A US helicopter pilot who rescued more than 70 wounded soldiers under heavy enemy fire has been awarded the Medal of Honour - 41 years after his life-saving mission.
Retired Major Bruce Crandall will belatedly be given America's highest award for gallantry at the White House today for the part he played in one of the fiercest battles fought in the Vietnam war.
The four-decade delay in recognising his bravery has been put down to lost military paperwork and oversight.
Mr Crandall, who will be 74 next week, became a hero to the men of the US 7th Cavalry - the successors to General George Armstrong Custer's wiped-out command at the Little Bighorn in 1876 - for repeatedly flying through heavy fire to pick up wounded and deliver ammunition.
His exploits were depicted in the Hollywood film "We Were Soldiers" in which Mel Gibson told the story of what almost became another US last stand in Vietnam's Ia Drang Valley in November, 1965.
The Seventh Cavalry were surrounded and pinned down by overwhelming North Vietnamese Army numbers and subjected to round-the-clock assaults over three days and nights.
As the NVA infantry attacks threatened to capture the helicopter landing zone inside the US perimeter, Crandall volunteered to fly hazardous missions in an unarmed aircraft to keep the air cavalrymen supplied with ammunition and water and take out their wounded.
He rescued more than 70 soldiers when other pilots refused to risk their lives and their aircraft on a virtual suicide mission into a "hot" zone.
Lieutenant-Colonel Harold Moore, the 7th's commander at the battle, said his men would have been "overrun and butchered" if it had not been for Crandall's resupply runs.
Mr Crandall said yesterday: "Most Medal of Honour awards are posthumous. I'm just glad I'm still around to collect it, even if it is more than 40 years late.
"We were the first airmobile unit and we went to war in a hurry lacking a lot of the administrative back-up the army has now. That's why the paperwork was either screwed up or not done properly.
"But better late than never."
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