Babula, Robert Leo
Marines Staff Sergeant

Robert Leo Babula from Indiana, Pennsylvania, Indiana county.

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: August 28, 1968
Death details: On August 28, 1968, four members of a U.S. Marine fire team departed their base area in Quang Nam Province to establish an ambush site near Hoa Hai village in the vicinity of grid square BT 06 67. When the team failed to return as scheduled, a search was conducted. On September 4, several pieces of a U.S.-made wrist watch and identification tags belonging to one member of the fire team were found in the vicinity of grid coordinates BT 061 673. No further evidence of the team’s fate was ever found.

Private First Class Robert Leo Babula, who joined the U.S. Marine Corps from Pennsylvania, served with Company K, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division. He was one of the four memberof the fire team who disappeared, and his remains were not recovered. After the incident, the Marine Corps promoted PFC Babula to to the rank of Staff Sergeant. Today, Staff Sergeant Babula is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency