This young man was one of thousands.

[**The following was taken from an interview with Anne Pearson, the cousin of an American soldier killed in Vietnam, Eddie Lynn Lancaster.**] >”We kept sending our young American boys over there and they would be killed and not come back, but we weren’t gaining any ground, and these Vietnamese and Chinese – whoever it was we were fighting over there – we couldn’t kill them all. My life wasn’t any better because Eddie Lynn and all his peers died. The world that I knew was not any safer. The more we questioned our leaders, it seemed, the more stubborn they got and dug their heels in. I thought, Oh, my God, I’ve got a little kid four years old – is he going to have to go over there and die? >”Eddie Lynn was only nineteen when he joined the Marines instead of going to college,” his cousin remembers, “so his life was not particularly eventful in any way, but he meant a lot to a lot of people, and when he was killed, it brought the Vietnam War closer to our home. It was almost as if someone grabbed us by the shoulders and said, ‘Wake up, you fools! Look at what is happening in the world. This young man was one of thousands. They all had mothers, they all had fathers, this was everybody’s son.’” __________________________ **Source:** Palmer, Laura. “Eddie Lynn Lancaster.” *Shrapnel in the Heart: Letters and Remembrances from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial*. Vintage Books, 1988. 6. Print.