I urge you to take a few minutes and read about Michael, you can make a difference, if we all work as one. Imagine if you will how Michael's family must feel, the not knowing! Click on the bracelet at the bottom of the page and do your part:), and give Michaels family as well as family's like his some piece of mind:)!
Name: Michael Louis Laporte
Rank/Branch: E5/US Navy
Unit: 1st Force Reconnaissance Company, 1st Force Recon Battalion, 1st
Marine
Division
Date of Birth: 21 August 1944 (Seattle WA)
Home City of Record: Los Angeles CA
Date of Loss: 05 September 1967
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 155500N 1075800E (ZC184665)
Status (in 1973): Missing in Action
Category: 2
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: HCDROP
Other Personnel in Incident: (none missing)
Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 15 April 1990 from one or more
of the
following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence
with
POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews.
REMARKS: LOST IN HELICOPTER DROP
SYNOPSIS: Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Petty Officer Michael L. Laporte
was
assigned to 1st Force Recon Company, 1st Recon Battalion, 1st Marine
Division at
Da Nang, South Vietnam. (NOTE: Some lists have Laporte incorrectly
listed as an
E2.)
On September 3, 1967, Laport was assigned as the team corpsman of a
nine-man reconnaissance patrol that was inserted by parachute into Happy
Valley,
Quang Nam Province, South Vietnam.
Laporte was the number five man in the jump sequence. All nine
parachutes
opened, but a westerly wind of about 30 knots caused the team to drift.
Laporte
was seen by team members to be drifting out and beyond the others. This
was the
last time he was seen. He did not join the patrol as planned.
The patrol conducted an immediate search with negative results. this was
Laporte's 13th jump and he was very experienced in such operations,
having been
in-country for about 2 years, with a request for another extension. The
jump
master believed that he was not injured in the jump and that he could
evade
capture. (NOTE: Some sources say that Michael Laporte was a Navy SEAL,
although
this information is not given in U.S. Navy accounts of his loss
incident.) Later
in the day, the patrol was hit by an enemy force of 5-6 Viet Cong. All
other
patrol members were evacuated. (NOTE: Defense Department lists indicate
that
Laporte was lost on September 5th. No reason for the descrepancy can be
determined, unless the team was inserted on the 3rd and extracted on the
5th at
which time Laporte was declared missing.) Laporte was listed Missing in
Action.
Nearly 10,000 reports relating to Americans still missing, prisoner, or
otherwise unaccounted for in Southeast Asia have been received by the
U.S.
Government since the war ended. Many officials, having reviewed this
largely
classified information, believe that hundreds of Americans are still
alive,
withing and hoping that their country will someday bring them home.
Through the years since Laports disappeared, reports have filtered in
that he
was captured by the Viet Cong. In 1979, U.S. Marine PFC Robert Garwood
was
released from Vietnam, and related that he had known of Laporte.
According to
Garwood, the Viet Cong had brought Laporte to the camp in Happy Valley
where
Garwood had been held for some time as prisoner. The camp guards called
Laporte
"Bill." The last he heard, "Bill" was working as a laborer on a communal
farm in
North Vietnam in the Quang Thien area -- in 1975 -- two years after the
U.S.
Government declared that there was no reason to believe any POWs were
still
alive.
Garwood was not debriefed by the U.S. Government for some 8 years after
he was
released, so his knowledge of "Bill" was quite dated by the time it was
reluctantly received. Perhaps Laporte is still alive, wondering if
anyone
remembers him -- or cares.
Michael L. Laporte was promoted to the rank of Chief Petty Officer
during the
period he was maintained missing.
I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to keep pushing this
issue inside the Beltway...
The need to get specific answers is more important now than ever before.
If still alive, some MIAs are now in their 70s...They don't have much
time left. We have to demand the answers from the bureaucrats and keep
standing on their necks (figuratively speaking) until they get the
message that THEY work for US and that we are serious about getting
these long overdue responses. Diplomatic considerations aside...
We can no longer allow questionable protocols established by
pseudo-aristocratic armchair strategists, to determine or influence the
fate of the men who were in the trenches while the diplomats were
sharing sherry and canapes and talking about "Their Plans" for the
future of SE Asia.
If you'd like to see what some others are doing in addition to writing
their congressmen, senators and the Whitehouse, check out some of these
sites:
http://hawk.nji.com/~mred/mialist.htm
Another remarkable site is by an 11 year old angel who never even set
foot on American soil...She not only put up a page...she started a major
project for an organization of Kids on the Net called KeyPals
International.
Her MIA page is at http://www.oocities.org/~angelicdevil/mia.html but
don't miss her Bring Grandpa Home page at
http://www.worldkids.net/clubs/kci/projects/Bring.html.
If you come away from that site without a lump in your throat, then you
just weren't paying attention.
