Yes, but it's also clear that Eddie made his own choices. While Galt is being held -- just before Stadler is brought to see him -- Eddie flies out to California to try to sort out why the gangs are holding the TT trains. He knows Dagny will be gone before he gets back, but he also says that she'll be able to make a new start, but that he he won't even want to do that.

Eddie is an interesting linchpin in the story -- when you think about him, it's like 1 degree of separation to all of the key actors in the plot.

I have always seen him as an exemplar of the good man, the man who is a hero in his own way, but is always an able follower of a great leader. Every Patton, every Carnegie, needs able lieutenants, and Eddie Willers was the best, most loyal, of that type of person. If he had stayed, I am sure that Dagny and Francisco and Galt and Reardon would have made sure that he was on the transport to the Gulch.

Yes. I kinda thought the Eddie character deserved better, but I don't know that he could have taken the oath. In the book, he seemed to live his life purely for Dagny.

There is a book called "Atlas Snubbed" by Ken Krawchuk, that allows Eddie to get the engine re-started and moving. It's sort of an unofficial sequel to AS. Life outside the Gulch following the collapse of society.