Never Forgotten

by Wade Franks with Mark Beaird

Never Forgotten is Wade's inspiring story of how his life was brought full circle from the mud and despair of the Vietnam battlefield that caused his life to go completely off course to a healing restoration and a guiding revelation of God's divine care and plan for his life. Travel with him on an incredible journey through the jungles of Vietnam and back home again to a country caught up in a conflict all its own. Travel the tortured road of hopelessness and self-destruction with a man haunted by the past until he finds renewed hope and purpose through a new and unshakable faith which would, ironically, lead him back to Vietnam. Never Forgotten assures readers that the work God is doing presently in our lives is a reflection of the work God has done in the past and a foretaste of what He will do in the future.

Foreword

This is a foreword, but for it to work, you have to look backward, and most of life cannot be spent looking backward. But those who fail to recognize history, which is looking backward, will not have a clue as to how to read the road map of the future. Wade Franks looks backward to bring to the reader today a lesson so thoroughly learned that it will be applicable in principle to the reader as much as it was to the writer. Wade is pure. I know this man personally and have enjoyed at great lengths opportunities of fellowship for days, not just during Vietnam Journey Back tours, but also while riding alongside him and his wife Gail on motorcycles to Canada, Colorado, and any place we could find to share time together. In his book, Never Forgotten, you will see the progression of God's grace - His covering even when we don't see His hand; the way He shapes a man. Wade did not realize those fingerprints were God's. God will use the unleashed and unrestrained, inexplicable, undaunted, enthusiastic author of this book to change your life. This book will make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, and you'll reach up to push it back down, as a shudder goes through your body that makes you want to shout. Well, go ahead! It will make this book that much more fun to read. -Dave Roever

Preface

For the "grunt" or the "ground-pounder" on the battlefields of Vietnam, the moon and the stars were regular reminders of home. The country in which they had found themselves was so unfamiliar in appearance, so foreign in customs and people. For most there was little to remind them of home except for the night sky. Surrounded by the darkness, quietly standing a post or lying silently in a foxhole vigilantly watching for the stealthy approach of the enemy, it was only natural to become keenly aware of one's surroundings. The smells and sounds of the jungle would grow alive with each passing hour. When the moon could be seen, it would often draw their attention upward and lead some soldiers to think of home and wonder, Is someone back home looking at the same moon as I am? Are they thinking of me?

Some had someone back home who was praying for them. Many knew that there was someone at home who cared. But with all that they had heard about what was happening back in the States with protestors and politicians, many wondered how much the country as a whole cared about their troubles. So lost in the immensity of the war and the landscape of world events, it was easy to wonder if anyone would ever know what they experienced if they did not make it back home, and if they did, could they ever tell anyone or make them understand?

With their upward glance to the moon, they would cast their hopes to the sky to see home again and to be remembered. While in this foreign land which seemed an immeasurable distance from home, their gaze at the moon was a search for connection with the former world and its people they had known, while in this foreign land which seemed an immeasurable distance from home.

This is one soldier's inspiring story of how his life was brought full circle from the mud and despair of the Vietnam battlefield that caused his life to go completely off course to a healing restoration and a guiding revelation of God's divine care and plan for his life.

Photos From The Book:

Reviews

An epic never flagging in suspense... It seemed hardly possible that anything new of significance could be said about the Vietnam War. But this is exactly what Wade Franks has succeeded in doing. The story of a small town boys survival of extreme combat, his contemptuous return home after the war, his years of searching for and finding the only one that can give peace and comfort to a troubled soul - Jesus Christ.

- Mark McDaniel
Former NASA Advisory Council Member