COLORADO SPRINGS — The last time Chuck Doole saw Frank Heidel, they were in the jungles of Vietnam. It was May 1966 and both were young soldiers in an Army reconnaissance unit. Doole was leading a patrol when an enemy soldier ambushed them, shooting him in the chest and knee.
“I was on point,” Doole said. “I saw a guy about 20 yards away jump up with a submachine gun. He shot me at a cross angle.
“I was hurting.”
As the rest of the patrol opened fire on the enemy position, Heidel dragged Doole to safety. But the injured man believed he was going to die.
As medics put him on a helicopter, Doole asked Heidel for a huge favor.
From his combat fatigues, Doole took out his grandmother’s rosary of brown beads. It had been her rosary as a child and she gave it to him as he left for Vietnam. Doole said he always carried it, along with a small New Testament, for comfort and inspiration in combat.
Doole stuffed the rosary into Heidel’s hand.
“He kept saying he was dying and I kept saying he’d be OK,” Heidel said. “He said: ‘No. You have to take this rosary and give it to my girlfriend.’ So I took it and I promised to give it back to him.”
Though Doole ultimately survived, they never saw each other again.
Until July 14, when Heidel kept his promise after 44 years.
In an emotional reunion at a Colorado Springs restaurant, Heidel, 62, delivered the rosary to the 63-year-old Doole. There were handshakes, hugs, laughter and tears as the two strangers met.
Doole was re-enacting the ambush and showing where he was shot. Then he reached into his pocket and asked Heidel, “Do you want to see the bullet?”
Heidel was shocked.
“It was a matter of five minutes after you relieved me that you were shot,” he said to Doole. “I would’ve taken that bullet.
“I really appreciate it,” he said, evoking laughter from Doole and the family members who had joined both men for the reunion.
The men had not known each other long when Heidel took possession of the rosary. He had been assigned to a mortar unit before joining Doole’s outfit.
At the time, Doole was in a hospital recovering from his first battle wound, a gunshot to his leg suffered as his unit was trying to rescue a company pinned down by enemy fire.
The two soldiers were so unfamiliar that Heidel never knew Doole’s full name.
Over the years, Heidel said, he searched for his platoon mate. But he had only a last name.
“Finally, about six months ago, I got a message that our unit was having a reunion. I asked if there was a Doole and they had a ‘Charles Doole’ on the list.”
