The WallVietnam Veterans Memorial · The Lake Norman Brief
The trench line of the 1st Battalion, 26th Marines at Khe Sanh, 1968.
The trench line of the 1st Battalion, 26th Marines at Khe Sanh, 1968. Photo: Michael Braukus Collection, USMC Archives, CC BY 2.0. Shown for the time and place, not a photograph of Danny Lee Smothers.

The Wall › Panel 43E › Nevada › Danny Lee Smothers

DANNY LEE SMOTHERS

Specialist Four · U.S. Army

August 26, 1947 – March 8, 1968

Service record

Danny Lee Smothers, of Carson City, Nevada, served as a Specialist Four in the U.S. Army. He died on March 8, 1968, in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam, at age 20. His name is inscribed on Panel 43E, Line 61 of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

On the Wall

Panel 43E · Line 61

Position of Panel 43E on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Names are inscribed in the order of loss, starting at Panel 1E at the apex and ending at Panel 1W. At the Memorial, find the panel number at the base and count down from the top line.

Remember

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Service

Branch
U.S. Army
Rank
Specialist Four (SP4)
Service
Regular
Occupation
Infantryman (11B)
Unit (as recorded)
198 LIGHT INF BDE
Born
August 26, 1947
Home of record
Carson City, Nevada (Carson City (City) County)

Casualty

Date of death
March 8, 1968
Age
20
Province
Quang Tri
Country
South Vietnam
Casualty type
Hostile
Category
Died of Wounds
Circumstance
Grenade

Context · from the records

What was happening

68 names on the Wall carry the date March 8, 1968; 27 of them were lost in Quảng Trị Province. In March 1968, 1,767 Americans whose names are on the Wall died in the war.

The 198th Light Infantry Brigade, his unit in the record, lost 23 of its members that month.

He died in Quảng Trị Province while the siege of Khe Sanh was under way. From 21 January 1968, North Vietnamese divisions besieged the Marine combat base at Khe Sanh and its hill outposts near the Laotian border for 77 days, while U.S. aircraft dropped some 100,000 tons of bombs around it. Operation Pegasus reached the base on 8 April. The casualty record gives the province and date, not the exact place, so it does not say whether he fell in the battle itself.

Also on Panel 43E, Line 61

Same unit, same day

From Carson City

Source. U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Casualty Analysis System, Vietnam Conflict Extract Data File (as of April 29, 2008), Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Record Group 330, National Archives (NAID 2240992). Panel and line as recorded in that file. This page presents the official record and its historical context; no biography has been written for him yet. See something wrong? Report a correction.