Jan Avery Elkins resided in East Brunswick, NJ. He graduated from East Brunswick High School in 1965. Jan’s interests included electronics, Elizabethan Literature and 20th Century American authors. He ran on the track team and played basketball. He sang well and played the guitar through high school and college. Following one year of college and a short period working for IBM, he enlisted.

Elkins entered the US Marine Corps in 1967, where he attained the rank of Corporal (CPL) in Company C, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines.

On October 26, 1968, in the Quang Nam Province, Republic of Vietnam, Jan was participating in an operation against the enemy. At approximately 8:40 AM, an explosive device mortally wounded him. A Medical Corpsman rushed to his aid but his wounds were too severe and he died almost instantly.

He is buried in Jefferson Memorial Park in Pittsburgh, PA.

Elkins was awarded the Military Merit Medal and Gallantry Cross with Palm, the Purple Heart and the Silver Star.

The grim and embittering elements of war, specifically for Americans in Indochina, affected every soldier differently. Where some accepted their experiences as part of their assigned tasks in Vietnam, others chose to reflect upon the horrors of their surroundings and activities and to avoid participating in either depravity or atrocity. Jan Elkins was an individual who practiced personal reflection, while his leadership qualities drew the attention of his peers and superiors.

Before his entrance into the US Marine Corps, Jan had been an introspective and serious high school student and athlete. He ran on his track team and played basketball. He sang well, and played the guitar through high school and college, where he performed in coffeehouses and nightclubs. Following one year of college and a short period working for IBM, he enlisted. He resumed his enjoyment of music while stationed at the 8th and I Barracks in Washington, DC, and there he met and married Steffanie Blanning. They’d been together for eight months when Jan started his tour of Vietnam. He died seven weeks later. At that time Steffanie was pregnant with their son, Jan.

While corresponding with family and friends amidst war’s ugliness and madness, he articulated the ironic, the contrasts between home and war surroundings and the inhumanities he witnessed, with both surprise and sadness. His letters from Vietnam testify to his decency and his remorse over the tacit losses of cultural and civilian life in the lives in Vietnam, of the losses of his friends and fellow soldiers, and of the dramatic changes in the lives of those who would live to see the end of that war. He wrote to his former schoolteachers, to his siblings, his parents, and daily to his wife, maintaining his personal and moral perspective. He died a US. Marine with a copy of The Complete Works of Byron in his pack.

Jan expressed concerns for his unit in combat, including that of surviving; returning to civilian life with the burden of what they all had become accustomed and compelled to do in their days. He wrote of firing at a moving object at the command of his C.O., and that a fellow Marine subsequently reported that he’d shot a young boy; how horrified he was that he’d killed a child the same age as his own youngest brother.

He wrote of his frustration over having our Dad sending medical supplies to his platoon when the Marine Corps began to send only what the “statistical survivors” should have needed. We got photos of Jan and other soldiers sharing cigarettes with the Vietnamese and posing with the children in small villages in the forests. He wrote of “sweeping” villages for Vietcong soldiers and of the hunts for snipers along with the common dread of booby traps (which would eventually claim him as well).

The past decades of events in the lives of Jan’s family members tend to dilute the impact his death had on all of us, but no eulogy or reminiscence has been capable of capturing the scope of what an extraordinary person he was, especially to those who knew him well.

Written by Jay A. Elkins, Brother

Sources: The Elkins Family and NJVVMF.
12/17/2024