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Forum URL: http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi
Forum Name: Undocumented Features General
Topic ID: 2211
Message ID: 13
#13, RE: Fragment the Second
Posted by Gryphon on Feb-28-14 at 05:00 PM
In response to message #12
>I'd wonder if "Snakeshit" was around, but General Currier has a
>nickname already.

If not a Wedge Defense Force pilot, it is a virtual certainty that there is a Colonial Warrior with that nickname, though his or her official on-paper callsign might be something a little more press-friendly. (If you recall, whenever anyone's "officially" talking to Snakeshit Crandall on the radio in We Were Soldiers, they call him "Ancient Serpent 6". :)

>(In the movie We Were Soldiers Captain Ed "Too Tall" Freeman
>was a helicopter pilot and 2nd in command of Company "A" of the 229th
>Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) during
>Vietnam War.

It's true! He's a pretty fascinating character, too, barely touched on in the film because he's not part of the main cast. The real Ed Freeman was in the Navy in WWII and fought as an infantry soldier in Korea - flying helicopters in Vietnam was his third military career.

Some of the most interesting figures in Vietnam War history are like that. The late Michael J. Novosel (author of Dustoff: Memoir of an Army Aviator), for instance, flew bombers with the Army Air Force in WWII, then transitioned into the USAF when it became a separate service in 1947. He left active duty after Korea, and when he tried to get his reserve commission reactivated so he could volunteer for Vietnam, they told him he was too old and they didn't need any more officers at his level... so he resigned and joined the Army to fly helicopters as a warrant officer. That's pretty baller, you ask me.

>Major Bruce "Snakeshit" Crandall was his CO. Freeman and
>Crandall are real people. Both were awarded the Medal of Honor for
>their actions in Vietnam during the Battle of Ia Drang Valley.

Bruce Crandall is a god damn rock star. The stuff they show him doing in We Were Soldiers (which is a helluva movie, by the way, kids - don't let Mel Gibson scare you off) not only really happened, that wasn't the only time in his career as an Army aviator he did something that badass.

I had a long and complicated explication of my internally conflicted views on warfare and warfighters here, but you know what, the hell with it - this isn't the time or place. The fact remains that Bruce Crandall is a god damn rock star.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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