At 18, Frank J. Gubala knew he did not want to follow in his dad’s footsteps – no offense to his farmer father or his ancestors who in 1915 established the family farm in Ransomville.
Gubala realized he was pretty good when it came to electronics, and he got himself accepted at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. But after a year of rigorous class work, Gubala had to drop out.
Decades later, he discovered he was dyslexic, but that was long after he had become a success in life.
In 1966, his college career ended, he lost his educational deferment, and he became eligible for the draft.
The Army wasted no time in laying claim to him.
“When I reported for induction at Fort Dix, N.J., they saw I had a year of college, and I was offered a commission as a second lieutenant along with training to work with computers, but at that time it was an eight-year commitment, and I did not want to give up eight years of my life to the government.”
As it turns out, Gubala on many occasions almost gave up his young life for Uncle Sam during close brushes with death in Vietnam. He had arrived just in time to fight in the Tet Offensive that began in January 1968. North Vietnamese soldiers and Viet Cong guerrillas had launched an all-out, coordinated attack against the Americans.
Within the first week that he was assigned to A Company, 9th Infantry Division, 3rd Battalion, 47th Infantry Regiment, Gubala saw how quickly war could snuff out life.
“That first week, we lost 10 members of our company,” he said.
What did he think?
“I didn’t have time to think. I was too busy trying to stay alive and hoping for tomorrow to come.”
And yet, his most hazardous experiences in the war were off in the future, said the recipient of two Purple Hearts.
On June 1, 1968, at about 10 a.m., his company arrived at an “extraction zone.” He said they had just completed a three-day, search-and-destroy mission and were scheduled to be removed by a Navy landing craft along the Mekong River.
“We pulled security until the other companies arrived. The boats were already there waiting. There was a sniper. We got sniped at a lot, and some of the time they wouldn’t hit us. It was just so they could pull their own people out of the way.
“This time our first sergeant was with us, and he ordered us to return fire. A few rounds went off, and the next thing I knew I felt blood running down the back of my neck. A round grazed the side of my skull. It was close. They put me on the medevac boat. I was out of field duty for about a month."
Less than two months later, on July 20, again at about 10 a.m., Gubala and 10 other platoon members were conducting a perimeter sweep around their camp, near Dong Tam, in the Mekong Delta, where he had spent most of his time in Vietnam.
“I’m aquaphobic. I have fear of water, and the delta was water, dikes, canals, creeks and rivers,” he said.
But it was not the water that got to him on that July morning.
“I was in charge of the perimeter sweep, and three of the guys were wounded by small hand grenades. Their wounds weren’t life-threatening, but we decided to call a medevac chopper to get them out to avoid infection. I found a landing zone for the chopper.
“I was in communication with the radio man, and a sergeant wanted to go through a pathway to this field. I yelled to him to go through the brush to the field. The pathway was probably booby-trapped. Just as I was ready to tell the radio man I was going to pop a green smoke flare, I heard a click, and I realized that sergeant went where I told him not to go.
“It was a Bouncing Betty, a hand grenade that was in a tin can in the ground, and when you stepped on it, a spring bounced it up and it exploded. The sergeant took the full brunt of the blast, and I received multiple wounds in my legs, back and head.”
The sergeant paid with his life, and Gubala joined the three other wounded soldiers he had arranged to medevac.
Before receiving first aid, Gubala nearly died, having lost three units of blood. When he finally arrived at a field hospital, death still dogged him.
“I was told my heart stopped three time during the operation,” he said.
But he lived, and he returned to the states to Walter Reed Army Hospital for therapy to regain movement of his right leg and regain weight and muscle tone. He had dropped from 165 pounds to 100 pounds.
When he was finally back on his feet, he turned down a medical discharge, because he did not want to be classified a “4F,” which had a negative connotation.
“So I stayed in the Army but wound up getting out three months early with an honorable discharge, because I agreed to go back to my father’s farm and work. There was a standard exception if a family needed help,” he said.
Once back home, he looked to college for his future, and by January 1970, he was enrolled as a full-time electronics student at NCCC.
Gubala went on to a successful career in computers and, more importantly, a 40-year marriage to the former Joyce Carpenter; their marriage is still going strong. They raised two children and now have two grandchildren.
And while he left the war zone as a young man so many years ago, he still carries Vietnam with him.
“I’m told that in my sleep I scream and yell once or twice a week,” Gubala said.
But the nocturnal troubles are less frequent than they were years ago.
And in recent years, thanks to his daughter, Julie, Gubala has reconnected with his Army buddies scattered across the country by way of the Internet and phone.
“Not only have I found my buddies, but close to 8,000 men who served in the 9th Infantry Division,” Gubala said. “Every year, parts of that group meet.”
The reunions, he says, have helped them heal.
“I’ve been able to help a lot of other guys locate their buddies, and we’ve been told we are the largest group of Vietnam vets from the same unit who get together. Over 3,000 of us got together last year in Indianapolis.”