Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq Read online

  They took off.

  On the OH-6, you sit side by side, with the Plexiglas bubble in front of you. The pilot, Mallette, was in the right-hand seat; Fred Franks was in the left; and Terzala, the crew chief/gunner, was in the back, sitting on the floor, with an M-60 machine gun cradled in his lap. Mallette was as skillful a Loach pilot as you're likely to find; he and Franks had been together for nearly ten straight months of tough flying. They'd taken some hits, but had avoided most. Franks trusted his life with John Mallette and Terzala, without question.

  Whap!

  They were hung up on a telephone wire. It was stretched across the front of the bubble, just at eye level.

  Helicopters striking wires happens on occasion. And it is frequently fatal, especially when your ship is just taking off and full of fuel. If you're a pilot, you try to look where you're going--obviously. But wires are thin and hard to see against a background of trees. And in their case, they had been operating for several weeks in an area where there weren't any wires to worry about. Now here they were, hanging thirty feet in the air, with a phone wire ready to slip one way or the other, up or down their bubble. If it slipped up, it would likely tangle around the rotor head, and down they would go . . . almost instantly to be engulfed in quick, consuming flames. If it slipped down, it would likely hit the skids, catch, and they would flip over. Down they would go into quick, consuming flames.

  "Oh, shit!" Franks blurted out.

  Mallette put the Loach into full power. The wire slipped down. Caught in the skids. Franks braced himself for the Loach to pitch over.

  The line snapped.

  And they lurched up toward the sky.

  Moments later, the Loach peeled off toward the east to take up station just above the canopy top, ready to help Brookshire and the squadron navigate through the lanes of rubber trees. They stayed low so as to avoid hostile fire, and also to keep out of sight of the NVA so that they would not give away their advancing troop positions.

  Franks didn't have much time to reflect on their good luck. He had a mission to continue. M48s, Sheridans, and ACAVs were already in the rubber. But he did have time to think, "That's it for us today. We've had our close call. Everything from here on out will be OK."

  A few minutes later, Franks's Loach was over the airstrip, while H Company (the tanks) and Troop G were maneuvering toward the strip on the ground. Troop E, together with Brookshire and Starry in their command tracks, was less than a kilometer away, and also approaching. Off to the west, up on a little rise, was the town of Snoul.

  If they wanted a meeting engagement, they had it.

  Meanwhile, staring at Franks's Loach was a North Vietnamese manning a .51-caliber AA weapon, his shoulder against the stock, and ammunition clearly fed into it. If he had had it pointed up toward the Loach and pulled the trigger, he would have blown them out of the sky. But luck was with them a second time that morning. When the Loach appeared, the crew was frantically trying to depress the weapon so that they could fire at the unexpected oncoming armor.

  The squadron had achieved the element of surprise. Now they had to maintain the momentum surprise had created and keep the NVA off balance. Now more than ever, speed was crucial. The squadron was committed. They had to move quickly. Franks's immediate job was staring him in the face. There were two NVA down there with that AA gun. Normally the antiaircraft people were aware of the disposition of the rest of their forces, because they all would be mutually supporting. So if one of them could provide useful information about further defensive NVA locations, that would refine the intel picture, help the squadron keep up its momentum--and save American lives. There were also a lot of civilians in the area. If they could better pinpoint the NVA, they could then avoid civilian damage and civilian casualties.

  When Franks wanted to mark a position where they had taken fire for gunships or TAC air to attack, he would drop a smoke grenade nearby and talk the fires in. They had devised a scheme where they would pull the pin from a smoke grenade, then shove the grenade back inside the cardboard canister it was packaged in. The only thing holding the handle was pressure inside the canister. That way, you could kick the canister out of the Loach when the enemy fired. The grenade would then come free of the canister, ignite, and smoke the area you wanted to mark while you were getting the hell out of there and calling in fire.

  Franks kicked a grenade free to mark the AA, and then got on the radio to Brookshire. "Battle Six, this is Three. NVA .51-cal by the smoke."

  "Roger, Three."

  Brookshire ordered Troop E, commanded by Captain Fred Kyle, plus parts of H Company, commanded by Captain Miles Sisson, to move quickly to capture the position and get ready to continue the attack around the Snoul airstrip (used by the rubber plantation owners, but not that day). Brookshire and the squadron command section was with Troop E, as was Colonel Donn Starry.

  Since nobody else was around, Starry grabbed his M-16, some NCOs, and soldiers and charged up toward the gun pit. A moment later, they'd captured the gun and two of the crew, and they were unloading the weapon. But two men from the crew made a run for it--the lieutenant and a soldier--and dived into a bunker a few meters away . . . really just a hole in the ground covered by logs and grassy sod. They probably slept there, or kept ammo there; no one ever found out.

  While that was going on, Franks's Loach set down, and he jumped out to see what info they could pull out of the prisoners. Mallette and Terzala stayed behind in the OH-6, with the engine running, so that they could lift back up fast with whatever new intel they had. Franks, moving fast, didn't grab his steel pot or the CAR 15 he carried in the Loach, though he did have his .45-cal pistol on his belt. And he was wearing the chicken plate. He didn't have much time. By then the unit was pretty exposed to the NVA. The enemy knew there wasn't going to be an air assault and that the squadron had slipped their ambush. They would adjust to this new situation. But how fast? Franks knew they would not run away, but would move to a different position and set up again for them there. So the surprise they were working with now was rapidly fading. He hurried over to the pit.

  The squadron had a Vietnamese interpreter and scout (they called them Kit Carsons; this one they'd nicknamed "Rocky") who was trying to coax information out of the NVA who didn't dive into the bunker. No luck; the men kept silent. Then the Kit Carson went over to the bunker and tried to talk the other two out. In Vietnam, they would have called in once for their surrender, paused a few seconds for a response, and then blown the bunker. Here was different. They badly needed the intel these men could give them.

  Franks, by this time convinced the NVA weren't going to do him any good, was on his way back to the helicopter. "Hey, Major," someone called, "we got two more in a bunker over here."

  So Franks changed his mind about taking off. He pulled out his pistol and raced over to the bunker. When he got there, the Kit Carson was crouched over the hole, trying to get the NVA to surrender.

  "Let's dig them out," Franks called out. "Let's get him out of there." And he started pulling and dragging at the logs over the bunker to try to open it up. He wanted that intel. Battle is full of split-second judgments, and that was a big one for Franks. The NVA threw a Chicom grenade that he never saw.

  Colonel Starry was just then talking to Sergeant Major Horn, the regimental command sergeant major. As he did so, he glanced over at Franks. Out of the corner of his eye, Starry noticed the NVA grenade lying in front of the bunker, fuse lit, next to Franks. It was called a potato masher, because that's what it looked like. They were made by the Chicoms, but they were based on the old German designs everyone has seen in World War II movies--tin cans with handles stuck in them and a cord out the bottom. You pull the cord and that lights the fuse . . . maybe half the time. This time it lit. Starry could see it burning.

  Five or six thoughts ran through his head, all in the moment he stood there watching, for the space of a breath or two, paralyzed.

  And Starry thought, Oh, Jesus, what about Fred? If somebody d
oesn't do something about Fred, he's going to get hurt bad.

  So Starry burst into motion. He actually dove into Franks . . . trying to knock him out of the way of the blast.

  There was an ice-white flash. Then a harsh, head-filling, bone-jarring crack.

  The next thing Donn Starry remembered is that he was backed up against his command track. The next thing Fred Franks remembered, he was lying flat on the ground. He was knocked unconscious by the blast.

  "Jesus . . . oh, my God . . . The major, the major's hit. . . . Get down. There's another one in there. . . . The colonel's hit. . . . What'd he throw? . . . Grenade . . . Is that son of a--still in there? Yeah . . . get a frag . . . Get a god-damn frag. We'll blow that bastard outa there. . . .

  "One-six [Troop E] has got contact, heavy shit. Where's that other f'er? I'll kill that bastard. Man, the major's really f'ed up. . . . The major's the worst."7

  Franks's left foot was a total mess; it was as though some giant had taken a monstrous boulder and smashed it into the foot and leg. When he regained consciousness, the pain was intense. There was also head pain, hard ringing in the ears, and stinging pains in his hand, arm, and side. He moved his head from side to side and simultaneously pulled clumps of ground and grass up, as though that would ease the pain. He said nothing. Then he lifted his eyes and saw the soldiers standing around him. Their faces, and his own pain, told him all he needed to know.

  A medic gave him a shot of morphine, and that gave him a little ease.

  Seven Americans had been standing around when the grenade blew. All of them suffered frag wounds, though none was as bad as Franks's.

  Contrary to his own orders, Donn Starry hadn't worn his chicken plate that day. If he had, he would have only been scratched. Fred Franks's chicken plate saved his life, thanks to Terzala. It was in shreds. As it was, Starry got ten or fifteen holes of various sizes in his face and down the front part of his body. The worst of these was in the stomach; a frag had taken a long strip of flesh out of there. Though there was a lot of blood, this was basically a surface wound, and he was able to walk around on his own after he'd had a chance to pull himself together.

  Meanwhile, Master Sergeant Bob Bolan, acting squadron command sergeant major, who had been Franks's operations sergeant and a great coach for him when he had been new to Vietnam, took his .45-caliber pistol and directed the action that destroyed the bunker and killed the two NVA soldiers. Specialists Gus Christian and Dave Kravick in E-18, a Sheridan, were there, providing cover. MSG Bolan was himself killed in action in July 1970 and remains to this day one of Franks's personal heroes.

  "Medevac on the way!"

  They set up an LZ with colored smoke. But it turned out the medevac wasn't the first ship down. Colonel Starry's command-and-control Huey came in ahead of it.

  Somebody helped Colonel Starry aboard. Then others lifted in Fred Franks's litter. He was feeling dry in the mouth, from the morphine. And he would fade in and out, from the pain in his crushed foot and from the drug. The other troops who were hit in the incident also were aboard.

  One of the other AA positions was still operating. When Starry's Huey took off, it put serious fire in their direction. With tracers flaming close . . . erupting all around them . . . the pilot took the ship down low, skimming over treetops. As out of it as he was by then, Franks could hear the popping sounds from the AA.

  It was less than fifteen minutes after the grenade blew.

  LATER that day, the battle that started near the airstrip expanded and intensified. Though they tried to avoid it, the Blackhorse had to take the fight into the town of Snoul. When it was all over, they had dealt the NVA a defeat, but at the cost of serious collateral damage to the town. If they had managed to obtain the intel Fred Franks wanted from the NVA at the AA site, all that might have been avoided.

  Thirty minutes after Franks was lifted out of Snoul, he was at the aid station at Quan Loi, near the 11th ACR base camp. The aid station was a triage area. They decided which of the wounded they could fix up there and which had to be medevaced back to Long Binh. Franks was clearly evacuation material.

  When the doctor at Quan Loi looked him over, Franks asked him, "Am I going to lose my foot?"

  "Nah," he said. "You'll be OK. Don't worry about it."

  They always underestimate combat wounds. . . .

  A medevac took him to the 93rd Evacuation Hospital at Long Binh. When he arrived, they rushed him into surgery. And during the next two days, he was in surgery again, more than once. How many operations he had then, he doesn't know. He was pretty much out of it during that time.

  He asked a doctor at Long Binh: "Doc, am I going to lose my foot?"

  "Nah," he said. "Six months and you'll be up and around doing duty."

  On 7 May, they flew him to Camp Zama Hospital in Japan. He was there for a week.

  He asked a doctor at Zama, Dr. Jeff Malke, "Doc, am I going to lose my foot?"

  "You don't want to hear this," Malke answered, "but six months from now, you're going to decide you'd be better off without that foot. But you're probably going to have to go through a battle to decide that yourself. You're not going to get around well on that leg. Major, that is just not a good-looking leg and foot."

  Dr. Malke was a wise man, but Fred Franks did not want to hear such wisdom just then.

  He said to himself, The hell with that. He doesn't know what he's talking about. I'm going to beat this thing. I haven't met a hurdle yet I can't get over.

  It was not, in truth, a good-looking leg and foot. The entire ankle was shattered, dislocated. The bones of the ankle and foot were splintered or crushed, and part of the lower leg had serious damage.

  The war was over for Franks. Little did he realize that his, and the Army's, biggest battles lay ahead.

  FRED Franks tells what happened next.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Valley Forge

  2408 Cleveland Avenue, West Lawn, Pennsylvania.

  That's where I grew up.

  My family moved there in the fall of 1946, right after Boston lost the World Series to St. Louis. I was nine. Housing was scarce in 1946, and my dad was lucky to find the place. It was what was called a double home, a two-family house, and it had been built in the twenties. There were no sidewalks out front, and to the rear of the house were open fields where people still hunted for small game. A baseball diamond was across the street next to the double railroad tracks of the Reading Railroad. It was there and on other athletic fields around Berks County that I learned about competition and teamwork.

  It was a great place to grow up. Even though the Army sent Denise and me all over the world, that part of Pennsylvania is still home to us. In that neighborhood, my sister, Frances, my brother, Farrell, and I grew up with a spirit of togetherness--my mother and dad saw to that. And it is where I first met Denise in 1949, right after she moved into the school district and took the seat in front of me in homeroom in Wilson High School. We learned values at home from our family and had them strengthened in that community in school, in church, in sports, and with our friends and their families.

  It was a modest, mostly blue-collar community. People worked hard, many in the factories of the Textile Machine Works or the Berkshire Knitting Mills in nearby Wyomissing. Homes were small, but clean, and well kept inside and out. There was pride there, and humility. Hard work was the ethic. Earn your way to the top, then when you get there, be modest, don't get a big head.

  In the summer of 1969, after I got orders to Vietnam, Denise, our daughter, Margie, and I moved into the old homestead at 2408. The house had been vacant since Mom and Dad had moved to Endwell, New York, in 1968, following my dad's promotion to a senior management position with the Endicott Johnson Shoe Corporation. I had just finished three years at West Point as an instructor in the English Department and as assistant varsity baseball coach. I felt good that Margie and Denise would be home while I was gone, and that Margie would go to the same grade school in West Wyomissing that Frances, Farrell, a
nd I had attended many years earlier. Some of the same teachers were still there. And Denise's parents, Eva and Harry, lived less than a half mile away, in the house where Denise grew up. Most of our relations were within fifty miles. Just as when we had both grown up, the three us were surrounded by family and friends.

  In late July 1969, as I kissed Denise and Margie good-bye in the Philadelphia airport, I was off to war, but I was happy that my family was in good hands.

  It was to that house that I would return on Christmas 1970 to decide whether to have my left leg amputated.

  VALLEY FORGE GENERAL HOSPITAL

  Valley Forge General Hospital, just outside Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, is forty-five minutes by medevac helicopter from the hospital at Fort Dix, New Jersey. I had spent the night there after a long, C-141 medevac trip from Camp Zama hospital in Japan. It was the Army's policy to place long-term-care soldiers as close to home as possible, and Phoenixville was about an hour's drive for Denise each way, mostly on two-lane roads. On 18 May 1970, the helicopter landed on the asphalt Maltese Cross landing pad at Valley Forge.