Larry Steagall, Kitsap Sun photos Retired Maj. Bruce Crandall stands outside his waterfront home last week in Manchester, Wash., with his original flight jacket and helmet. Mr. Crandall, who turns 74 today, is being honored later this month with the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroics in Vietnam as a Army chopper pilot. Click photo for larger image.
	Listen In Listen to comments from Medal of Honor recipient Bruce Crandall: His experience with Hollywood. His friend "Too Tall Freeman" Remembering his fellow soldiers. Can the U.S. win the war in Iraq?
	An American flag, a picture of an Army helicopter and a photo of retired Maj. Bruce P. Crandall, left, and actor Greg Kinnear. Mr. Crandall was a helicopter consultant in the 2002 film "We Were Soldiers," a depiction of the Battle of Ia Drang in which he was portrayed by Mr. Kinnear. Click photo for larger image.

Forty-one years have passed since Army helicopter pilot Bruce Crandall helped rescue 70 wounded soldiers from a raging battle in Vietnam. On Monday, at age 74, he at last will receive the Medal of Honor, America's highest award for combat valor, from President Bush.

"It's a tremendous honor, and the time doesn't really matter," Mr. Crandall said in an interview.

His wingman, Ed "Too Tall to Fly" Freeman, the other helicopter pilot involved in the rescue, received the Medal of Honor in 2001, some 35 years after the mission.

The two have been as close as brothers for half a century. Mr. Crandall said he felt proud and overjoyed when Mr. Freeman finally was awarded the Medal of Honor.

"He deserved it because he volunteered for the mission," Mr. Crandall said. "I was the commander, and that means there was a different responsibility for me."

But after another six years of review, the Army decided that Mr. Crandall also deserves the Medal of Honor for his heroism in saving dozens of men in the Army's 7th Cavalry.

The battle and rescue on Nov. 14, 1965, became the subject of books and the 2002 movie "We Were Soldiers." Actor Greg Kinnear portrayed Mr. Crandall, and Mel Gibson played Lt. Col. Hal Moore, commander of the 7th Cavalry.

Mr. Crandall, then a major, led the 16 chopper crews with Company A of the cavalry's 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion. During the day of the great rescue, he flew for 14¹/₂ hours and completed 22 missions to and from the Battle of la Drang Valley, bullets flying all around him.

"What I remember now is how long and how hellish it was. It kept getting worse as the day went on," Mr. Crandall said.

Joseph Galloway, then a 24-year-old wire service reporter covering the battle, would later co-author a book with Mr. Moore about the battle. They recounted how two U.S. choppers were downed by enemy fire. Mr. Crandall's helicopter also was hit, wounding his crew chief and killing his radio operator.

U.S. infantry soldiers remained on the battlefield, and Mr. Crandall was not about to leave them there to be killed.

He asked for a volunteer to fly alongside him in a second helicopter, back into the teeth of the bullets. Too Tall Freeman, a captain who stood 6 feet, 4 inches, did not hesitate. He wanted the job.

"I really didn't want Ed to volunteer," Mr. Crandall said. "I had no great desire for him to be the one with me. My kids called him Uncle Ed."

Mr. Moore, now a retired three-star general, said the mission meant life or death for dozens of U.S. soldiers on the ground. In his recommendation of Mr. Crandall for the Medal of Honor, Mr. Moore wrote: "If the air bridge failed, the embattled men of the 1st Battalion 7th Cavalry would certainly die in much the same way George Armstrong Custer's cavalrymen died at Little Big Horn -- cut off, surrounded by numerically superior forces, overrun and butchered to the last man."

Mr. Crandall said the strategy of two helicopter pilots combining on the rescue was rooted in practical reasons. "If we had two aircraft, that would split the artillery fire and give us a better chance."

On their flights in and out of the battle, the two pilots delivered rifles, ammunition and water, then picked up wounded men and flew them to safety.

Army helicopters were a new part of warfare then. Nobody knew what to expect from the pilots, a factor that may have contributed to the long delay in them receiving the Medal of Honor.

When President Bush presented Too Tall Freeman with the medal in 2001, he said another president from Texas, Lyndon Johnson, should have had the privilege. Mr. Johnson was in office during the 1960s, his term continuing for three years after the Battle of la Drang Valley.

Mr. Crandall had to wait even longer. But, he said, he did not mind because he never dwelled on the Medal of Honor or any other symbol of what he did.

"I don't think about that day now," he said of the battle. "I remember the relationships from that day."

Plus, he said, others have waited much longer for the Medal of Honor and never been able to enjoy the moment. In particular, he mentioned former President Teddy Roosevelt, who posthumously received the Medal of Honor 102 years after he led volunteer soldiers in the battles of Kettle and San Juan hills.

Mr. Crandall, now retired and living in Manchester, Wash., figures he is a lucky man in every respect.

"I am 74, and I've already lived 18 years longer than anybody in my family," he said.

A fine baseball player in high school in Washington state, he dreamed of being drafted by the New York Yankees. He was drafted all right, but not by a big-league team. Instead, the Army took him in 1953.

No one could have known it then, but that moment did more than change his life. On one horrible November day in 1965, it saved the lives of 70 others in Vietnam.