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Last Update: Monday, July 20, 2009

The internet has a way of providing us unexpected information. Out of the blue, I received an e-mail with the attached news article attached. The individual who sent it to me lived in my hometown and for some reason had kept it for almost three decades. He came across my website, contacted me and provided the copy. I had never seen this article before and as I read it, memories of the 1972 Easter Offensive came back to me. It was a poignant experience.

Excerpted from the Boston Record American
Saturday, May 6, 1972

22^nd Birthday in Vietnam

Lynn Pararescue Specialist Sergeant

Apologizes for Worrying His Family

By Janice Elliott

            “I am sitting in my room with a .45 pistol to my right and an MP-3 submachinegun to my left. I’ve got my flak vest, helmet, and combat gear laid out in case I need them in a hurry. All in all, it’s a hell of a way to usher in my 22^nd birthday.” 

            Those words were written by Air Force Sgt. Robert LaPointe of 63 Tudor St., Lynn, as he waited at DaNang for an expected enemy attack and a hurried summons that would mean he would once again risk his own life to save another. LaPointe is a Maroon Beret, a Pararescue specialist who spends virtually all his days and many of his nights behind enemy lines picking up doomed flyers and friendly forces trapped and wounded in battle areas. Letters to his parents and younger brothers written almost every day are a chronicle of the war in bits and pieces – night alerts, daring rescues recounted so matter of factly they seem routine, and, once of the haunting feeling that he was going to die. 

            “At 1 a.m. this morning my crew chief woke me up and told me that I had a mission,”  LaPointe wrote in one letter to his father, Paul, his stepmother and his brothers, Raymond, 17 and Tommy, 15.  “An AC-130 gunship with 14 crewmembers has been shot down on the trail and we are going up and try to get them. I brief at 4:15 a.m. and will take off with the first light of the sun. It is now 3:09 a.m. and I couldn’t sleep so I thought I would get up and write. The area we are going into is a bad one: Tripple A and SAM’s. We have had two other airplanes shot down there in the last couple of days. It is a strange feeling, knowing that in a couple of hours I will be getting shot at and that I could be shot down too. I am not scared, but I am very nervous. I’ll be OK when I get on my airplane and have something to do, but now I am listening to some music and thinking. I’ve never felt this way before a mission, before this. I wanted you to know that I’ve got no regrets at being here as I believe in the mission of air rescue over here and I like my work.” I’ve never felt sorry that I’ve come here. Well, Dave (Dave is a fellow Maroon Beret) is at my door waiting for me so we can go check out our aircraft and survival gear. I am reminded now of the movie Patton where at the end he said that “All glory is fleeting.” I know what he means now.” 

            From childhood he was what his fellow airmen would call “gung ho.” In high school, he joined a Civil Air Patrol unit and learned the difficult art of rescue. “He even used to get called out of school to go climb a mountain and look for a plane that was down,” says his father. A slim, good looking man with brown hair and blue eyes, LaPointe joined the Air Force after high school graduation. He “felt it was his duty,” says his father. He did one tour in Vietnam, then signed on for another stint. He made it home on leave last September and hopes to be back for another in June. 

            It was on his last leave that Robert met his stepmother for the first and only time. The LaPointe’s were married seven  months ago, nine years after both were widowed. Asked to describe his son, the elder LaPointe said “He’s what you’d call an all-American boy” and there was pride in his voice as he said it. Young LaPointe made the news earlier this week when on a rescue mission to free friendly forces and civilians trapped by the Communist offensive. He was left behind when his chopper took off. “He mentioned in one of his letters that he had to wait for a second chopper and that he sure wasn’t going to get left behind a second time.” LaPointe received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his part in a rescue mission last month near Quang Tri. Through his efforts – and accurate fire – a damaged helicopter was led back to safety. Had it not been for LaPointe, the Air Force said, the occupants of the other aircraft would have faced certain death or capture. 

            On April 21, in the midst of the Communist offensive, LaPointe wrote: “The artillery is booming outside now and it sounds as if it is hitting close. If the offensive had not started, I would now be in Thailand having a good time on R & R (rest and recreation). But, as my commander told me (he also lost his R & R) war’s hell and we aren’t being paid to go on R & R. I guess he is right.” 

            In another letter, he tells of a rescue: “I’ve just returned from a mission where we just picked up two U.S. pilots who crashed in Quang Tri Province. I was on the low bird and we have been credited with two combat saves. The pilots made their way to a beach and we landed near them. The #1 PJ (parachute jumper) ran down to them to make sure that they were OK and that they could get to the rescue chopper. I grabbed an M-60 machinegun and left the aircraft to get in a defensive position so that I could hold off the enemy troops what were moving into the area. After the survivors hopped on board, the #1 PJ covered me and I retreated back to the aircraft and we took off. All of this time, we were being shot at. As soon as I got back on the aircraft, I started shooting back with my minigun. We got out of there too fast to know how many we killed.” 

            Next, he tells his family that as a reward for the mission, his crew has been given the remainder of the day off, “my first in a long time.” Then he writes that the crew may be decorated for their efforts. In the same letter, dated April 15, LaPointe notes that the enemy is gaining ground and says, “The ARVN (South Vietnamese Army) reports of enemy casualties are all inflated and no one here believes them and reports of their own are being surpressed. 

            “The officers are having a party to celebrate our pick-up but I would like to pass it up as I am tired. It doesn’t make much sense to me to get drunk while all this is going on as they will probable call us if someone else goes down. This whole war does not seem to be going our way lately and as far as I am concerned, I’ve got the only good job left in it that has any real mission.” 

            LaPointe received enough medical training before shipping out to be able to suture wounds and do minor surgery. He is also a qualified parachutist. In addition to the letters, LaPointe and his family also exchanged taped messages. The last message his father received was only one minute long. “I guess he’s worried – he just doesn’t know what to say anymore.”

 
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