Austin M. Gaughan

"Aust" Gaughan wanted to join the Marine Corps right out of West Catholic High School in 1966, but his father persuaded him to think about it for a year. Over the next year, he attended Peirce Junior College, clerked at First Pennsylvania Banking and Trust Co. and made regular Saturday morning visits to a Marine recruiting station. Gaughan remained committed to the Marines, and enlisted in July 1967. He trained as a combat engineer and was sent to Vietnam in January 1968. "I�ll be a Marine if it kills me," he wrote home from the war. Not wanting to alarm his parents, be told them that he liked his duty post with Company A of the 3rd Shore Patrol Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, at Khe Sahn, Quang Tri Province, and was getting plenty of sleep. After his parents saw a Life magazine article that painted a far grimmer picture of Khe Sahn, Gaughan admitted that life was rough there. The 19-year-old private first class died on March 15, 1968, in the Station Hospital in Da Nang, of wounds sustained in Khe Sanh the previous day. He was survived by his parents.