On a helicopter back to Pleiku, Frankie and Rye came under small-arms fire. Rye protected Frankie with his helmet and affection before dropping her at the helipad and lifting off on another mission. Frankie watched his Huey take hits and return fire before disappearing safely, cementing a lingering fear for his life and their future.

In April 1968, letters marked personal and national turmoil. Barb wrote that her brother Will had been killed by Oakland police after a confrontation involving the Black Panthers; Frankie offered condolences and urged strength. In June, Frankie wrote to her parents about collapsing morale after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, relentless casualties, psychological trauma among troops, drug use, and her determination to keep saving lives despite the worsening war.

On July 4, 1968, Frankie was in the OR when two emaciated, traumatized soldiers carried in their fellow POW, Fred, mortally wounded. Despite Dr. Mark Morse labeling him expectant, Frankie performed a tracheotomy to ease his breathing so he could die peacefully with his friends present. She urged the escorts to discard a grisly trophy necklace, recognizing how war was brutalizing minds as well as bodies.

Moments later, a wave of forty-five Vietnamese villagers burned by napalm flooded the OR. Frankie and Margie converted the space into an overflow burn unit and treated catastrophic injuries with limited relief possible. Frankie discovered a severely burned woman with a still-breathing baby tucked against her; she cradled the infant until the baby died, then took the body to the morgue, where Private Juan Martinez helped lay the child to rest. The experience planted a dark, persistent anger in Frankie.

After an exhausting night, Dr. Morse ordered Frankie to rest. Unable to sleep, she used the MARS radio to place an emergency call to Rye and, through static, shared the horror of the napalm casualties. A few hours later, Rye arrived unannounced at her hooch and held her until she finally fell asleep.

By early November, after Nixon’s election and eight months into her second tour, the 71st was briefly quiet. Frankie was surprised with a party and promotion to First Lieutenant. Major Goldstein and Captain Miniver praised her service; colleagues celebrated, and Rye appeared to join the festivities. Outside the party, Frankie and Rye spoke of continuing atrocities—including a bombed orphanage and rumors near My Lai—then turned to each other for solace.

Alone together, they made love, and Rye confessed, “I’m afraid I’ll love you till I die.” Frankie reciprocated but later fixated on the ominous phrasing—“I’m afraid” and “till I die”—as a troubling omen in wartime, wishing she could have made him say it differently.