In 1968, not many men with blue blood were signing up to shed it in Vietnam. But after a close friend and lacrosse teammate at Princeton died in battle, Mr. Mueller joined the Marine Corps. After Officer Candidate School and the Army’s Ranger School — Marines trained as Rangers often led long-range reconnaissance patrols, hunt-and-kill missions with a high mortality rate — he shipped out to the Dong Ha combat base, on the northern edge of South Vietnam, near enemy territory.
“You were scared to death of the unknown,” he told Mr. Graff 40 years later. “More afraid in some ways of failure than death, more afraid of being found wanting.” That species of intense fear, he said, “animates your unconscious.”
On his first tour, as a second lieutenant, he earned a Bronze Star for valor on Dec. 11, 1968, while leading an outgunned rifle platoon ambushed in Quang Tri province by an enemy armed with rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and mortars.
His citation said he “personally led a fire team across the fire-swept area terrain to recover a mortally wounded Marine,” and it commended his “courage, aggressive initiative and unwavering devotion to duty at great personal risk.”
Four months later, he was shot through the thigh with an AK-47 round while leading his platoon to rescue American soldiers under a lethal Vietcong attack. He was awarded the Purple Heart.
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Godspeed, Rest in Peace My Friend
