I watched Ken Burns Vietnam war series recently over the summer, and I learned about Denton Crocker Junior, a man who briefly ran away from home at 17, wouldn’t come back unless his parents agreed to let him enlist, which he did, became a paratrooper at 18 and was shipped off to Nam around October '65.
Once there he was bored workin in the rear echelon, intentionally fouled up his work so he was reassigned to the front lines in early '66, towards the summer he wrote home saying he needed a break from cracking up, next operation he was on was Operation Hawthorne, ordered as point man on June 4th in the early morning to walk up the crest of a hill in Kontum province to relieve an ARVN position.
He died on that mission, he was 19 and one day after his birthday.
This guys life stuck with me, I don’t know why, but all the things he did at such a young age, and never to return home, I don’t know, I feel like a parasocial grievance for him.
If anyone’s interested, his mother wrote about his life and its available for download at the Library of Congress website. Here is the link