'PANHANDLE PINKIE'
Marine saves friends
Editor's Note: In Greenville, NH., they called him "Pinkie." His name is Alvin Lapoint and he is 19, barely out of high school. His fellow marines call him "Panhandle Pinkie" because he loads up with extra gear, spare ammo, rations and a jacket knife, when he goes into battle. Some of his buddies in Viet Nam are alive today because "Panhandle Pinkie" charged a Communist cannon armed with only a bayonet and a grenade that turned out to be a dud. Here is his story as he and his friends told it.
DA NANG, South Viet Nam— (UFI) — The young Marine dodged, twisted, turned and kept running.
Dozens of rounds spewed out of the muzzle of a Viet Cong cannon and plowed up dirt at his feet.
Rounds whistled past him on both sides.
"He's dead . . . he can't be alive, but he's still running," the sergeant said, almost to himself.
HE RAN ON.
The sergeant lifted his head from the dirt.
The Marine ran. He ran until he was 10 feet from the big gun, a 12.7 mm. antiaircraft cannon that had been turned on his squad.
HE LEAPED INTO the air, a long dive, and landed right on top of the gun barrel. He had a bayonet in his fist. He swung upright, straddling the gun, and in the same motion buried the bayonet in the stomach of one of the Communists. The second one in the bunker dived down a hole.
RR strikes affect Kansas City area
KANSAS CITY, Mo.—(UPI)—Pickets marched outside Union Pacific and Missouri Pacific (Mopac) facilities in Kansas and Missouri today after the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen went on strike against eight major railroads across the nation.
The Illinois Central facilities,
Spaceteststoday butfiringisnotset
CAPE KENNEDY — (UPI) — Launch terms, frustrated by three firing flops in three days, today tested two troublesome rockets for renewed attempts at shooting a Ster Guzer satellite and an Atlas-Centaur launcher into space.
The firing schedule for both the 3,000-pound Obbiting Astronomical Observatory (OAO) and the Atlas-Centaur rocket was in doubt. All that was certain was that neither would be launched today.
The high-powered Contaur, carrying a model of the Survey or soft-lending spacecraft it will send to the moon in May, was expected to be put off until at least Monday, but a longer delay for the OAO was likely.
The OAO, a $50 million satellite equipped with 10 telescopes, had its second launch attempt halted Wednesday after its Atlas-Agena roared into life and then quit before it left the ground.
Project officials blamed the trouble on the failure of one of the Atlas boosters's three main engines to reach full thrust during the tour-second period. 117-foot vehicle was anchored to the launch pad for just such an eventuality.
Red leaders ask unity
MOSCOW—(UPI)—Soviet and foreign Communist leaders called today for international Communist unity to help North Viet Nam fight its war against the United States.
Soviet President Nikolai V. Podgorny told the third session of the 23rd Soviet Communist party congress that Russia is giving "economic assistance and weapons" to Hanoi.
operating out of St. Louis and elsewhere, were among the other lines struck.
UNION PACIFIC and Missouri Pacific trains in and out of Kansas City were either annulled or marked indefinite.
Without mentioning past rejections by Communist China of unity pleas, Podgorny demanded "unity and cohesion of the internationalist Communist movement."
Pickets from both lines walked outside Kansas City's Union Station.
Missouri Pacific said the strike was in force along the 12,000 miles of the Mopac and its subsidiary, the Texas and Pacific. This includes 12 states in the midwest, south and southwest.
PICKETS WERE up at Kansas City, Sedalia, and Poplar Bluff, Mo., as well as Little Rock and Texarkana, Ark.
The young Marine jerked his bayonet out of the body, and without hesitation dived down the hole, too. The bayonet went to work the second time. It found its mark again. The hole was deep, a tunnel running back into the hillside. He rolled his grenade in, but it failed to go off.
Dail, Kansan 3
Thursday, March 31, 1966
"I was there in the bunker for a couple of minutes, but then our artillery started coming in and they told me to get out of there," said Pfc. Alvin "Panhandle Pinkie" Lapoint. "I started to leave, but another gook who was in that hole came out and opened up with that damn cannon again.
Ann Brewer and the Flames are here Fri. Night, April 1
"SO I CRAWLED down the hill and got me another grenade and went back. The second grenade did the trick."
Lapoint, 19, of Greenville, N.H., is a hero. He saved at least a dozen lives. His buddies can't understand how he came out of it without a scratch.
"Only a blister on my belly," he said with a grin. He pulled up his shirt and said, "That gun barrel was hot."
Lapoint won his place in Leathernek legend during Operation Indiana 330 miles northwest of Saigon, near Quang Ngai two days ago.
Anti-U.S. feelings rise
SAIGON—(UPI)About 2.000 Buddhist students marched through the streets in another anti-government demonstration today. They held symbolic "executions" of leaders in the ruling military junta and charged that American GI's "have turned our women into prostitutes and bar girls."
Speakers at a mass rally called the government of Premier Nguyen Cao Ky a lackey to the Americans and for the first time put South Viet Nam's "independence" even above the fight against the Viet Cong.
"WE DO NOT ACCEPT an anti-Communist struggle if the sovereignty of Viet Nam is lost," shouted student leader Thang Vu.
He charged his homeland was being used as a "testing ground for weapons of foreign countries" and demanded "a government capable of dealing with this foreign country."
capable of dealing with the foreign interests. In Da Nang, about 380 miles north of Saigon, more than 3,000 persons staged an orderly anti-government demonstration. They gathered in Diem Hong Park and waved banners denouncing both the military regime and the United States.
THE RALLY CAME just 24 hours after the ruling junta met in extraordinary session and voted to set up a constitutional council to draft a new constitution. Buddhists have protested this would not be adequate to meet their demands that the government be turned over to civilians.
The government's official news agency said the junta also adopted disciplinary measures for handling both "military and civil servants who continue to participate in actions susceptible to harm the national security and order," an apparent warning to demonstrators.
BUDDHISTS HAVE been demonstrating for three weeks against the military government headed by Ky, but always before presented a solid front in the struggle against Communism.
The demonstrations began March 10 after popular Lt. Gen, Nguyen Chanh Thi, a Buddhist, was ousted as commander of the country's five northern provinces. The demonstrators demanded early elections to select a civilian government.