Pedro

...But I force a smile, knowing that my ambition far exceeded my talent. There are no more white horses or pretty ladies at my door.

[Pedro @CHChabs]

@HFTVSports Montreal

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@HabsOnReddit Heart and soul!

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@adamcarolla We all miss Corn Pop

[Pedro @CHChabs]

@NobodymrRobert Eat up with the dumb ass.

[Pedro @CHChabs]

@aroog1278

[Pedro @CHChabs]

Never Forget

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

Two days ago we lost an American hero. His name was Bruce Crandall, and this is his story 🇺🇸

Before he was a legend, Bruce Crandall was a kid from Olympia, Washington, born in 1933, an All-American high school baseball player who joined the National Guard at 15. The Army drafted him in 1953, trained him as an engineer, then put him in a cockpit. His first real job as a pilot was mapping the parts of the world nobody had charted yet, flying for two years over the open desert of Libya, then over thousands of square miles of unmapped mountains and jungle in Central and South America. He married Arlene in 1956. They would raise three sons. He spent the early part of his career flying toward empty places. Then Vietnam asked him to fly toward the worst one.

Sixty years ago, in a clearing called LZ X-Ray, roughly 450 American soldiers were surrounded by an enemy force several times their size. The shooting was so heavy the medevac helicopters turned back. Landing meant dying.

Bruce Crandall made a different choice.

He was a 32-year-old major flying an unarmed Huey. No guns. No armor that mattered. Just a thin aluminum shell and a decision. He pointed the nose at the hottest piece of ground in the war and went in anyway, with his wingman Ed "Too Tall" Freeman right behind him.

Then he did it again. And again. Twenty-two times in a single day.

He flew in the ammunition and water that kept the men alive. He flew out more than 70 wounded soldiers, loading them while rounds punched through the airframe, the cargo bay slick with other men's blood. Each run he could have stopped. Nobody would have blamed him. He kept his word to the men on the ground instead: you will be resupplied, and if you fall, we are coming for you.

He never fired a shot all day. He saved dozens of lives with nothing but nerve and a helicopter.

The men called him "Snake." He went back for a second tour and was shot down in January 1968, this time by friendly bombs falling too close. By the end of the war he had flown more than 900 combat missions.

Then he did something quieter that almost nobody talks about. He went home and lived an ordinary life. He retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1977, earned a master's degree, ran a small California town as its city manager, and spent 17 years in the Public Works Department in Mesa, Arizona, fixing roads and keeping the water running. The man who once flew through a wall of fire spent his later years making sure the streetlights worked.

It took 40 years for the country to catch up to what he did at X-Ray. In 2007, President Bush hung the Medal of Honor around his neck. If you saw We Were Soldiers, that was him on screen, Greg Kinnear in the cockpit, though the real man was braver than any movie could hold.

Col. Bruce "Snake" Crandall died on May 31, 2026, at 93 years old. He outlived the war, the doubts, and most of the men who watched him come screaming back into that valley when no one else would.

Some heroes carry a rifle. This one carried the wounded home, then went back to work like it was nothing.

Rest easy, Snake. We have it from here.

In honor of Lt. Col. Bruce Crandall (1933-2026), the best of us and a true American hero. We won't forget you 🇺🇸

[Pedro @CHChabs]

@adamcarolla Dr. Detroit

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@lady_valor_07

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@thesickpodcasts @TonyMarinaro He was easily out coached in the last series due to his lack of adaptability and not using his depth to the best of it's ability. Good coach for 82 games, inept for best of 7's.

[Pedro @CHChabs]

@Cashloren

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@Keithhambone

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@Destroye83 That's the Wally Bird.

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@Montreal_Expos Left

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@RealBababanaras Prison-general population-solved

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@DarsignyP @Antho_Martineau He shoulda played him because he had fresh legs and he fights and digs and gets under the skin of the other team, which is what the team needed against Carolina.

[Pedro @CHChabs]

@RobertaFresque2 Onions. Onions ruin everything!

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@TVASports @jnblanchetJDQ

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@sourceskingghg Heh heh. The Leafs suck. EVERYBODY knows that.

[Pedro @CHChabs]

@atensnut 1976 El Camino