Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

Major Fred Franks fought in Vietnam with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, the "Blackhorse," from August 1969, when he arrived, to May 1970, when he was severely wounded during the Cambodian invasion. He had previously served with the Blackhorse in Germany for almost three and a half years, from March 1960 to July 1963, and he was glad to be back in his old outfit. He was a cavalry officer; he knew cavalry; cavalry was his home. And the Blackhorse was his regiment.

Like so many Americans before him, Franks got off the plane with his fellow soldiers at Long Binh, Vietnam, ready to do his duty. He had flown over in a stretch DC-8 out of Travis Air Force Base, just north of San Francisco. Just the day before, he had said good-bye to Denise and Margie at the Philadelphia International Airport and flown to San Francisco. His kid brother, Farrell, had driven them to the airport, and his mother and dad met them there to say good-bye. It was a quick forty-eight-hour transition from what soldiers called "the world" to a combat zone.

The first thing that hit him getting off the plane was the unmistakable smell. It was a combination of the heat, the smoke in the air from burning wood, and who knew what else. But he would never forget it.

Fighter aircraft were parked close by. He heard sounds of jet fighters taking off and flying overhead, as well as the unmistakable Vietnam sound of UH-1 "Huey" helicopter rotor blades slapping in the air. He was intent on taking in as much as he could, right away, as he thought back on how he'd gotten there.

After graduating from West Point in 1959, Franks had asked for and was commissioned into armor. He was a "tanker," and yet he saw himself as more than that. Though tanks are the centerpiece of cavalry — they give it its punch — cavalry goes beyond tanks. Armored cavalry is the first team; it has a command freedom, an esprit, an ethos. In the cavalry, small units operate a combination of potent weapons systems (in the Army, this is called "combined arms") that give them the capability to move fast and hit hard. On the battlefield, these units operate under decentralized leadership in missions that are out in front of everyone else.

First, though, Franks had to go through some fundamentals: a basic armor course at Fort Knox, then Ranger and airborne schools at Fort Benning. Chest deep on patrol in the dark waters of the Florida swamps and then in the numbing cold of the Dahlonega, in the Georgia hills, Franks learned a lot about himself and combat. It was the best individual peacetime training he ever got in the Army.

Franks did his apprentice work in armored cavalry along the Iron Curtain between Czechoslovakia and West Germany during a time that included the 1961 Berlin crisis and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. In the crucible of daily life as a young troop leader in the Blackhorse, he learned from the officers and noncommissioned officers the tough, hard skills of small-unit tactical leadership. Combat veterans of World War II and Korea drilled them on combat cavalry fundamentals and taught them tribal wisdom through war stories during the long nights at the border camps along the Czech border. Like so many others, he developed his tactical skills by doing his job day to day in the field, by listening, working hard, and by making damn-fool mistakes, and being allowed to get back up and learn from them.

For his first fifteen months in the Blackhorse, Franks was a lieutenant leader of the smallest combined-arms unit in the U.S. Army, an armored cavalry platoon of scouts, tanks, mechanized infantry, and a self-propelled mortar. From there he was the squadron's support platoon leader, responsible for leading truck resupply of the squadron. For the next eight months, he was executive officer (second in command) of a cavalry troop. Then he commanded Troop I.

When he headed to Vietnam, it was the Blackhorse he intended to belong to — but he almost didn't make it. By the time Franks got to Vietnam, the beginnings of the U.S. drawdown had screwed up the individual replacement system so badly that all orders were canceled, and new replacements were sequestered upon arrival to await new orders. He was instructed not to call anyone. No way, Franks thought, I've got to get to a phone. He got through to a sergeant at the Blackhorse unit at Long Binh. "Wait right there, don't go anywhere else, we'll be over to get you. We knew you were coming."

The next morning, true to the sergeant's word, the Blackhorse sent a vehicle over and picked him up. "Major Franks? Come with me, sir. Your orders are all cut and we're ready to go." When Franks saw that rearing black horse patch on the soldier's shoulder, he felt as though he had seen a family member. Actually, he had.

In 1969, the Blackhorse was one of four cavalry regiments on active duty in the Army. The others, 2nd, 3rd, and 14th, were in Germany. The Blackhorse had been withdrawn from Germany in the summer of 1964 and stationed at Fort Meade, Maryland. When the big U.S. buildup in Vietnam began in 1965, it soon became apparent that an armored cavalry regiment would be a valuable asset in the war, and the 11th ACR was deployed to Vietnam, arriving in 1966. It immediately established itself as a tough combat regiment, successfully completing a wide variety of missions on many different terrains. Soon it had inflicted heavy punishment on the Viet Cong and the NVA, the North Vietnamese Army.

The Army is a competitive organization, but Franks was a competitive man. When he joined the 11th ACR in Vietnam, he had not yet met a wall that could stop him. If there was a hurdle to leap — physical, psychological, or intellectual — he leapt it. If he failed the first time, he worked and trained until he made it over. He was an athlete; he was used to intense training and to hard drills. And he was used to the payoff that hard training gave him. Though at five-eight, he couldn't be called physically impressive, he was a talented baseball player who'd reached a career batting average of better than.300 on the West Point baseball team, and been team captain. There's a good chance he would have succeeded as a professional ballplayer. He was tempted. In 1961, the choice confronted him: to be a soldier or a baseball player. Franks chose soldier.

There was also in him a finely tuned, well-developed mind, and in 1964, the Army sent him to Columbia University to study for an M.A. in English. Afterward, he was scheduled to teach at West Point. It was a two-year course at a high-ranking school, but characteristically, he pushed it. He finished the degree in a year, in the belief that he would be sent to Vietnam for the second year, and then to West Point following that. Somehow a bureaucratic foul-up put a stop to that: "If we've set you up for two years of study," he was told, "you have to put yourself through two years of study." And it turned out he couldn't go to Vietnam in 1965 after all. Daunted, yet still pushing hard, he continued at Columbia and completed most of the course work for a Ph.D. Then he went on, as planned, to West Point, where, on a teacher's schedule, he had the opportunity to finish up his days at a reasonable hour and perhaps spend real time with Denise and Margie (like most young Army officers, he'd been away more often than he was home).

Don't count on it. He did get to spend more time with them, but he also hit the books and completed his Ph.D. orals, while carrying a full teaching load and taking on the job of assistant varsity baseball coach for the fall and spring. On top of that, he took a correspondence course from Fort Sill to keep his nuclear weapons proficiency current, a necessary skill for officers in the 1960s.

Serious American involvement in the Vietnam War began in 1962. By the late 1960s, U.S. forces had grown to over half a million, and with that increase came a number of plans and programs for victory. Though not all of them were ill conceived, even the best needed time for successful completion, and some came too late. The United States was out of time. By the late summer of 1969, strong antiwar feelings in the States, brought about primarily by the ever-increasing American casualties, had caused President Nixon to begin a general withdrawal. At the same time, he hoped to give the South Vietnamese government some chance at survival. The program was called Vietnamization. Its aim was to turn more and more of the ground war over to the South Vietnamese, while the United States simultaneously provided air and logistics assistance and began to withdraw its own combat troops. Operations were launched to attempt to buy time for the South Vietnamese, such as the continuation of the "secret" bombings of Cambodia, then the invasion of Cambodia in May 1970. Others would follow.

In August 1969, the regimental command post of the Blackhorse was at the village of Quan Loi. Quan Loi was just east of the market town of An Loc, forty kilometers from the Cambodian border and about a forty-five-minute helicopter ride or a four-hour armed convoy trip from Long Binh. A C-130-capable airstrip was also at Quan Loi, and the regiment's air cavalry troop operated out of there. The 11th Cavalry rear base was at Long Binh, near Saigon, the largest U.S. Army logistics facility in Vietnam.

The regiment was commanded at the time by Colonel Jimmie Leach, an experienced and aggressive cavalry commander. A World War II tanker, Leach had commanded a tank company in General Creighton Abrams's 37th Tank Battalion in the 4th Armored Division.

One of the regiment's missions was to keep open the major road from Lai Khe, in the south, through An Loc, to Loc Ninh to the north. To do this required a daily mine sweep of the road, plus active reconnaissance of the area to either side of it. All three of the regiment's squadrons and the air cavalry troop were engaged in this operation. The Blackhorse at the time was under the operational control of the Big Red One, the 1st Infantry Division, whose headquarters were at Lai Khe. Other missions involved direct attack on NVA units when they were found and fixed, and area reconnaissance of the entire area to keep the NVA out. Meanwhile, as part of the consolidation that was one of the first consequences of Vietnamization, the 1st Infantry had been given orders to begin to redeploy back to the United States. As part of that redeployment, they would give up some of their rear base camps around Long Binh and Di An, and the Blackhorse rear base was moved from Xuan Loc, their home from the time they came to Vietnam, to Long Binh. Some residual 2nd Squadron elements were to move to Di An.

When Franks reported for duty, Leach assigned him to 2nd Squadron, but ordered him back south to Xuan Loc to help clear up some problems and to plan the rear base move to Di An. Franks knew he had a lot to learn in a short period of time.

Franks was what the troops called a "fanoogie," abbreviated as FNG and standing for "f 'ing new guy." It was a way for veterans to set themselves apart from the newcomers and to tell the new guys that they had lots to learn and some rites of passage to go through. There was an official way to do it, too — the Army sent all newcomers through a five-day course in-country to indoctrinate them in the ways of the unit and combat techniques and the enemy. Unfortunately, those courses were at Long Binh and Franks was at Xuan Loc, some distance away. He needed a substitute crash course fast.

The course he needed was right under his nose at Xuan Loc. Franks had always felt new leaders and commanders should spend a lot of time listening, and not a lot of time sounding off: When you join a new unit, you find mostly soldiers and leaders who want to belong to a great outfit. They want you to succeed. They want you to be able to lead and command them well. Give them a chance to tell you early on how they think they can help you do that. It had worked for him in the Blackhorse before. Gain the soldiers' confidence and respect by treating them the same way you want to be treated. Earn your way on the team in a hurry and learn while you are doing it. The first few weeks are when you learn the ropes and you also make a first impression, and, like it or not, as soon as you get there, you are being sized up by the soldiers, your peers, and your superiors. They will put you through both formal and informal rites of passage to see what you are made of. You just have to be ready to rise to the challenge.

So Franks wanted to spend as much time as possible with the soldiers, because it was the best way to read himself into this new situation. Many of the NCOs there in 2nd Squadron had seen considerable action in the past months. All he had to do was ask. Franks was able to draw out of them information about the country and terrain, the enemy, and about small-unit fighting techniques and tactics. He also had the opportunity to spend time with Captain Claude "Keyes" Hudson, who had been commanding the 2nd Squadron rear base, had recently been a cavalry troop commander, and was soon to go home. Hudson turned out to be a walking repository of lessons learned, and Franks pumped him for more information. Franks knew how to fight troops and the squadron. What he did not know were the actual tactical methods that worked here, in this terrain, against this enemy. Keyes and the NCOs gave him an introduction to Vietnam and to the Blackhorse he could not have gotten anywhere else.

That was lucky, because what Franks had gotten back in the States hadn't been any help. Before he left, he had been sent to Fort Knox for a standard "refresher course," whose aim was to bring officers up to speed for service in Vietnam. Franks couldn't believe what he found. They were teaching World War II in Central Europe, and using an old series of radios no longer in service in Vietnam. After a few days, he'd stopped going to class and sought out Vietnam veterans, especially Blackhorse veterans, for information. It was invaluable, and a far sight better.

Then he got a break. Lieutenant Colonel Jim Aarstaat wanted him to come forward to Quan Loi to become the 2nd Squadron S-3 (in charge of plans and operations) when the current squadron S-3, Major John Gilbreath, went on R and R. Though the job was officially temporary, it looked likely to become permanent. When Gilbreath returned, he would probably become the squadron XO (second in command) and Franks would remain S-3.

To Franks, this was the best job you could have as a major in the Blackhorse. In the U.S. Army, majors do not command; the closest they could get to the action was as a battalion or squadron S-3. It was the first team. To be a major S-3 in an elite outfit like the Blackhorse was a real honor, and the toughest, most challenging combat job an army major could find.

But it sure happened fast. John Gilbreath was about twenty kilometers west of Quan Loi operating out of a small firebase. Franks asked Gilbreath when he was going on R and R. He said tomorrow. They had a short transition meeting about the squadron mission and how it was conducting operations, then Gilbreath took him up on a reconnaissance flight over the area. It was fast and low, and the only place for him to ride was on the floor in the back of the OH-6 helicopter as Gilbreath pointed out the terrain, the enemy routes, and recent battle sites. And that was it. He was the S-3 of the squadron. He'd been in Vietnam for all of two weeks. Years later, Franks would remember those two weeks as he thought about how much time VII Corps needed to prepare for combat in Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, all this was not unfamiliar. The organization was basically the same as in Germany. The enemy was different, but it was apparent that the squadron operated just as he would expect it to. The cavalry troops, including the air cavalry troop, would find and fix the enemy. Then, while air and artillery isolated them on the battlefield, sealed off the enemy retreat, and simultaneously pounded the enemy with fires, the big fist of the tank company would maneuver against them, along with the cavalry troops. The job of the S-3—under the commander — was to orchestrate it all and bring all the weapons into the fight simultaneously.

As a young officer in a cavalry troop, you pick up an enormous amount of experience doing these things. You're involved in operations where a large number of actions are going on simultaneously, almost all of them out of your sight. You need a creative imagination. You have to know what's going on by listening to reports on the radio. You see some of it. You hear most of it. You picture it in your mind. One action in the woods. Another over by the river. Another near the town. Maybe some indirect fire behind the woods. Maybe some attack helicopters between the woods and the town. And maybe some close air support coming in along the river. Quick decisions are required, often without seeing it all except in your head. You have to figure time/distance factors. Can a unit reinforce in time? Can they beat the enemy to the punch? All of these actions are happening simultaneously, and all of them happening, much of the time, under conditions of stress and fatigue, in all kinds of weather, and with casualties. And so as a cavalry officer, you grow to be proficient at juggling half a dozen or so thoughts simultaneously in your head, picturing actions in your mind's eye, and constantly making judgments about when to act and when to remain silent and let things go on.

Because he had had so much practice at this kind of "battle orchestration" during his time in Germany with the Blackhorse, Franks had no doubt that he could do what he had to as S-3 in Vietnam. It was a matter of adapting quickly to the techniques to be used in this terrain against this enemy, and at the squadron level, instead of the smaller cavalry troop.

And he knew he better get it right from the start, because there were a lot of soldiers depending on it. They had every right to expect him to know what he was doing, and if he did not measure up, they had every right to get someone else.

When he took over as 2nd Squadron S-3, this is what Fred Franks had to deal with:

An armored cavalry squadron in Vietnam normally consisted of a headquarters, with about 200 troops; three lettered cavalry troops (2nd Squadron troops were E, F, and G), each with better than 130 men; a tank company of seventeen M48A3 tanks and about 85 troops; and a howitzer battery of six 155-mm artillery pieces, with about 125 troops. Later, the 2nd Squadron would get two eight-inch howitzers, with about forty troops, and a platoon of 40-mm antiaircraft pieces, which was an attached unit that went with the squadron. A combat engineer platoon from the regiment's 919th Engineer Company also went with them. At that time, the cavalry troops did not have tanks, but instead vehicles known as ACAVs, Armored Cavalry Assault Vehicles (M113s), which were lightly armored tracked vehicles armed with machine guns. The squadron also had a section of four helicopters to be used for command and control of squadron operations. There were two UH-1 "Hueys" and two OH-6 "Loaches." Normally, the squadron commander used the UH-1s, and the S-3 used the OH-6s. There were crews for each aircraft and they flew alternate days, while the commander and S-3 flew every day. The regiment also had an aviation troop with Cobra attack helicopters and OH-6 scout helicopters. These normally flew in support of daily squadron operations or worked independently at the regimental commander's directions. The Cobras were called "red" teams, and the scouts were "white" teams (cavalry colors are red and white). When they worked in pairs (one Cobra and one Loach), they were called "pink" teams.

The job of the S-3 was to plan the operations and run the nerve center of the squadron. Under the commander's guidance, the S-3 would devise a plan that would ensure that the elements of the squadron combat power — artillery, engineers, tanks, scouts, cavalry troops, and air — were all tied together in some coherent way to do what the commander wanted done to defeat the enemy at least cost to the squadron. At the forward command post, the commander and S-3 would work out of three M577 command post tracked vehicles. They each also had their own command tracked vehicle, M113 ACAVs.

The command post of a cavalry squadron is small and informal. It was — and is — organized like this: below the executive officer was a staff — S-1, S-2, S-3, and S-4 (S is for "staff "). The -1 handled personnel; the -2 handled intelligence; the -3 handled plans and operations; and the -4 handled logistics. Normally, the S-3 was the senior of these four and coordinated with them. The 2nd Squadron of the 11th ACR in Vietnam was set up so that the personnel and logistics elements, and the XO, normally stayed at the base camp (at Quan Loi at that time), while the operational element (S-2 and S-3) was out ranging as far as fifty kilometers from there. Lieutenant Colonel Aarstaat would choose where to be to command if a fight broke out. There was a fight nearly every day.

By August 1969, the enemy was now no longer the Viet Cong, but North Vietnamese regulars. The Tet Offensive of 1968, which has usually been perceived as a disaster for U.S. forces, was actually a catastrophe for the Viet Cong. Tet virtually destroyed the Viet Cong as an operational force. Afterward, the North Vietnamese Army took over military operations in the south. The few Viet Cong that were left might have laid mines or involved themselves with other minor actions, but any serious engagements involving 2nd Squadron were always with the North Vietnamese. This was army in the field against army in the field, at least for the Blackhorse. The NVA were excellent light infantry and they were hard to find and fix, but they were not guerrillas.

When Fred Franks took over as S-3, the 2nd Squadron part of the regimental mission was to keep open the highway — actually, a two-lane dirt road — from An Loc to Lai Khe, a distance of about thirty kilometers. The regiment used the road for its own supply to An Loc from Long Binh, but civilian traffic also needed it. To establish that the South Vietnamese government was in control of the area, the free flow of normal civilian traffic had to be restored. By this time, the Blackhorse and the 1st Infantry Division, along with some ARVN units, had established good control over the area. The threat of mines remained, but the probability of ambushes by NVA units was low. Second Squadron's mission was to keep it that way by aggressive reconnaissance to the west of the road out to distances of twenty to thirty kilometers. There they would intercept any NVA units moving in the direction of the road.

In late August, 2nd Squadron operated out of a firebase approximately twenty kilometers from An Loc and ten kilometers west of the highway. The operational element of the main command post (the S-2 and S-3) was there, along with the tank company and artillery battery. At night, and in the location where they had been operating, the cavalry troops set up a tight laager for self-protection.

During the day, the squadron aviation could fly over the convoys and be available if a fight broke out. When convoys were not operating (there was normally one per day), the squadron was engaged in aggressive reconnaissance in troop-sized operational areas to the west of the road, where they looked for the enemy and frequently found him. The threat from ground attack at the time was so low that the cavalry troops were not involved in protecting the convoys. But artillery locations were spaced in mutually supporting positions along the road. The squadron commander or S-3 would fly over the convoy, and could deal with the enemy with fires available from the artillery along the route, or from close air support or helicopter attack aviation.

It was during this time that Franks received his baptism by fire. This is how he remembers it:

During this period of almost three weeks, the 2nd Squadron had a number of engagements with the NVA, ranging from a single enemy rocket fired into their firebase to an NVA company-size attack against one of the cavalry troops. In the course of these operations, Franks would do all the things an S-3 of a cavalry squadron would do in combat: call in and adjust artillery fire, call in air strikes, maneuver forces on the ground, and in a battle, orchestrate all the fire and movement simultaneously over a single and tightly disciplined radio frequency. No U.S. soldiers were lost to enemy action. Although he was not yet a seasoned combat veteran, he was a changed soldier from the one of three weeks before.

In early September, Lieutenant Colonel Grail Brookshire replaced Aarstaat as squadron commander, and officially made Fred Franks the 2nd Squadron S-3 (and Gilbreath the XO). For all he had learned, however, Franks knew he had a long way to go. He also was aware that he had to execute while he grew in combat experience. He did not want his growth to be at the expense of the soldiers. Over the next nine months of combat, he would form some very definitive thoughts about how to win at least cost to his soldiers. Some were confirmations of things he'd developed from previous experience in training, education, and command. Some were a direct result of seeing what worked in combat. They were both parts of being a soldier — matters of the mind and matters of the heart. For soldiering involves much thinking and intense problem solving, but it is also an intensely passionate profession, because in command, in order to do your duty, you put in harm's way that which you have come to love so much — your soldiers (as Michael Shaara said so well in his Civil War novel, The Killer Angels).

Fred Franks knew what made units great in peacetime training. He was now to see what made a unit great in combat. And he was to learn that they were the same.

THE MIND OF A COMMANDER[4]

Many parts make up a commander — many attitudes, skills, experiences, and convictions. Some of these are fundamental and eternal — duty, honor, country, courage, integrity, loyalty, patriotism. Others are more particular and personal; they grow and develop over time. The particular constellation of attitudes, skills, experiences, and convictions that Fred Franks brought to 2nd Squadron, and which grew and developed during his months in Vietnam, later characterized his performance as a commander, up to and including his command of VII Corps in Desert Storm. You don't understand Fred Franks unless you understand these.

Let's start with the blindingly obvious. When you fight in combat, you don't fight halfway. Fighting is for keeps. When you play ball, you walk away from the game. You lose today, you play again tomorrow. But in combat the stakes are final. It can bring about the deaths of people you've worked with, are responsible for, and care about, or your own death. You don't get second chances. This means, as I've already indicated Fred Franks is fond of saying, when you win, you don't want to win close. You don't want drama. You want to win 100-0, not 24–23. In other words, there's no room for sloppiness. And there's no room for lapses in alertness. It means that when you're a soldier, you want not just a small edge over your enemy, but as large an edge as you can get. Thus, where you can, you want to work your units into situations where the difference between winning and losing, or between life and death, does not hang on acts of extreme courage — or on Medal of Honor-winning bravery. It may come to that and the mission might demand it, but you try to work it so those actions add to the edge. For a soldier, ordinary courage should be more than enough (and ordinary courage is not at all easy!). Ordinary courage means doing what you're supposed to be doing as well as you can; and it means not letting down those who depend on you. Acts of ordinary courage sometimes require extraordinary measures… but that's another story.

What gives them the edge they need? Here are the ways, as Franks came to know them:

Franks was to confirm what he already knew: It all starts with the soldiers themselves. It is their training and courage, and the quality of their noncommissioned officer and officer small-unit leadership, that win.

In those early days of combat, Franks quickly saw that the real heroes of Vietnam were the soldiers who by and large had been drafted and who had come to Vietnam to do what our country had asked them to do. In the 2nd Squadron Franks found a tight-knit team who were fiercely proud of the unit and who looked out for one another. They lived out of their vehicles for months on end, fighting from them, living in them. Day after day they would go on their missions, looking for the enemy and on most days finding him. By late August 1969, they had been at it constantly for almost six months. Franks wanted to be part of that team.

He also began to see something else.

By this time, Vietnam had gotten personal for most in the ranks as well as for the thousands of next of kin of those killed in action, wounded, missing in action, or POWs. Many had already served there, some more than once. Some of Franks's West Point class of 1959 had been killed in action, one from his cadet company. In the spring of 1969, two friends of Franks were killed in action a week apart. (One of his pilots in the 2nd Squadron, it turned out, had been flying the helicopter the day one of those friends had been killed; he and Franks would talk about it.) And so when Franks went to Vietnam in the summer of 1969, he did so as a professional, but the war quickly became part of his soul.

There are four main ingredients of combat power:

• FIREPOWER: Using everything available to you at the right place and time.

• PROTECTION: Preserving your force for use at the right time.

• COMMAND AND LEADERSHIP: The battlefield is a chaotic place. If your side is less mired in chaos than your enemy's, if your force is more agile and can respond more quickly to changing events, you have a big edge. You do that through vision and sensing. If you can see your own units and the enemy better than your enemy can see you, then he is, relatively speaking, more entangled in confusion and chaos. You also have to see in your mind's eye what you cannot see physically. You have to know where and how to get the right information to form that vision.

• MANEUVER: If you can move around the battlefield faster than your enemy in the right combination of units, you effectively increase your own numbers and increase the number of directions from which you can hit the enemy. This is how you gain and maintain the initiative and win.

Combat discipline is not the same as parade-ground discipline. The latter has its uses — though these don't figure high in the greater scheme of things. On the other hand, without combat discipline, you lose. Combat discipline means maintaining weapons and maintaining vehicles. It means doing what is right even when no one is watching. It means following orders. It means staying put and fighting if that is the mission, even though the odds may not look good. It means applying lots of violence with focused firepower on the enemy, but when the engagement is over, being able to shut it off. And it means staying alert and on edge, and looking out for one another.

Noncommissioned officers and leaders and commanders need to know how to keep the edge that comes from combat discipline, especially during lulls between combat actions. If units don't engage in a combat action at least once every three or four days, their effectiveness falls off very rapidly. Units and leaders cannot get complacent. Complacency is a fatal disease. With that in mind, Brookshire and Franks would spend much of their time going out and around, visiting units, listening to the troops, talking to the troop commanders (and the troop commanders and noncommissioned officers would, of course, be doing the same thing), making sure the troops were using battle lulls to clean their weapons, keep their ammo clean, maintain their vehicles, and attend to some personal hygiene (not easy, living out of a combat vehicle).

Focus is equal parts concentration and awareness. Ground combat is relentless, both physically and mentally. You live and fight from your vehicles, no letup, no rear areas, nothing but day after day of looking for the enemy. If you give in to exhaustion, you grow careless or overconfident, and then you become a hazard not only to yourself but, if you are a leader, even more so to your soldiers.

Before a planned battle, you get focused, no matter how tired you are. It requires every ounce of energy you can generate but you have no choice, and you must stay that way the entire action. In combat, time passes differently. Sometimes it seems like slow motion — actual combat time always seems longer than it really is — but you can't let up, ever.

When that planned battle begins, however, you sense the newness of it all, because each battle is different, and that is a help. It adds to the normal alertness, no matter how tired you are. During the battle, your senses come alive. They are supercharged. You see more, hear more, sense more. You fight to keep them under control. Your intuition lights up. Combat veterans call it a "sixth sense." Once, after midnight in War Zone C, the squadron firebase came under intense rocket and direct fire attack. Franks was asleep on a cot when it started. Rather than stand up, he rolled off his cot and crawled out. When he looked the next day at the sides of the shelter, they were riddled with shrapnel and bullet holes. Standing up would have been sure death. He could not explain why he had not stood up.

In battle, thought processes that might usually take longer take place in your head in nanoseconds. Your senses and brain are working overtime, stimulated by the action and your own sense of responsibility to the mission and your troops. But if you are tired going in, once that battle stimulus is removed, leaders and units crash. Breaking the momentum of an attack and then starting tired units back again is almost impossible.

If you are a senior commander, you are intensely focused on the present — on the immediate fight in front of you. But at the same time you try to remain detached enough that you can forecast and anticipate the next fight, and the one after that. The more senior you are, the more future you have to create.

If you constantly stay focused, you usually can outthink the enemy. You can run him out of options as you simultaneously outfight him. That's how you win.

Our friend W. E. B. Griffin has called this attitude, correctly, the Brotherhood of War. Yes, soldiers fight for their country. Yes, love of country is right in there among their own deepest-held beliefs — along with love of family and love of God. But when it comes down to it, soldiers in combat actually fight for their friends who are side by side with them in the fight… for the other members of their tank crew, for the rest of their squad. In a good unit, each soldier feels a boundless, unquestioned loyalty to the others. He does his best not to bring bad things to the others. He feels enormous peer pressure to pull his own weight in a fight. And he will sometimes reach impossible heights of bravery looking out for the others. In January 1970, near Bu Dop, for example, Captain Carl Marshall landed his Cobra amid enemy fire one morning at the beginning of a huge battle in order to rescue a fellow pilot who had been shot down in his scout Loach and was about to be captured by the NVA. Franks was in his own Loach adjusting artillery fire into the trees to keep the NVA away while beginning to maneuver ground troops, and he saw it all. He saw Marshall land, open the canopy of his Cobra, and with his cannon firing into the trees lift off and rescue his fellow aviator.

The commander's goal, not always achieved, is to create the conditions that will endow the whole unit with that feeling, and the behavior that follows from it. If the brotherhood feeling is working at a high level — in, say, a regiment — then you really have the power that can give you the decisive edge over your enemy.

Loyalty to troops — the Brotherhood of Warriors — has always been a powerful force in Fred Franks's own life and in his deepest convictions as a commander. He has always identified more directly with the soldiers than with the institutional hierarchy.

"To lead is to serve," he likes to say. "The spotlight should be on the led and not the leader.

"In battle, character counts in leaders and soldiers as much as brains. Stuff like courage, mental and physical toughness, and integrity really count. Yet competence is also important for leaders, because I believe soldiers have every right to expect their leaders to know what they are doing. Leaders must also share the danger, the pain, and also the pride that the troops feel. Leaders need to be up front in combat. They need to be where the soldiers are."

To Franks there is always unimaginable nobility about young Americans who are willing to risk it all for the sake of accomplishing what their country has asked them to do. That implies an almost blind trust on their part that their leaders have the stomach to see it through and will do that at the least cost to those inside the actual flames of combat. It implies that before the commitment to battle is made, the leaders have reached the reasonable conclusion that the objectives are worth the cost. It also implies that the tactical methods to be used will accomplish the strategic objectives. And it implies, finally, that after the battle is over, no matter what the outcome, they will acknowledge and recognize the sacrifice of those who carry in their bodies and their souls the living record of battle, a record that lasts far longer than the individual lives of soldiers or leaders. If leaders trust that soldiers are willing to give up their lives, or parts of their bodies, in order to accomplish their aims, then soldiers have a right to expect that their sacrifice will be worth it and remembered.

When, not long before the attack into Iraq, that soldier came up to General Franks and said, "Don't worry, General, we trust you," that remark touched deep within Fred Franks's inner core; it captured exactly what he had hoped the soldiers felt, and exactly what he had hoped that he himself was providing for them. And the highest praise that came to him after the victory was from a sergeant in the 2nd ACR. "You generals didn't do too bad this time," he said.

The question of loyalty affected Franks in another way.

Many of his professional generation were affected personally by Vietnam but kept it to themselves, and it perhaps did not affect their performance of duties later. Some might even say after Desert Storm and Provide Comfort that Vietnam had not affected them in the Gulf. That was not to be so for Franks. There was not a single day during Desert Shield and Desert Storm that he did not remember Vietnam and the fellow soldiers of his generation. Vietnam and the broken trust. Vietnam and the courage of the soldiers taking fire both on the battlefield and at home in America. It was a national tragedy of the 1970s. Being in the hospital with those soldiers hurt badly by war and seeing the pain caused them by those who linked them to the cause of the war left Franks identifying more with these young soldiers than perhaps with some of his own generation of professionals who were untouched by that personal experience. It was to make a difference the rest of his life.

Combat units are teams. They are in fact teams of teams: squads, platoons, troops, squadrons, and on up to higher teams such as divisions and corps.

To build his team, the commander watches over three elements: He makes sure that the team members share — and work toward — common goals (in particular, the commander's intent). He listens (to know what is actually going on). And he makes himself aware of the chemistry both within the team and between it and other teams. He allows differences unless they fracture teamwork.

Squadron commanders normally changed their troop commanders every six months. Fox Troop was due for a change in March. In due course, Brookshire pulled Captain Max Bailey out of Troop F and put in a captain who had been the squadron S-4 (logistics). Immediately, Brookshire and Franks sensed a change in the personality of the unit. That was to be expected. But this was not a welcome change. They were now a little less aggressive in the fight, less coordinated when an action started. They weren't as quick and crisp as before. The teamwork among the troops, and between Troop F and the artillery battery, was breaking down. It wasn't that the new captain was incompetent, but the chemistry was wrong — and something had to be done to make it right.

Though Brookshire had probably already made up his mind, he asked Franks for his thoughts.

"I don't think you have a choice," he said. "Soldiers deserve the best leadership we can provide. The guy in Troop F is a good guy, and he knows the job. It just isn't working. You can stay with him for another couple of months, but I don't think it's going to work, and we're going to end up with somebody getting hurt and maybe killed in the process. So my recommendation is for you to pull him out without prejudice, send him to another unit, and put Bailey back in command of the troop."

That is what Brookshire did. The chemistry of the unit demanded it. The captain was sent to command a mechanized infantry company in another division, where he had a fine combat record, and Troop F's teamwork was once again crisp.

The commander has to know how his soldiers are fighting in combat. He has to be aware of the momentum of his units, and of their reactions to success or failure. He has to know how much they have left in them, and how much peak effort they can still put out — during all the stress, intensity, and exhaustion of combat.

In November, the squadron was given the mission of opening the road between the towns of Loc Ninh and Bu Dop, about thirty kilometers away. It was a slow job: the road had been closed for some time and was full of mines, and the jungle had grown over it. By December, they were halfway there. Meanwhile, part of the mission involved flying in a task force to secure Bu Dop. This task force was commanded by Major Jim Bradin, and its mounted element was Max Bailey's Fox Troop, plus Troop B from 1st Squadron.

Though Franks's duty was on the road, and not in Bu Dop, he kept an eye and an ear aimed in their direction — just as he kept an eye and ear aimed at all the units of 2nd Squadron. He wanted to make sure they were OK; if trouble broke out, he could offer help fast.

One day, Franks was in his helicopter listening in: Fox Troop was in a fight. They'd run into an ambush in a rubber plantation. In early August, Echo Troop had fallen into a situation very like this one — NVA regulars dug in, in bunkers — and had come out of that fight with over half the troop as casualties. The action had left deep scars. And now Fox Troop was in a similar stiff fight against a major force in an area the NVA had owned for years. The stakes were high. Things could go very badly, the way they had with Echo Troop. Or they could badly hurt the enemy, and even break the back of NVA forces around Bu Dop. As it happened, Max Bailey was away on R and R, so the executive officer, Lieutenant John Barbeau, was commanding the troop.

Franks called Bradin. "Can I help?"

"Hell, yes, you can help. I can't get a helicopter to get up in the air to go over there to run the fight. Can you come over and do that?"

This was unusual: taking charge of a fight for someone else in his area of operations. But Franks called Brookshire, and he OK'd it. It was an unselfish thing for Bradin to do. He was thinking only of what was best for the mission and the soldiers.

It took five minutes at top speed to reach Fox Troop. Then he flew over the area, watching the firing back and forth at close quarters (no more than fifty to one hundred meters), getting a sense of the engagement. The NVA were firing at his Loach, too, but he accepted that. It wasn't the first time. Meanwhile, he did what he needed to do to help: he brought in artillery and attack helicopters to seal off the area, while the troop continued the fight on the ground. He switched to the troop radio frequency and immediately heard the sharp exchanges so characteristic of commanders in a stiff fight. Meanwhile, Bradin had sent another cavalry unit, Troop B, to join the fight.

Things were going well until a call came from Barbeau saying that they had some casualties.

"OK," Franks told him, "evacuate your wounded, establish an LZ, and finish the fight. I'll call a medevac in." In other words, his intent was for a security element to go out with the wounded, nothing more than that.

But the troop had had more casualties and wounded than Franks knew — four soldiers KIA and twenty wounded, almost 50 percent of what they had gone in with — and instead Barbeau pulled the whole troop out of the engagement area. That made sense, but…

That lets Troop B in there and the fight not finished, Franks thought. They had the NVA trapped, right where they wanted them, had paid a big price, and now needed to finish them. Plus, Franks wanted Troop F to own the area for which they had fought so well, and not to be out of there as though the NVA had run them out.

So Franks landed his Loach and said to the commander, "You, me, and this cavalry troop, we're going back in there. Leave some security here to evacuate the wounded, then mount up and let's go." And then he got into the commander's track with Barbeau and they moved back up and secured the area with Troop B and made sure the NVA weren't capable of attacking again.

He was taking a chance on Troop F at that moment, but he knew them as a unit and how tough they were. Barbeau and Troop F were all heroes that day. Hurt as they were, they went back in and finished the battle. The NVA never again threatened Bu Dop until after the Blackhorse left.

This is not just knowledge learned from reports and briefings. This is knowledge gained from action, from contact with the enemy. It's fingertips-to-gut knowledge. Once you have this kind of knowledge, you begin to see vulnerabilities in the enemy, and then you can take the fight to the enemy and hit him hard.

Brookshire, Franks, and 2nd Squadron came to know the NVA well, in day-in, day-out actions. They respected them, and so did everyone else in the Blackhorse.

The NVA were tough, well-drilled, well-armed light infantry. That is to say, their usual armament was individual weapons — AK-47s, machine guns, RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades, something like World War II bazookas), and small mortars. On occasion they used heavier 107-mm and 122-mm rockets, but usually only when staging an attack on a fixed site, such as a firebase. They were tightly disciplined in their individual actions, movements, and use of fire, and they were highly motivated, rarely surrendering or leaving dead or wounded. When you captured them, NVA prisoners would talk, but they knew only what they themselves were supposed to do, and not much more. Nevertheless, interrogation of prisoners often obtained vital information, especially if it could be done right now, as soon as they were taken. Because NVA communications were poor, when they left a base camp to move out on an operation, they had a hard time making adjustments. They did what they'd been ordered to do, come hell or high water. Though short-term adjustments came hard, over the longer term they adapted both their strategies and their tactics to suit changing situations. They were smart and they adapted. So did 2nd Squadron.

The NVA were elusive infantry who had a remarkable ability to move around without being detected. Over time the squadron credited them with the capability, perhaps too much, to operate at night.

This was not true, as they discovered in War Zone C.

After 2nd Squadron completed the job of opening the road to Bu Dop in early February, they were moved to War Zone C on an interdiction mission. War Zone C, 100 kilometers to the north and west of Saigon and south of an area of Cambodia called the Fishhook, was essentially uninhabited — no commerce, no civilians, only the NVA and the Blackhorse. There, the mission was not to keep roads open but to keep NVA regulars and supplies away from the air base at Bien Hoa, Loc Ninh, and the populated area around Saigon. The squadron had that mission until the invasion of Cambodia in May 1970.

Though Agent Orange had been heavily used in War Zone C, the effects were intermittent. There were bare patches that left the jungle looking as if it had been hit by winter, and there were large areas of dense rain forest. But on the whole, despite the defoliants, the forests of War Zone C were higher and denser than what the squadron had experienced up to then — triple canopy rather than single canopy. The NVA were transporting their people and supplies through this labyrinth on bicycles along a network of jungle trails and often using flashlights to do it at night.

Time and again after fights and B-52 strikes, American soldiers discovered flashlights on dead and captured NVA. Nobody made very much of this until, all of a sudden, it hit someone that they carried flashlights because they couldn't see at night, not nearly as well as Americans. Because of their diet — fish and rice, few fresh vegetables — they were practically blind in the dark. At night in thick jungle, they could hardly see the trails with their flashlights, much less navigate. The only reason they operated at night was that operating during the day was even more dangerous. In other words, the NVA didn't own the night. They were vulnerable.

When that point grew clear, one of the officers had an inspiration. His name was Captain Sewall Menzel, and he came up with a way to lay an ambush for the NVA without exposing American troops. When the North Vietnamese came down a trail, one of them would hit a trip wire; behind him, preset claymore mines and other weapons would go off, killing nearly everyone on the trail. They had tried it earlier with some success. It would work much better in War Zone C.

Soon, 2nd Squadron troops were setting "trap lines," as they called them, along assigned trails. Each of the cavalry troops had an assigned area and their "trap lines" to set and check daily. Before long, these automatic ambushes had succeeded in cutting way back on the amount of men and supplies coming through.

When you really know the enemy, you can see his weaknesses and hit him hard.

Doing this has both immediate and long-term aspects.

Long-term preparation for combat is absolutely the most crucial component of keeping soldiers at a combat edge. The word for long-term preparation is training. Franks later liked to quote Rommel, who said, "The best form of welfare for the troops is first-class training."

If you don't have much experience with today's Army, there's a good chance you have misconceptions about how soldiers spend their working life. The tendency is to think of Army life as dull but predictable: you have to work your way, as best you can, around a large, unresponsive bureaucracy. In truth, there's more than a little bit of all that, but none of this is the true Army.

Soldiers and leaders in the U.S. Army spend the better part of their lives training for war, and training hard. American soldiers train like Olympic athletes — but with this difference: they train their bodies to perform at the highest pitch, but they also train their minds to work at the same high pitch. In combat, the mental edge is as important as the physical. You also have to know how to handle your weapons. You have to know how to run and maintain your vehicles. And you have to know how to do all that in consort with other vehicles… in a team, with other teams. And that means you have to think, not only about what's going on now, in your own immediate situation, but also in relation to several other situations that depend on you. And at the same time, you have to think about how each of these situations is changing, and likely to change, over the course of the next few minutes, or hours… or for longer periods for higher commanders. Finally, you have to be able to predict or judge or intuit or guess how your enemy is going to be acting and reacting to all these situations, then decide on a course of action that gives your units the edge they need.

This kind of thinking is thinking at a very high level.

Fred Franks has always had a passion for units skilled in combat fundamentals, a carryover from playing lots of sports. He particularly valued accurate firepower, for being able to hit what you aim at. It is his conviction that most battles and engagements are won by units with weapons skills. Maneuver is important, as is knowing how to maneuver, but in the final crunch, it's the unit's fighting capability in terms of toughness and their weapons skills that wins in a fight.

How do you train for toughness and weapons skills? By drills and exercises. By setting up a qualification course for vehicles such as tanks. And then by practice and more practice to reach combat standards. You push your unit's edge as far as you can. Then you push it farther than that.

Units need intensive training — if they can get it — even in combat zones.

After Grail Brookshire took command as 2nd Squadron commander from Jim Aarstaat early in September, the squadron completed its move to Di An. There they were to exchange most of their M113s for newer Sheridan light tanks. And there they also drew 81-mm mortars in exchange for their 4.2-in weapons (the 81-mm mortar could shoot closer in to its own position, a capability Brookshire wanted).

At Di An, in addition to receiving new weapons, the squadron would undergo a CMMI (Command Maintenance Management Inspection), an administrative procedure that looked into how the squadron's maintenance program was going. The new weapons were an important addition to the squadron. The CMMI was a bureaucratic joke.

"For Christ's sake," Franks said to himself when the inspectors made their appearance in their crisp, spiffy rear area uniforms, "the squadron's in the middle of a combat theater, and here come these rear area guys with clipboards checking us out like we're at Fort Knox with nothing better to do."

There were too many scenes like this:

"Hey, look here," a CMMI officer laments, adding up check marks on his clipboard. "These vehicles have holes in them."

"Shit, sir, they got hit by RPGs," a soldier answers, with barely concealed disgust. "That happens when you fight."

Franks knew the CMMI threatened to take the squadron's focus off needed combat training. They did not let it happen. They kept their eye on the ball. It was a great lesson. Franks would later remember this as he kept focused on the training and preparation for war amid all the distractions of VII Corps's deployment to Saudi Arabia.

Despite the CMMI, the standdown for maintenance came at a good time for the unit. Most vehicles the squadron was keeping needed to be fitted out with new tracks or otherwise repaired and brought up to speed. This time also gave Brookshire a chance to get to know the squadron and for them to get to know him. More important, they needed a rest. They had been on line in operations for more than six months without a break.

It wasn't a holiday. Brookshire wanted discipline, combat discipline. He wanted a training program, to institute maintenance procedures that would work in combat, and to stress teamwork. He also wanted to get the squadron provisioned with all the right equipment, and to replace what was lost to combat actions. Weapons needed to be fixed or replaced, and fire control on tracked vehicles corrected. They needed spare parts, and they needed to load up on ammunition. While all this was going on, Brookshire was everywhere looking into everything, and he expected Franks as the S-3 and Gilbreath as the executive officer to be doing the same thing. It was a break from combat, but a busy time for the squadron.

Meanwhile, they took in the new Sheridans, and on the whole, they were glad to have them.

The Sheridan light tank was an innovative, and in many ways a flawed, machine (its official title was Armored Airborne Reconnaissance Assault Vehicle, or AARAV). Originally designed to be dropped by parachute, for use by airborne units (the 82nd Airborne is phasing out Sheridans, but used them effectively in Panama in 1989), the Sheridan was fitted with aluminum armor and an aluminum frame. It had a decent powerplant, which made it quick and agile (much better than the M113 in that regard); and because it was light, it didn't normally bog down in the often soft terrain of Vietnam. Soldiers also welcomed the big weapon it carried, a 152-mm cannon (the tank commander had, additionally, a.50-caliber machine gun). From this you could fire either an antipersonnel flechette round, a HEAT round, or even a Shillelagh antitank missile. The flechette round is packed like a shotgun shell with three-inch-long darts that are propelled to a velocity comparable to the muzzle velocity of a bullet. HEAT rounds (High Explosive Anti-Tank) were used for bunker busting. They were not actually used against tanks, since in those days the U.S. Army did not see NVA tanks. Shillelaghs were not used in Vietnam.

On the other hand, the Sheridan came with serious drawbacks. Its aluminum underside offered little protection against mines. The remedy for this problem, three- or four-inch belly armor bolted underneath, meant that the Sheridan could no longer be air-dropped. The aluminum armor on the front and sides didn't offer a lot of protection, either. This made the Sheridan especially vulnerable to NVA RPGs. Worse, the Sheridan's cannon used what is called combustible-case ammunition (This was the Army's first attempt at combustible-case ammunition. Though there were problems with it, the Army continued to correct these problems. The 120-mm combustible-case ammunition on the M1A1 works very well.) During that time, all too often, when you were firing a number of rounds in a short time period — as in a fight — still-burning residue from incompletely consumed rounds would often stay in the chamber, and you'd get a premature detonation. You don't want to be inside a Sheridan when that happens.

Still, for all that, the Sheridan was an improvement over the older M113s, and the troops welcomed them. Meanwhile, they had to learn how to use them. They had to learn to drive, load, shoot, and maintain them, and the vehicle commanders had to be taught how to command them.

When the Sheridans arrived, Brookshire asked Franks to draw up the new equipment training program — a job very like the one he would have on a larger scale twenty years later as brigadier general in Grafenwohr for the Seventh Army Training Command in Europe. There he put together the new equipment training programs for the M1 tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and MLRSs (Multiple-Launch Rocket Systems), then newly arriving in Europe. In Di An, the job was smaller, but more immediately pressing. Second Squadron would be taking the Sheridans into combat in only a few weeks.

For the training program, they had some help. The Army sent a team along with the Sheridans to teach the squadron's crews about the vehicle — about how to drive it, how to operate the turret, and about maintenance (both in the shop and at crew level). But it was Franks's responsibility to train the crews how to fight with the Sheridan and to determine whether they were combat ready. He wanted to create a rite of passage.

Under Franks's direction, the noncommissioned officers of the squadron built a crew qualification course near Di An, where crews would have to pass a series of tough, realistic exercises with strict standards. On the course, Sheridan crews would fire at a number of situational targets, that is, standard silhouette targets that replicated the kinds of situations they were likely to face in combat. There also were a few hard targets — damaged vehicles were used for that purpose. For these exercises, live ammunition was used and tank crew examiners rode along in the vehicles when they were shooting to score and critique the crews. If the crews didn't pass, they shot again until they did. At the end of the training, there was a graduation course. When they passed that, they were certified ready for combat.

It was a good program, and it paid off. When 2nd Squadron crews completed Fred Franks's training program, they were ready to fight with the new vehicles, and to fight with them in units.

ACTION

In early October, the squadron was sent to Loc Ninh, about thirty kilometers north of An Loc, with a mission much like their earlier operation in August, to secure both the road to An Loc — Highway 14—and the area around Loc Ninh.

Loc Ninh was a village of close to fifteen hundred people (three or four thousand people lived in An Loc, which was the market town and commercial center for the district). Around and about Loc Ninh were farms and rice paddies, and a small logging industry operated in the forests nearby. The road was the only access for the local people to their markets, and the Army needed the highway for military convoys to resupply 2nd Squadron. The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong tried to close the road by laying mines and setting up ambushes. There were quite a few NVA around Loc Ninh, and Franks and the squadron saw constant action, sometimes two or three times a day.

Just as on the road to An Loc, the squadron set up a fire support base for the tank company, the artillery battery, and the forward command post element. (Franks named the base "Marge," after his daughter.) From there, the cavalry troops would fan out in their own areas of operation, searching for the enemy. When the cavalry troops found NVA units, they'd call in artillery and, if necessary, the tank company, and usually air. The artillery battery and air would fix the enemy in one place, while the cavalry troops and, as needed, the big fist of the tanks moved in and destroyed or captured them.

Franks or Brookshire, meanwhile, would be in a helicopter. Whoever was in the air at the time the fight started would organize it. He'd isolate the enemy, call in artillery, call in TAC air and attack helicopters, and maneuver the ground troops and help them navigate. The other would be in the firebase — in the command M577s and on the radio a short distance away or with the troops. Rarely would they both be on the ground. Usually they could do more for the troops if one of them was in the air, as most of the action involved only one of the cavalry troops. The helos were based in Quan Loi.

Although Franks spent some time on the ground to get a feel for what the fights looked like from there, most of the time he was in the helicopter eight or ten hours a day. In between operations, he and the troop commanders talked together a lot, so Franks knew how best to help them in their operations when he was in the helicopter.

The OH-6 was a great scout helicopter. Its power-to-weight ratio and general aerodynamics made it an extremely agile machine, immediately responsive and capable of tight maneuvers over the top of the jungle close to the ground. It was crashworthy because of the small passenger bubble and high skids. However, as a command aircraft it was marginal because of the weak radios. For the times when the helicopter FM radio broke, which happened frequently, Franks took along an infantry portable radio, stuffed it next to his seat, and stuck the receiver next to his ear, pushing the handset if he wanted to talk. In addition to FM, it had both VHF and UHF radios, which Franks used mainly to talk to attack helos and close air support. The helo radios were activated by pressing a button on the floor by his foot. Talking on three radios with two different activation devices, plus looking at the ground and his map, and keeping his wits in a fight while sometimes getting ground fire was a challenge, to say the least. Though he considered that minor compared to the troops banging around in their ACAVs and Sheridans all day through jungle…

They called it "busting jungle," where armored vehicles literally made a road through the forest by knocking down trees. Except for drivers, troops rode on the outside of their vehicles most of the time. It was cooler, and safer — paradoxically. If you were hit by an RPG, you were better off outside than inside. If you had to get inside fast, you could do that. Sometimes they hit bamboo thickets so strong, the M113s would be thrown back (when bamboo grows thick, it grows thick!). Sometimes they hit trees full of large biting red ants that would rain down on the troops. They'd have to stop and strip out of their fatigues and beat the ants off. Sometimes tree limbs would break off and come crashing down on top of the vehicles, or worse, on one of the soldiers. Some of these caused serious injury.

Every evening, after the day's operations were finished, Franks and Brookshire talked about the operations coming up the next day. They'd look at the mission and the enemy, and then at various hypothetical solutions to mission problems: What if they do this? Can we do that? After they had a good idea of how they wanted the operation to run, they would war-game it. Once they were satisfied, Brookshire would say, "OK, that's what we're going to do. Get the word out to the troops." Either Brookshire or Franks would call the troops on the secure radio and explain the operations to them. Though there'd be an entry in the squadron log, the bulk of squadron communications was oral. It was all talked through.

Few actions involved more than an individual cavalry troop, and rarely required the whole squadron to take part. There also were small-unit patrols and ambushes to stop the NVA and Viet Cong from mining Highway 14. Later, on the mission to Bu Dop, two infantry companies from 1st CAV Division were attached to the squadron. They kept the NVA away from the road-clearing operation. Franks was almost constantly executing coordination of ground units, both mounted and dismounted, artillery, attack aviation, and air strikes. He was confident that Brookshire trusted him to handle all that; he valued the trust. Brookshire often left him to orchestrate actions, without interfering. Later, just after Christmas, Brookshire had to rush back to the States on an emergency leave. While he was away, Franks commanded the forward elements of the squadron. During that time, he took the squadron the rest of the way into Bu Dop.

They both had a lot of help. The troop commanders were first-rate. Ross Johnson, then Fred Kyle in Troop E, Max Bailey in Troop F, Paul Dickenson, then Sewall Menzel in Troop G. The tanks (H Company) were commanded by Bob Hurt, Malcolm Gilchrest, then Miles Sisson. The artillery (HOW Battery) was under George Fisher, then Dick Trageman. Senior NCOs also were outstanding. The command sergeant major in the 2nd Squadron was Ray Burkett, a highly respected and veteran CSM. Burkett was wounded in early April 1970 and had his left arm amputated. Second Squadron was a sharp, tight team.

Franks had particular help from his own team, both on the ground and in the air.

On the ground, in the S-3 shop, were Master Sergeant Bob Bolan and his assistant, Sergeant First Class Tommy Jones. In the air, Franks's pilots were Chief Warrant Officers John Mallette and Doug Farfel; his crew chiefs were Specialists John Lamontia and "Polack" Terzala. It was a tight team — a combat family. Bolan left a large impression on Franks. A wise veteran, he ran the S-3 shop like clockwork, and was on his fourth combat tour in Vietnam. He was killed in action as the squadron command sergeant major in July 1970.

COMMAND STYLE

Commanders have different command styles. If you spend any significant amount of time around Army people, you're going to encounter no little commentary about these differences. There is no right way to command, no template out of which commanders are stamped. Some commanders — to point out the more visible of differences — are loud, physically dominant extroverts; others are quieter, more soft-spoken, more given to indirection. Such opposites can be equally effective as commanders.

Grail Brookshire was a soldier's soldier, six foot one, 180 pounds, and sharp featured. When he spoke, his voice was clear and loud. When he reinforced a point, he was usually profane. Before taking over 2nd Squadron, he had been the regimental S-3, and knew the regiment's operations. At 2nd Squadron, he was technically skillful, and very aggressive: he took the fight to the enemy. Brookshire had a special affinity for tactics and a finely tuned sense for a fight. And he was always at the right place to conduct it. Simultaneously orchestrating ground maneuver elements, artillery, Army air, and Air Force air came naturally to him. (This "coming naturally" was a result of long study and practice.) As a complement to his tactical skills, he knew soldiers, what made them tick and what would inspire them to push their own edge. He believed in tight discipline and technical competence. But he also liked to stay out with frontline troops, working with them and sharing their hardships. And Brookshire liked to communicate with his subordinates. He liked to talk with them, to ask and take their opinions. He was a master at creating and building teamwork in a combat unit.

Franks and Brookshire took to each other as soon as they met. Their leadership styles and personal styles instantly meshed. Though Franks and Brookshire had never worked together until 2nd Squadron, it wasn't long before they built under fire a close working relationship. This grew into a close friendship, based on shared hardships and dangers, and shared concern for soldiers, this in spite of very different personal styles. Brookshire was boisterous, profane, and very direct. Franks was more quiet and soft-spoken, with a deep inner intensity, but also direct and profane when the situation called for it. They talked long and often, exchanging ideas about how to conduct a fight. And they both smoked cigars, a habit Franks had begun in the 11th Cavalry as a platoon leader. Together they developed a natural and comfortable working groove. Before long, it all became natural and instinctive.

On 7 December there was a regimental change of command, when Colonel Donn Starry took command of the 11th ACR from Colonel Jimmie Leach.[5] Though he and Franks did not then know each other, the relationship that developed between them turned out to be as lasting as the one between Franks and Brookshire. For one thing, in May, in Cambodia, Donn Starry saved Franks's life. And later, back home in the States, they would work together again.

Most commanders are intelligent people. Not all of these intelligent people are smart commanders. That is to say, not all of these people make the best decisions for their commands.

Out of these intelligent people, most are readers (usually of history and military history); most also, these days, have earned advanced, professional degrees (I've met three-star lieutenant generals with Ph.D.'s); and some few are intellectuals. These will make a contribution during their career to the way the Army thinks about itself and its missions, both strategic and tactical. Donn Starry was one of the Army intellectuals, and so, it turned out, was Fred Franks. The relationship between Fred Franks and Donn Starry that began in the jungles near the Cambodian border would continue on into TRADOC. Part, at least, of the contribution Franks was eventually to make to the Army built upon the foundation that Donn Starry had constructed in the 1970s and 1980s, when he commanded first the Armor Center at Fort Knox and then TRADOC, the Training and Doctrine Command.

Starry's command methods inspired fierce loyalty in his subordinates. He always talked to and listened to soldiers and subordinate commanders. He also led from out front. He shared the dangers.

From the beginning, you never doubted that he was in charge. You always knew he was there and aware of what you were doing. He would monitor your combat actions on the radio, but usually broke in only when you needed something or when he could help in some way. He would meet you almost every day at your location. He didn't send for people to come see him; he'd go to them. When there was an action, he liked to stay with the lead squadron, and not in the rear at his command post, but otherwise, he left you pretty much to run your own show. As long as you were operating within his intent, he didn't intrude much into your business.

Starry encouraged and demanded initiative. He valued those commanders and others who could "orchestrate" a battle. You came to realize that nonjudgmental listening and focused questioning were major facets of his command technique. (Listening to your subordinates, without jumping in with comments, observations, or directives, is a good way to find out what is actually going on in a unit.) Starry certainly had a very good idea what he wanted done, but he would lead people to find that on their own, as though they themselves had discovered it. He would do that by asking questions and pointing out relevant facts and issues. If his subordinates still missed seeing what he saw — if they needed, say, to add an element to a plan — he would ask a question that would indicate that… or, if it came to that, he would interrupt and directly make himself clear. Otherwise, he'd listen. He was a commander's commander.

Starry also valued noncommissioned officers. He and his Command Sergeant, Major Don Horn, were inseparable. Horn was a wise senior NCO, with a lot of combat and soldier tactical savvy. When Horn had something to say on one of Starry's visits, Franks listened.

Fred Franks has always been a sensible, creative, intelligent leader. He always thinks ahead. You have to think ahead if you're going to fight at the highest pitch of violence at the least cost to your troops. But that's not the entire Fred Franks.

Sometimes your intuitive sense lets you go on instinct and get lucky in combat, and you have to leave room for that. But you have to pick your spots.

North of An Loc, and in War Zone C, he and his crew used to set the Loach down near recently bombed NVA bunkers or B-52 strikes in order to obtain accurate BDAs or to pick up POWs or captured documents from squadron troops on the ground. The Air Force liked accurate BDAs; they showed how well they were doing their job. Getting BDAs on the ground was the only way to ensure accuracy; but doing that was a little mad. On the other hand, in exchange for accurate BDAs, the Air Force took special care of 2nd Squadron when they needed TAC air. Young Major Franks thought that was worth the risk. But it was not risk free. Franks and his crew would go down four times in their Loach, twice from enemy fire.

The first day they were in War Zone C, he was flying observation in his Loach along the border with Cambodia when he spotted North Vietnamese earthen bunkers. He called in air. Some Cobras dived in, and the North Vietnamese scattered. Then Franks noticed a pair of rucksacks on the ground, apparently dropped in a clearing near one of the bunkers, now deserted. The NVA infantry that had manned it were at the moment running for their lives toward the Cambodian border, a short distance away. On the chance that the rucksacks might contain valuable intelligence, and ignoring the strong possibility that they were booby-trapped or that the NVA were still around, he wanted to land and get them. Because they were all in it together, Franks asked Doug Farfel, who was flying the helicopter, and John Lamontia, his crew chief, if they'd be willing to go down to pick them up. They agreed it was worth the risk.

The Loach set down and, with Franks covering him, and Captain Carl Marshall circling close above in his Cobra gunship, Lamontia raced out and snatched the two rucksacks. After Lamontia returned to the Loach, an NVA soldier appeared, refused to surrender, and tore off toward other NVA bunkers that were visible through the trees. Since Franks and his crew didn't know what this soldier was planning to do or if anyone was in the bunkers, and since they wanted to get the hell out of there, Lamontia dropped the NVA soldier with his M-60 machine gun and suppressed the enemy in the bunkers. Then they got the hell out of there.

The snatch proved valuable. One of the rucksacks contained a detailed map showing infiltration and resupply routes through War Zone C, as well as unit identification. This map was immensely useful to 2nd Squadron and allowed them to set numerous ambushes along those trails.

Later the next day, Brigadier General George Casey, the assistant division commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, on one of his many visits to the regiment, visited Franks, Farfel, and Lamontia in an informal ceremony. "Franks," he said, "I don't know whether to court-martial you for stupidity or pin a medal on all of you for what you did out there. I guess because it turned out OK, I'll pin a medal on you all. That's the spirit of the cavalry we want. That's what the cavalry's all about — out in front."

Two months later, at the end of April, the Blackhorse was out in front again. They were going into Cambodia. Second Squadron would lead.