Army Maj. Gen. Franklin L. “Buster” Hagenbeck, 51, is a paratrooper,
but he comes from the aristocratic breed of generals rather than the rough-and-tumble
kind. He bears a striking resemblance to Douglas MacArthur. And like
MacArthur, he’s a constant presence in the operations center when his troops
are under fire, up at all hours, pacing and questioning his staff, checking
and rechecking and trying not to nag: aircraft spare parts, fuel, weather,
ammunition supplies, even water; the separate routes the helicopters will
fly through foggy mountain passes to get reinforcements in and casualties
out and not collide with each other. “You don’t sleep a lot at night,”
he says one afternoon. “You spend every waking moment going over every
detail until you think you’ve got it right. One night I laid down
for the first time in 48 hours, and 45 minutes later they came in to”—he
gathers his breath and pushes on—“to tell me a helo is down and we’ve got
KIAs (killed-in-action).”