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 David Lee Gilliam.

The Wall › Panel 45E › North Carolina › David Lee Gilliam

DAVID LEE GILLIAM

Private First Class · U.S. Marine Corps

March 16, 1948 – March 16, 1968

Service record

David Lee Gilliam, of Greensboro, North Carolina, served as a Private First Class in the U.S. Marine Corps. He died on March 16, 1968, in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam, at age 20. His name is inscribed on Panel 45E, Line 1 of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

On the Wall

Panel 45E · Line 1

Position of Panel 45E 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. Marine Corps
Rank
Private First Class (PFC)
Service
Regular
Occupation
Machinegunner (0331)
Born
March 16, 1948
Home of record
Greensboro, North Carolina (Guilford County)

Casualty

Date of death
March 16, 1968
Age
20
Province
Quang Tri
Country
South Vietnam
Casualty type
Hostile
Category
Killed in Action
Circumstance
Small Arms Fire

Context · from the records

What was happening

51 names on the Wall carry the date March 16, 1968; nine of them were lost in Quảng Trị Province. In March 1968, 1,767 Americans whose names are on the Wall died in the war.

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 45E, Line 1

From Greensboro

All 56 names from Greensboro →

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.