Pictured with Lt. Col. Bruce Crandall, a Medal of Honor recipient, at the Y-12 National Security Complex History Center are Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Don Naab, left, Y-12’s Ray Smith, and WSI-Oak Ridge Deputy General Manager Jim Rackstraw. Rackstraw served with Crandall in Vietnam. (Photo by B&W Y-12)
Medal of Honor recipient Lt. Col. Bruce Crandall visited the Y-12 National Security Complex last week. Now retired from the U.S. Army, Crandall is one of 80 living Medal of Honor recipients.
Awarded the nation’s highest award for military valor, Crandall flew more than 900 combat missions during the Vietnam War. His bravery in rescuing wounded soldiers and bringing supplies to ground troops was memorialized in the book, “We Were Soldiers Once … And Young,” and in the film “We Were Soldiers.”
He was in East Tennessee to promote the 2014 Medal of Honor Convention, which will be hosted in the Oak Ridge-Knoxville area, and to promote the school program Character Counts.
