Rocko’s Sacrifice in Vietnam: Congressional Medal of Honor

Frank Fratellenico was a kid from Albany, New York, called Rocko by everyone who knew him.

He joined the Army in 1969, and by the summer of 1970 he was a 19-year-old corporal with Company B, 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry, in the 101st Airborne Division, fighting in Quang Tri Province, Vietnam.

On August 19, 1970, his squad were pinned down by heavy fire coming from two well built enemy bunkers. Rocko Fratellenico decided to move. He crawled forward alone, out ahead of his squad and into the fire, worked his way up to the first bunker, and knocked it out with hand grenades, taking out the enemy soldiers inside it.

Then he went after the second bunker. As he closed on it, enemy fire hit him, and he fell. In his hand was a grenade he had already armed and was about to throw, and when he went down, it dropped to the ground beside him, live, its fuse burning, right next to four of his fellow soldiers.

Fratellenico, wounded and on the ground, had maybe a second to understand what was happening. He used it to reach out, pull the grenade in, and throw his own body over it. It exploded underneath him. His body absorbed the blast. The four men next to him lived, unhurt, because a 19-year-old who was already wounded chose in his last instant to cover a grenade rather than roll away from it.