Michael Eugene Mullen - Richard Sakharoff

Peg Mullen

: Carol Burnett as Peg Mullen, “Friendly Fire”

It’s been over 40 years since I watched the original broadcast on ABC of the made for television movie, “Friendly Fire”. Carol Burnett played “Peg Mullen, the mother of her son, Michael Mullen, who died in Vietnam. That movie had a long lasting impact on me, learning about Michael’s mother, and her tireless search for the truth surrounding how her son had died.

One interesting fact is that actress and comedienne, Carol Burnett, attended and graduated the same high school as myself. She would occasionally come back to our school to visit the students. I remember around 1968 was one of those times where she came to our auditorium to perform her “question and answers” routine which she always included at the end of The Carol Burnett Show.

So, watching Carol Burnett play Peg Mullen in a serious drama movie was quite usual. The idea to cast Carol Burnett to play that role must have really worked, because over 64 million people watched the original broadcast in 1979. Looking back though, the movie“Friendly Fire” was made only 6 years after the american involvement in Vietnam was coming to an end, as so did the Military Draft officially end on July 1st, 1973.

Michael Mullen had graduated with honors from Rockhurst College in Kansas City, Missouri with a Bachelor’s in Biochemistry. It was while working on a doctorate degree in chemistry at Missouri University, that unfortunately for Michael, he received his draft notice from the army in 1968.

If you would like to learn more about Michael Eugene Mullen, there are some good websites that you can visit. Some of those are the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund which is https://www.vvmf.org/ or if you are a veteran, Together We Served https://togetherweserved.com/

Michael Eugene Mullen

BELOW is a short synopsis report of the incident that took place on the early morning of February 18th, 1970 in which SGT Michael E. Mullen and a fellow soldier lost their life in Vietnam. The information was included from coffeldatabase.org and from a book written by LTC Charles R Shrader

MISADVENTURE (FRIENDLY FIRE)

On February 17, 1970, C Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry, 198th Light Infantry Brigade, Americal Division, established a night defensive position on a wooded hilltop in the vicinity of Tu Chanh in Quang Tin Province, RVN. Supporting artillery for the unit were four 105mm howitzers located on Hill 410 some distance away. Early in the morning of February 18th, a registration round was safely fired over C Company’s position. However, a second round of HE (high-explosive) hit a tree over 1st Platoon and exploded. Two troopers, SGT Michael E. Mullen and PFC Ronal L. Williams, were killed by fragments from the errant round. Another six were wounded. The dead and wounded were evacuated to the 27th Surgical and 91st Evacuation hospitals. A later investigation disclosed that the supporting artillery unit had failed to calculate correctly for the height of trees near C Company’s position. The registration round had cleared the them, but the HE round had not. It hit a tree, exploded, and caused the friendly casualties. [Taken from coffeltdatabase.org and the book “Amicicide: The Problem of Friendly Fire in Modern War” by LTC Charles R. Shrader]

MISADVENTURE (FRIENDLY FIRE)

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