Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

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Heroes rarely look the part. The first holder of the Medal of Honor I met looked more like a retired accountant than John Wayne, and when I introduced General Fred Franks to a physician friend, the latter remarked that he was a dead ringer for the professor of pediatrics at Cornell University Medical School. And that's really the basis on which we first met. In 1991, I knew a young lad named Kyle who was afflicted with a rare and deadly form of cancer. A friend of mine, Major General Bill Stofft, was heading over to the Persian Gulf after the conclusion of hostilities. There was a senior officer over there, I'd heard, who'd lost a leg in Vietnam. My little buddy had just endured the surgical removal of his leg, and I asked Bill if he might approach this officer and ask him to write a brief letter of encouragement to Kyle, then at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. The officer, I learned from General Stofft, was Fred Franks, then a lieutenant general, and commander of VII Corps. Bill delivered the request, and Lieutenant General Franks responded at once, calling it a privilege. He wrote a warm letter to my friend, and copied it to me with a cover note thanking me for making him aware of my friend and his affliction. That, really, is the bond between us.

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