thedrifter
05-12-08, 09:19 AM
Bro finally has closure on hero airman
By Joe Fitzgerald | Monday, May 12, 2008
More than 40 years have passed since Mike Donato received word that his brother Paul, a Navy airman, an electronics specialist, was missing in action in Vietnam, triggering a pain that would remain compounded by mystery.
“It’s a terrible category,” Donato, 69, the retired principal of Hyde Park High School, pointed out. “It leaves you wondering: ‘Was he captured? Will he come walking through that door again someday?’
“We never knew much about what Paul did; we could never get anything out of him regarding where he was or what he was doing. All we had was a post office box where we could write to him.”
A decade would pass before the military formally declared Paul dead, allowing the Donato clan to have a memorial Mass at Sacred Heart Church on Cummins Highway in Roslindale, just up the street from the family homestead and a stone’s throw from the railroad bridge that now bears his name.
When the remains of Paul’s crew were eventually recovered, individual identification was not possible, so the bones of all nine members were placed inside one casket and interred at Arlington National Cemetery.
“As the families were gathered inside this tiny chapel,” Donato recalls, “with a minister, priest and rabbi officiating, we could hear the hoofbeats of horses waiting to transport that casket.
“Then we lined up in that procession and walked to the grave where nine flags were presented. Somewhere off in the distance, taps were played. It was unbelievable.
“Now here we are, getting ready to go back on Wednesday.”
Donato plans to be at the U.S. Navy Memorial in Washington for an 11 a.m. ceremony in which U.S. Navy Squadron VO-67 will posthumously receive a rarely awarded Presidential Unit Citation “for extrordinary heroism and outstanding performance of duty in action against enemy forces.”
But this time there will be no mystery, no unanswered questions, because, after all these years of not knowing how their loved ones perished, details finally reached these families last week.
It was early in the Tet Offensive, and 1,800 Marines at the U.S. base in Khe Sanh found themselves surrounded by 20,000 enemy troops, marshaling to annihilate them.
“According to what we heard from a major general,” Donato said, “it wasn’t a strategic area, but by massacring those trapped Marines, the enemy would have been making a political statement.”
Paul’s unit was commissioned to squelch it.
U.S. Navy Squadron VO-67, secretly operating from a remote base near the Thai-Laotian border, launched such perilous operations that its anticipated casualty rates were 60-75 percent. Still, it resolutely ascended into the face of danger.
“We’re told they flew as low as 300 feet, studying the topography, sighting enemy supply routes, enemy positions, implanting sensors to monitor troop movements,” Donato said. “They were looking for ways for our guys to get out.”
Though the plane carrying Paul’s crew would be shot down by anti-aircraft fire in Laos in February 1968, the squadron’s mission eventually succeeded, enabling those vastly outnumbered Marines to elude the bloodthirsty Viet Cong.
Mike Donato and his other two brothers, Joe and Jimmy, will be joined at Wednesday’s ceremony by a granddaughter Paul never knew.
“Down through the years,” Donato said, “every holiday, everyone would show up at my parents’ house, except for Paul’s wife and three kids who were living in New Mexico. They missed a lot, we missed a lot, and obviously he missed it all.
“But now we know why. Now we know, that because of him and his buddies, those Marines who faced certain slaughter got to spend these years with their families instead. It’s the only way to look at it, I guess.
“I am so damn proud of him, and not just because he was my brother. That’s what I’ll be thinking when they unveil the plaque on Wednesday: I’m so damn proud of them all.”
Ellie
By Joe Fitzgerald | Monday, May 12, 2008
More than 40 years have passed since Mike Donato received word that his brother Paul, a Navy airman, an electronics specialist, was missing in action in Vietnam, triggering a pain that would remain compounded by mystery.
“It’s a terrible category,” Donato, 69, the retired principal of Hyde Park High School, pointed out. “It leaves you wondering: ‘Was he captured? Will he come walking through that door again someday?’
“We never knew much about what Paul did; we could never get anything out of him regarding where he was or what he was doing. All we had was a post office box where we could write to him.”
A decade would pass before the military formally declared Paul dead, allowing the Donato clan to have a memorial Mass at Sacred Heart Church on Cummins Highway in Roslindale, just up the street from the family homestead and a stone’s throw from the railroad bridge that now bears his name.
When the remains of Paul’s crew were eventually recovered, individual identification was not possible, so the bones of all nine members were placed inside one casket and interred at Arlington National Cemetery.
“As the families were gathered inside this tiny chapel,” Donato recalls, “with a minister, priest and rabbi officiating, we could hear the hoofbeats of horses waiting to transport that casket.
“Then we lined up in that procession and walked to the grave where nine flags were presented. Somewhere off in the distance, taps were played. It was unbelievable.
“Now here we are, getting ready to go back on Wednesday.”
Donato plans to be at the U.S. Navy Memorial in Washington for an 11 a.m. ceremony in which U.S. Navy Squadron VO-67 will posthumously receive a rarely awarded Presidential Unit Citation “for extrordinary heroism and outstanding performance of duty in action against enemy forces.”
But this time there will be no mystery, no unanswered questions, because, after all these years of not knowing how their loved ones perished, details finally reached these families last week.
It was early in the Tet Offensive, and 1,800 Marines at the U.S. base in Khe Sanh found themselves surrounded by 20,000 enemy troops, marshaling to annihilate them.
“According to what we heard from a major general,” Donato said, “it wasn’t a strategic area, but by massacring those trapped Marines, the enemy would have been making a political statement.”
Paul’s unit was commissioned to squelch it.
U.S. Navy Squadron VO-67, secretly operating from a remote base near the Thai-Laotian border, launched such perilous operations that its anticipated casualty rates were 60-75 percent. Still, it resolutely ascended into the face of danger.
“We’re told they flew as low as 300 feet, studying the topography, sighting enemy supply routes, enemy positions, implanting sensors to monitor troop movements,” Donato said. “They were looking for ways for our guys to get out.”
Though the plane carrying Paul’s crew would be shot down by anti-aircraft fire in Laos in February 1968, the squadron’s mission eventually succeeded, enabling those vastly outnumbered Marines to elude the bloodthirsty Viet Cong.
Mike Donato and his other two brothers, Joe and Jimmy, will be joined at Wednesday’s ceremony by a granddaughter Paul never knew.
“Down through the years,” Donato said, “every holiday, everyone would show up at my parents’ house, except for Paul’s wife and three kids who were living in New Mexico. They missed a lot, we missed a lot, and obviously he missed it all.
“But now we know why. Now we know, that because of him and his buddies, those Marines who faced certain slaughter got to spend these years with their families instead. It’s the only way to look at it, I guess.
“I am so damn proud of him, and not just because he was my brother. That’s what I’ll be thinking when they unveil the plaque on Wednesday: I’m so damn proud of them all.”
Ellie