William Edward Clancy
No. 22035 William Edward Clancy, The Boston Globe, September 19, 1969
Obituary, The Boston Globe, September 19, 1969
A 20-year-old Army specialist from Dorchester who survived a Vietcong ambush last July died Tuesday of meningitis in San Francisco’s Letterman General Hospital. Sp 4c William E Clancvl of 25 Spaulding st., Dorchester, was stricken during the third week of August and transported back to the United States.
His death came only hours before his parents, Mr. and Mrs. John A. Clancy Sr., arrived at the California Army hospital to visit him.
In a last letter home that arrived in Dorchester Aug. 21, Clancy described his narrow escape in combat. A 13-year-old Vietnamese boy who frequently traveled with Clancy as an interpreter spotted several guerrillas sneaking toward the men and shouted a warning.
Clancy wheeled around and fired his M60 machine-gun at the would-be attackers. “If it wasn’t for him (the boy),” he wrote his parents later, “you could never know what could have happened.”
A 1966 graduate of Don Bosco, Clancy attended the Coyne Electrical School in Boston with hopes of becoming an electrical engineer. He enlisted in the Army Engineers on Sept. 22, 1968, however, and became a highly specialized demolition expert.
Though he would have been deferred from the draft as a student, his father said, “he realized he had a military duty and thought it was better to do it when he was young. I explained the dangers of Vietnam to him,” his father recalled, “but he said. ‘I’m not afraid, Dad. I’ll be in good hands.’ “