reams of paperwork that had to be sent to Washington for the highest medals, Crandall said.

Generals in-theater could approve nothing higher than the Distinguished Flying Cross, Crandall said in a phone interview from his home near Bremerton, Wash, so he received that award. Through the years, he was able to get that upgraded to a Distinguished Service Cross and now to the Medal of Honor.

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