FREDERIC N ASH
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HONORED ON PANEL 30W, LINE 41 OF THE WALL

FREDERIC NATHANIEL ASH

WALL NAME

FREDERIC N ASH

PANEL / LINE

30W/41

DATE OF BIRTH

01/03/1950

CASUALTY PROVINCE

HUA NGHIA

DATE OF CASUALTY

03/05/1969

HOME OF RECORD

TALLAHASSEE

COUNTY OF RECORD

Leon County

STATE

FL

BRANCH OF SERVICE

ARMY

RANK

SGT

Book a time
Contact Details

REMEMBRANCES

LEFT FOR FREDERIC NATHANIEL ASH
POSTED ON 10.3.2016
POSTED BY: Lucy Conte Micik

Remembered

DEAR SERGEANT ASH,
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE AS A GRUNT WITH THE 1ST CAVALRY. THIS WAS THE UNIT OF A FRIEND'S BROTHER. SAY HI TO MIKE IN HEAVEN. REST IN PEACE.
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POSTED ON 3.5.2015
POSTED BY: A Grateful Vietnam Vet

Thank You

Thank you Sgt. Ash for your leadership and courage.
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POSTED ON 3.7.2014
POSTED BY: Curt Carter [email protected]

Remembering An American Hero

Dear SGT Frederic Nathaniel Ash, sir

As an American, I would like to thank you for your service and for your sacrifice made on behalf of our wonderful country. The youth of today could gain much by learning of heroes such as yourself, men and women whose courage and heart can never be questioned.

With respect, Sir

Curt Carter
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POSTED ON 3.23.2011
POSTED BY: Paul Grandy

Ash - Personal Account of Casualty





ASH, FREDERIC NATHANIEL

SGT, B Co, 18th Cavalry, 1st Air Cavalry Division

DOB 3 January 1950

KIA 5 March 1969

Panel 30W

Line 41



CLAUSE, MICHAEL ALLEN

PFC, B Co, 18th Cavalry, 1st Air Cavalry Division

Labadieville, Louisiana

DOB 14 October 1947

KIA 5 March 1969

Panel 30W

Line 42











We had been working the area around the Parrots Beak for about a month now. It was hedgerow country. Miles and miles of elephant grass with little plots of land enclosed by hedgerows, bamboo, and other assorted vegetation. Years ago, before the B-52's had destroyed the area, these little plots had been miniature farms. A bygone era of old graveyards and monuments to the Vietnamese culture.

The days were hot, the nights cool, and the mosquitoes arrived in hoards shortly after sundown. We had set up that night early. We were on the northeast corner of a half acre plot. A ditch bordered the entire plot. After digging in and setting up trip flares and claymores I sat down on the edge of the foxhole. Ash and Clause were setting up a mosquito net with a poncho on top in the ditch about 15 feet to my left rear. I would have the first guard that night.

About an hour before dark I moved back to the edge of the ditch to heat up a can of beanies and weenies. Ash and Clause came up to sit on the edge of the foxhole facing back towards the perimeter. Tim Strauss, Dowell Taylor, Conrad Fleck and I sat around bullshitting with Clause while Ray Owens and Ash played a couple of hands of Hearts until dark.

Ash was a big man. Tall, wasp waisted, with the muscularity of a decathlete. He had about three and a half months left in country. Ash was just waiting on the Freedom Bird. Ash was a man of few words. When he did speak it was of what he would do when he returned to the world. There was a certain amount of excitement in his voice. In a few short months he would be gone from the swamps and jungles that he had endured for that long year. He was a survivor, or so he thought.

Clause was also a big man. He had only been with us a couple of weeks. His first day in the field Wes Smith, the platoon sergeant, grabbed him and made him his Radio Telephone Operator (RTO). He seemed overweight for the typical grunt. A couple of months of humping would trim him down though. Clause's strength was his brain. He was college educated and seemed to know a little bit about everything. He seemed so out of place. Although he didn't agree with American policy in Vietnam, he did show up. His idea of learning was from experience. He did say once that if he had never come to Vietnam, he never could learn to understand it. That we accepted. He was one of us.

As darkness set in the mosquitoes arrived. Tim, Owens, Taylor and Fleck headed back to their sleeping areas. Ash and Clause crawled under their mosquito net in the ditch. I sat down and lit a smoke to keep the mosquitoes away. About 2100 the firebase fired a few 105 rounds at strategic points around the perimeter. This was common procedure. Other than that it started out as a very quiet night. About 2130 I walked around to the front of the foxhole to relieve myself. When I finished I walked back around to the rear of the foxhole. I was looking out front and just getting ready to sit back down on the edge of the foxhole when suddenly a shower of smoke and sparks came showering down on me. The only thing I saw though was a fiery explosion about 50 meters in front of the foxhole. A second later I found myself picking myself up from the bottom of the foxhole. To this day I still don't know how I got there. Maybe it was the concussion. Maybe it was a reactionary survival instinct to duck for cover. I remember thinking that our artillery was firing a little close to the perimeter. As far as I knew it was our 105's. Things were suddenly quiet again. I sat back down on the back edge of the foxhole. A moment later Owens came up and asked what the explosion was. I told him about the explosion to the front and all the sparks and smoke. Tit came up also wanting to know what it was. There was no yelling or screaming around the perimeter. It never occurred to me to check on Ash and Clause who were sleeping in the ditch just 15 feet from me.

About 5 minutes later I heard someone frantically crawling up the ditch. As I turned around up popped Platoon Sergeant (PSG) Jim Hensley. He was the Field First Sergeant at the time and wanted to know if anybody was hurt. From his speech you could tell his adrenaline was pumping. I related what I had seen again. Looking around he saw the poncho in the ditch and asked who was down in it. I told him it was Ash and Clause. He crawled down to it. I could hear him rustling around in the foliage. I could hear him saying something to the effect of 'Hey you all right'? The poncho and mosquito net were laying on the ground.

After getting no response he flipped the upper right corner up to take a look at them. He was welcomed by a sight out of a Boris Karloff movie. 'God, get a medic over here', he yelled. Clause's head had been blown off from the eyes up. The upper right side of Ash's skull was also missing. Jim flipped the poncho back over them and backed on out. He was telling Conrad, the fire team leader not to look, but his curiosity got the best of him. I figured he would probably regret it. Wes came over from the next foxhole. He pulled the poncho liner off of them. One piece of shrapnel had hit a pressured can of Burma shave that was in Clause's pocket. It exploded all over him. Wes picked Ash up by the shoulders as though to give him some measure of comfort. It was of little use.

By now I could hear a low moan coming from the ditch. It was the death rattle of Ash. He only lived a few more minutes. Ash's dream of that last Freedom Bird was over. Clause never was with us long enough to have that dream.

I was tempted to go down and take a look but being on guard I figured it was my duty to keep a watch just in case any gooks wanted to take advantage of the situation. It's the 'car wreck' mentality. People are repulsed at the sight of violent death, but still they want to see it. But John Eutsler's death in January had taught me that some things are best left unseen.. I watched as the medic and a couple of other guys took the bodies to the pad. The Medivac took them out that night.

The rest of the night was quiet except for an incident with a large snake. None of us slept that night. At about 0300 in the morning Wes was sitting at his foxhole. He had laid his M16 on the berm in front of his foxhole. In the dark he saw a form crawling over the weapon. Initially he thought it was a gook arm who had crawled up to the berm and was trying to steal his rifle. By the time he grabbed the stock he figured out it was a large python so he just let it keep on crawling. It finally crawled off to the left of the foxhole and down into the bamboo. These snakes were not that uncommon. Usually the pointman would run into them during daylight hours. Of course the Company Commander would have to come forward to look at it. After which he would dispatch it with a shot to the head. I used to wonder what kind of thrill he got out of shooting some helpless snake. It wasn’t as though they were a threat to us as was the dreaded bamboo viper. Rarely did we even see those. And the times we did they were usually in a couple of pieces after some pointman’s machete had accidentally cut them in half while cutting trail.

At daylight I looked down in the ditch at a bloody poncho. On the upper bank of the ditch only 10 feet from where I had been standing when it exploded lay the front half of a 122mm rocket. In the ditch below lay the back half. There was only 6 feet of bamboo left between where I had been standing and where the round had hit. Those of us that lived that night were all lucky. If it had fragmented like an American artillery round we would have all looked like Swiss cheese. Even Jim had holes in his fatigues but nothing penetrated his body. From the blast pattern it appeared that the rockets had come in from the south west. In that direction lay Cambodia. Strange I thought, 'Some of us that were here yesterday are gone today, and some of us that are here today will probably be gone tomorrow'. It was all so sudden. There was no warning. It was all becoming so ordinary. The reality was that this was war and this is what is supposed to happen. Who would be next I thought. Would it be me. The lasting memory of Ash became the typical funeral statement, 'Ash to Ashes'. Clause was somewhat different though. It was of God himself reaching down in the darkness of night with a huge ice cream scoop, removing the cap of his skull and scooping his brain out.

We saddled up early that morning. The Cambodian border awaited us. On this day we would stick our nose inside Cambodia. But just far enough to say we had been there.

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POSTED ON 11.19.2010
POSTED BY: Robert Sage

We Remember

Frederic is buried at Clifford Hill Cemetery in Tallahassee, FL. BSM AM PH
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