THE WALL OF FACES

Major Lawrence Michael Malone, United States Army
May 4, 1936-January 7, 1968


Who would have guessed that so many of us would reunite 53 years after graduating? We gather to honor brave men whose young lives were lost in the jungles of faraway Vietnam. Joe Lauinger, Don Ide, Billy Adams, Peter Kellogg and Larry Malone counted among the 58,220 Americans killed in the war. Inscribed in black granite on the Vietnam Memorial, the names of all these courageous men serve as reminders of the high price of our Nation’s wars.

Major Larry Malone was a Georgetown mentor, and in those days some of us needed all the help we could get. I joined the two-year ROTC program junior year, and had a fair amount of catching up to do, but I wanted to serve and believed it was the right thing to do. Unlike some of my clairvoyant contemporaries, I had little real understanding of either the Vietnam war, or the challenges of combat with a highly resourceful enemy. Like Larry, I wanted to be an infantryman, and wholeheartedly joined the crusade. I survived, Larry didn’t.

Major Lawrence M. Malone and his battalion commander, LTC Bob Gregory, perished on January 7, 1968, while flying a reconnaissance mission near Hue, then South Vietnam’s second largest city. North Vietnamese ground fire brought their helicopter down. There were no survivors. At that time the North Vietnamese Army threat in this area was considered minimal, and higher commanders had little notion of the massive North Vietnamese buildup, which culminated in the Tet offensive just a few weeks later. Those of you who have read Mark Bowden’s recent history of the Battle of Hue will have an idea of what lay in store for the US and its South Vietnamese ally during some of the most vicious fighting of the war.

Assigned to the same unit in the First Cavalry Division, the Second Battalion, Twelfth Cavalry, I arrived too late to connect with my mentor. Lawrence Malone left a widow and young child. Unknown to me at the time, I was one of many replacements deployed to fill the depleted ranks of the First Cavalry, then stationed near Hue, by then a ravaged, smoldering ghost town. Even to this day, no one can say for certain how many souls perished during this epic battle.

A West Pointer from Seattle, Washington, Larry Malone had previously served a one-year tour as an Advisor to a South Vietnamese Airborne unit. As an Airborne Ranger, he was highly trained and motivated, and imbued with a radiant sense of hu

Some may think you are forgotten
Though on earth you are no more
But in our memory you are with us
As you always were before….

Our family has always remembered the his ultimate sacrifice.

Major Malone was my ROTC instructor at Georgetown University. He truly inspired all of his students and instilled in them a sense of duty and responsibility as future junior officers. Blessed with a wonderful sense of humor, he, nonetheless, made us understand the realities of the conflict we would soon face. H was loved and respected by all. He will always have a special place in our hearts.
John De Pue, Class of 1967

The “Friends of Rocky Versace” remember one of Rocky’s fellow alumni from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point - a Firstie in Cadet Company M-2, USCC when Rocky was a Cow in Co. K-2 and a brother Airborne-Ranger - Major Lawrence Michael Malone, USMA Class of 1958, on what would’ve been his 85th birthday - 4 May 2021.