The youngest Marine to die in the Vietnam War was 15 years old.

via WarHistoryOnline.

The story of an underage US Marine who fought in the Vietnam War has been uncovered.

Dan Bullock joined the US Marines so that he could join the fight against the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. However, it wasn’t uncovered until years later that he changed his own birth certificate so that the Marines’ recruiters would believe that he was older than he was. At the time he was just 14 years old and was accept for the Marines.
After one year of combat in Vietnam in 1969, Dan was sadly killed in the conflict. He was the youngest casualty of the war at just 15 years old.

It was when journalists visited Dan’s family who live in Williamsburg that the story emerged.
A friend of Dan’s Franklin McArthur said that it is about time that Dan is recognised for what he did during the war, and that he was so young when he took part in the action.
Franklin would like for Dan to be remembered since hardly anyone knows his story. A picture of Dan now adorns a wall at New York’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial and a street in his old neighbourhood of Brooklyn has been named after him, along with a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Honolulu.

Dan was buried in North Carolina and his grave stone was donated by Sally Jesse Raphael, the famous talk show host.

The US Marine Corps is filled with fascinating and tragic stories.  The Historical Division is doing great work to preserve our history but there is so much more to be done.

I wish one day, we could get extra funding to fully flesh out the history of our organization.

Just when you think you know most of it, a new story emerges that shows just how much more you have to learn.

Side note:  WARHISTORYONLINE is a MUST READ.  Make sure to subscribe to them.