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The Tragic History of the U.S. Child Warriors

Khalid Elhassan June 9, 2020 34 min

31. The Youngest American Killed in the Vietnam War

An Hoa Combat Base, which Bullock was guarding when he was killed. Wikimedia

USMC Private first class Dan Bullock was sent to Vietnam in May, 1969, to serve as a rifleman in the 1^st Marine Division. The child Marine 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.

Assigned base security duties, Dan was in a bunker with three other Marines on the night of June 6^th, 1969, when North Vietnamese sappers stealthily crept under the wire surrounding the base. They got close enough to Dan’s bunker to toss a satchel charge through the firing 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.

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.