Congress and the Johnson administration, therefore, sought to protect our college-bound and educated young men. Protestants were 64.4 percent (37,483), Catholics were 28.9 percent (16,806). Clarke fled the shooting scene and exchanged fire with Vietnamese policemen who were chasing him. According to the drivers account, recalled by Bergman, the Viet Cong had set off a remotely detonated mine (later determined to be a Czechoslovakian-made artillery shell) buried in the road. The radio transmitter was put out of operation and an unknown number of Viet Cong killed and captured. He ran a short distance, turned and fired on the ambushers again. As part of the first American troop drawdowns of the war, Marines departed Vietnam at Da Nang. No other American war has presented such a young profile in combat. Our motto is We try until we succeed!, Contact us at admin@historyandheadlines.com, Guidelines and Policies for Images used on This Site, as well as for Guest and Sponsored Articles, and Other Terms of Use. We flew in at 500 feet and initiated a 500 foot per minute decent.. The article was originally published in the June 1993 issue of Vietnam Magazine and updated in November 2004. The Youngest American KIA in Vietnam War', "Marine, 15, Killed in Vietnam; Enlisted at 14, Lying About Age; MARINE, 15, DIES IN VIETNAM WAR", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dan_Bullock&oldid=1141844302, American military personnel killed in the Vietnam War, United States Marine Corps personnel of the Vietnam War, United States Marine Corps personnel stubs, Pages containing links to subscription-only content, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 27 February 2023, at 03:00. They Say He Burned Down the Reichstag. "The first American soldier killed in the Vietnam War was Air Force T-Sgt. A new Department of Defense (DOD) database computer tape released through the National Archives allows researchers to take a much closer look at our 58,152 Vietnam casualties. George Washington had complained vociferously about the flood of questionable foreign volunteers. The shining surface is intended to reflect the sun, the ground and those who stand before it. That was Davis team. Inscription at the beginning of The Wall. Frank Mt. Its a contradiction deepened by Dan Bullocks age, and the fact that he should have been in high school, not in a bunker in Quang Nam Province. Dan Bullock was killed instantly, seems to be the case. Certainly, some who died did come from poor and broken homes in the urban ghettos and barrios, or were from dirt-poor farm homes in the South and Midwest. As Bullocks father told a Times reporter in 1969, My son had no business in that damn war.. He was 15 years old and had been in-country nearly one month. Fitzgibbon's name was added to the Vietnam Memorial Wall on May 31, 1999, and Today Show host Katie Couric interviewed members of his family for the occasion. An estimated 11,000 women served in Vietnam. Using fresh intelligence from Davis outfit, the 3rd Radio Research Unit, they headed west to attack the Viet Cong at the Thieng Quang pineapple plantation in Operation Chopper, the first helicopter assault of the Vietnam War. The teams established a 3-mile baseline along Highway 10 near Cau Xang and waited for the Viet Cong transmissions to begin. However, Davis, an experienced radio direction finder, kept his watch in a breast pocket so it would not interfere with the direction-finding process. Two teams believed they were at good signal detection points, but Tom was not satisfied with the quality of his signal and had made a request by radio to Control Net for permission to move to a better location, Bergman recalled. Contents1 Do veterans get free, The Purple Heart Medal is awarded to members of the armed forces of the U.S. who are wounded by an instrument of war in the hands of the enemy and posthumously to the next of kin in the name of those who are killed in action or die of wounds, Active duty members can visit the DFAS tax statement website at: https://www.dfas.mil/MilitaryMembers/taxinfo/taxstatements/ to request or view their tax statements. All were nurses, all were single and all but one were in their 20s. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. The radio technicians would have to make calculations from only three positions along the same road. Bullock was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina. The vast majority of Americans who were eligible by age but did not serve in the armed forces were exempted by reason of physical, mental, psychiatric, or moral failure; or they were given status deferments because they were college students, fathers, clergy, teachers, engineers or conscientious objectors. Bullock had plans to become a firefighter or police officer once he returned stateside. He had been assigned to cleaning duty that night, but was transferred to the night watch after one Marine was wounded on night duty. When it ended, all but one member in the third truck would be dead. When he exited the club, he saw Fitzgibbon across the street playing with some local children and giving out candy. The idea that American enlisted dead were made up largely of societys poverty stricken misfits is a terrible slander to their memory and to the solid working-class and middle-class families of this country who provided the vast majority of our casualties. According to the Department of Defense at the time, Dan Bullock was possibly the youngest American service member killed in combat since World War I, and has almost certainly remained so. The three Dec. 22 teams needed to complete their mission and get out as fast as possible. North Vietnamese troops launched the Tet Offensive in January 1968, which was successful against South Vietnam and the U.S. Once he learned, Dans father, Brother Bullock, said that his sons enthusiasm about the service kept the family from notifying officials about his age, according to The Times. Shortly after Davis got the go-ahead, his truck came over the bridge and drove past Bergmans to get a better location for that last bearing. U.S. personnel in Vietnam in May 1961 were assigned to Military Assistance Advisory Group-Vietnam, formed in November 1955. All were returned to Saigon on an aircraft that was part of the 57th Transportation Company (Light Helicopter), which had arrived in Vietnam less than two weeks earlier. Nguyen Van Thieu, president of South Vietnam, and President Richard M. Nixon, on Midway Island. Operation Choppers success was directly attributed to the Americans of the 3rd Radio Research Unit and their Vietnamese counterparts, who diligently searched for and located the transmitterfor which Davis and nine ARVN soldiers paid the ultimate price. Later, he was assigned to help secure Iraqs southern border. He had been there just a few weeks. The Vietnam War was a long, deadly . Prof. Appy added: More and more African-Americans, including guys in the military, were saying, You know, we achieved the right to be cannon fodder in a war that seems increasingly senseless and even unjust and a blatant reminder that while were being sent 10,000 miles away in the name of democracy, were being denied those democratic rights still in the United States. A contradiction that King and every civil rights leader was drawing attention to.. [8], The DoD had previously moved the date of the start of the Vietnam War to include the death of Captain Cramer, who was killed at Nha Trang in a training accident on October 21, 1957. In early February, his mother and father went to their son's colleagues and handed over a large humanitarian cargo to the . How old was the oldest man in World War 2 in Vietnam? Master Sergeant John Hartley Robertson, 76,. As one walks the Wall slowly, examining the ineffably American names, one is struck by the same recurring surnames. Dan Bullock, a boy from Brooklyn, was the youngest American killed in the war. The Air Force lost 2,580 or l percent. The point at which the three lines intersect should be the location of the enemy transmitter. They came largely from California and Texas, with lesser numbers from Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Florida, New York and a few from many other states across the country. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Richard Bernard Fitzgibbon Jr. There is some truth to this, but it is instructive to look at what the DOD database reveals in terms of race, ethnicity, national origin, religious preference and casualties by U.S. geographic areas. These young men were trained quickly and shipped to Vietnam quickly. This uneven impact was caused by a number of factors: (1) While the South was home to some 53 percent of all blacks in the 1970 census, almost 60 percent of black casualties came from the South; (2) Although we cannot be as precise, we do know that a considerable majority of Hispanic-American casualties came from the West, (California, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado) and the South (Texas); (3) Better employment opportunities in the Northeast reduced the number of volunteers; (4) Greater college matriculation in the Northeast increased the number of status deferments for the regions 17- to 24- year olds; (5) More anti-war sentiment in the media and on college campuses in the Northeast. Supervisors explore ways to offset vehicle traffic from new rural housing, This Monte Vista High wrestling star isnt rising, shes skyrocketing, Column: Padres offense inspires bright forecasts as Petco Parks worst clouds have lifted. On Jan. 10, less than three weeks after his death, the Army Security Agency officially named the 3rd Radio Research Units Tan Son Nhut compound Davis Station. V. Mark D. Raab served in Vietnam February 1970-March 1972 as a specialist 4 in the 277th Field Artillery Detachment, 23rd Artillery Group, II Field Force. The morning following the Dec. 22 ambush, 30 CH-21s of the 8th and 57th Transportation companies were loaded with several hundred troops from ARVNs elite Airborne Brigade. The episode included a segment on the father and son.[3][13]. In Naberezhnye Chelny, the parents of contract soldier Sergei Korsakov, who died during the NMD, organized a collection of humanitarian aid for the Russian military in the combat zone. He immediately threw the satchel into the water to keep it out of enemy hands and returned to the truck as small arms-fire cracked all around him. Of the 7,262 blacks who died, 6,955, or 96 percent, were Army and Marine enlisted men. The two men, both U.S. Marines, were killed in a rocket attack one day before the Fall of Saigon. Early on President Johnson, his advisers and especially the Congress, realized that if the draft was to be truly equitable and had included combat assignments in Vietnam for the sons of the educationally advantaged and influential Americans from the professional and managerial classes, then the resulting uproar would have shut down the war. The apparent last American to die in the war was Air Force Sgt. Lower end category IVs consisting of those who scored below 20 on the AFQT were usually rejected for service. Advertisement Maj. Steven Hutchison of. Officer casualties in Vietnam, including warrant officers, numbered 7,874, or 13.5 percent of all casualties. All classes were drafted or volunteered and all served and died equally, although it must be noted that most blacks died separately. When Clarke went off duty, he began drinking heavily at a club at the base. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. Just 15 years old, he would be the youngest American killed in the Vietnam War. Serhii Panasiuk, a 33-year-old soldier of the Territorial Defence Forces of Volyn Oblast, was killed at the Ukrainian-Belarusian border during a combat task. Nolde returned to Vietnam in 1972 at the request of Army Chief of Staff General William Westmoreland to serve as an advisor to the Army of South Vietnam. The major service academies and other military colleges provided close to 900 of the Vietnam officer casualties: the U.S. Military Academy, 278; the U.S. Air Force Academy, 205; the U.S. Almost 50 percent were majors, lieutenant-colonels, colonels and three were generals. He is accused of murdering 19-year . The death of William Nolde was treated as a national event, with President Nixon and General Alexander Haig in attendance at the burial at Arlington National Cemetery, an event aired on national television. A relatively small number refused to register for the draft at all. A Friend Who Lives In Mount Laurel Is Pushing To Have That Sacrifice Recognized", "Only The Good Die Young: In Memory Of PFC. Even though the Americans had obtained what they considered accurate and actionable intelligence, ARVN commanders in Saigon ordered yet another mission to reconfirm the transmitters location, now designated as Target 627-C. A correspondingly greater tradition of military service in the other regions had its effect on U.S. regional casualties. The officer corps casualties alone would satisfy that judgment, but that is not the same as being representative. The Channeling Memo of July 1965, instructed all local draft boards to give status deferments to college undergraduate and post-graduate students. Thus, there were 211,455 killed and wounded, or one in every 10 Americans who served in Vietnam. Following in his father's footsteps, Richard B. Fitzgibbon III joined the United States Marine Corps and also served in Vietnam, where he was killed in September 1965. Can 17 year olds go to war? Since the days of Alexander the Great and the Roman Legions, it has always been the young, inexperienced, low-ranking enlisted man who has taken the brunt of combat casualties. The resulting aptitude scores were used to classify entrants into four categories and this would, for the most part, determine their subsequent assignments. History Short: Americas First Spy Satellite, A Failure! They also died quickly, many within a few weeks or months of arriving in Vietnam. The concluding episode, titled "Stories from the Wall", aired May 29, 2000, a year after Fitzgibbon's name was added to the Vietnam Memorial. As Maya Ling Lin, the architect of the Wall, has said: It was as if the black-brown earth were polished and made into an interface between the sunny world and the quiet dark world beyond that we cannot enter. At An Hoa combat base on the airstrip Dan Bullock was guarding when he was killed CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters airlifted Marines. Of course, the Marine, Navy, and Air Force enlisted casualties were all volunteers, but as it turned out, almost 50 percent of Army enlisted casualties were also volunteers. UPI - The Vietnam War Andrew Peters, 28, was serving as a member of . Of all enlisted men who died in Vietnam, blacks made up 14.1 percent of the total. At first he struggled to make it through, but was able to do so with the help of one of his fellow recruits. | The names are listed chronologically by date of death, the first to last. One may also ask, how many US soldiers died in Vietnam in 1968? This number of deaths per 100,000 compared strikingly with the 23.5 in the Northeast region, 29.9 in the West and 28.4 in the North Central (Midwest) region. Neal Rairden was a bunker or two down, just 15 yards away, when North Vietnamese commandos tossed a pack of explosives. He had been there just a few weeks. Who were they? Theyre superstitious about a lot of things, but with Dan, they were dead on. We were one giant Hollywood B-17 bomber crew, one perfect socioeconomic platoon storming Omaha Beach or Okinawa. Radio direction finding teams preferred to take bearings from several different directions, but this areas extensive wetlands and the lack of roads made that impossible. [5], When he was 14 years old, he altered the date on his birth certificate to show that he was born December 21, 1949. The Army conducted an official ceremony in October 2007 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, from which Capt. Ryan C. McGhee, 21, of Fredericksburg, Va., was killed Wednesday in central Iraq. [3], Fitzgibbon was not killed in action, but rather was murdered in Saigon[4] by another American airman, Staff Sergeant Edward C. Clarke. They often reveal a typically warm American family atmosphere. Dan Bullock Was Only 15 When He Was Killed In Vietnam. Dan Bullock (December 21, 1953 June 7, 1969) was a United States Marine and the youngest U.S. serviceman killed in action during the Vietnam War,[1] dying at the age of 15. It called for the registration of all 18 to 26-year old males, with induction to take place at 18 1/2 if so ordered by the local draft board. The Brooklyn teen, after using a doctored birth certificate to enlist, became the youngest U.S. casualty of the Vietnam War when he was gunned down on June 7, 1969. This process is conducted simultaneously at each of the other two teams locations. Don't overpay for pet insurance. Despite his youth, he was physically solid at about 5 feet 9 inches and 160 pounds and managed to get through the notoriously grueling Marine boot camp at Parris Island, S.C., and then on to Vietnam without being found out. None of that geopolitical theater especially mattered when the satchel charge came through the firing slot of Dan Bullocks bunker, though. One of Fitzgibbon's sons, Marine Lance Corporal Richard B. Fitzgibbon III (March 11, 1944 September 7, 1965), was also killed in the Vietnam War. You might learn some skills.. First Sgt. It wasnt exactly Declare victory and get out, as Senator George Aiken had famously suggested the United States do back in 1966, but it was the start of Nixons peace with honor initiative. Pleasant Library of Special Collections and Archives. THE NAMES ON THE WALL: AN HISTORICAL JUDGMENT. If officers are added, then almost 70 percent of those who died were volunteers. | [8], Private First Class Bullock arrived in South Vietnam on May 18, 1969, and was assigned as a rifleman in 2nd Squad, 2nd Platoon, Company F, 2nd Battalion 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division. The young man died in the line of military duty in December, he was 20 years old. The night of June 6, 1969, had been quiet, and guarding the airstrip at Delta sector was supposed to be an easy watch. In letters home, he said he missed his family and reported that he did not have any holes in him yet. There is no question that all segments of American society were represented. Fitzgibbon died from his wounds on June 8, 1956. His son, Army Warrant Officer Leo Hester Jr, was killed in action November 2, 1969 in an aircraft crash. In terms of national origin/ancestries, an extensive sampling of the data-base reveals that Americans of French Canadian, Polish, Italian and other Southern and Eastern European surnames made up about 10 percent of the Vietnam casualties. He was younger, and he didnt belong. Prior to his military service, he graduated from Cleveland State University, having majored in sociology. Davis then ran west on the gravel road, turning and firing his carbine to draw enemy fire toward himself and away from other team members. Median age is 68 years. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. Copyright, Frank Mt. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. Another son, Robert "Bobby" Fitzgibbon, died in April 2011. All nine ARVN soldiers in the trucks cargo area died from the explosion or the subsequent VC gunfire. 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