{"id":36747,"date":"2013-07-22T17:47:31","date_gmt":"2013-07-22T21:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=36747"},"modified":"2020-12-01T13:23:22","modified_gmt":"2020-12-01T18:23:22","slug":"a-promise-kept-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=36747","title":{"rendered":"A Promise Kept"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two days ago, a US Korean War veteran landed in Pyongyang, Korea<\/a>.\u00a0 His name is Thomas Hudner.<\/p>\n

Hudner was a Naval aviator during the Korean War.\u00a0 On 4 December 1950, his wingman – Jesse Brown – was shot down near the Chosin Reservoir.<\/p>\n

Hudner located the crash site, and noted his wingman was still alive. He then crash-landed his own aircraft near the remains of Brown’s plane.\u00a0 He attempted to save his wingman.<\/p>\n

Sadly, Brown was severely injured – possibly fatally.\u00a0 And in any case, Hudner was unable to free him, even after air-rescue arrived.<\/p>\n

Hudner stayed with his wingman until he’d lost consciousness.\u00a0 The he departed with search and rescue.<\/p>\n

Brown’s last words to Hudner were a whispered,\u00a0“If I don’t make it, please tell Daisy I love her.”\u00a0 (Daisy was Brown’s wife.)\u00a0 Hudner agreed.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Hudner’s last words to Brown were, “We’ll come back for you.”<\/p>\n

Hudner indeed kept the first promise: he sought out and told Mrs. Daisy Brown her late husband’s final words. And although it’s taken over 62 years, he’s now kept both promises.<\/p>\n

Hudner is in Pyongyang with a JPAC search party. They have secured permission to search for Ensign Jesse Brown’s body near the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea.<\/p>\n

. . . <\/strong><\/p>\n

For the record: ENS Jesse L. Brown was the first African-American Naval Aviator. He was also the first US Navy officer killed in Korea. Obviously, that means that LT(JG) Thomas Hudner was white.<\/p>\n

Doug Sterner’s excellent site “Home of Heroes” has a wonderful article that gives much more background on LT(JG) Hudner and ENS Brown. Go there and read it; it’s definitely worth your time. Keep a kleenex or two handy.<\/p>\n

Doug’s article is entitled “No Man Should Die Alone”<\/i><\/a>. I probably don’t need to explain what that means to anyone reading this site.<\/p>\n

For his actions that day, ENS Jesse Brown was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Sadly, it also came with a posthumous Purple Heart.<\/p>\n

For his actions that day, LT(JG) Thomas Hudner was later awarded the Medal of Honor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two days ago, a US Korean War veteran landed in Pyongyang, Korea.\u00a0 His name is Thomas … A Promise Kept<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,119,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical","category-navy","category-real-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36747"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111489,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36747\/revisions\/111489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}