26. Dan Bullock Became the Youngest American Killed in the Vietnam War
After boot camp, US Marine Corps Private First Class Dan Bullock was sent to Vietnam, a war whose insatiable maw was ever hungry for more and more bodies. He arrived in South Vietnam on May 18th, 1969, and was assigned to Fox Company, Second Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division as a rifleman. He ended up in Quang Nam Province and was stationed in An Hoa Combat Base, about 25 miles southwest of Danang. By then, he was all of fifteen.
Dan was big for his age, but he was still a boy in every regard. Surrounded by men, he kept to himself, and his comrades noticed. Assigned base security duties, he was in a bunker with three other Marines on the night of June 6th, 1969, when North Vietnamese sappers stealthily crept under the wire that surrounded the base. They got close enough to Dan’s bunker to toss a satchel charge through a slit. The explosion killed all four occupants. Dan Bullock was the youngest American killed in the Vietnam War, or since World War I, for that matter.