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America’s Youngest Warriors – Children Who Fought for the US

Khalid Elhassan April 4, 2025 17 min

Children - US Army Sergeant John Lincoln Clem — US Army Sergeant John Lincoln Clem. Metropolitan Museum of Art

3. A Child Marine

Children - Official US Marine Corps portrait of Private First Class Dan Bullock — Official US Marine Corps portrait of Private First Class Dan Bullock. Wikimedia

Even more tragic than Calvin Graham was Dan Bullock. He was born in 1953 in Goldsboro, North Carolina, where he lived until his mother died when Dan was twelve-years-old. So he and his younger sister moved to Brooklyn, to live with their father and stepmother. When Dan was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, his top three picks were a cop, a pilot, or a US Marine. He eventually decided to the give the Marines a try. However, he did not want to wait until he grew up. In September, 1968, fourteen-year-old Dan headed to a Marine Corps recruitment center with a doctored birth certificate. The birth year on the document was altered from 1953 to 1949, which made him eighteen – old enough to enlist.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.