PFC Daley started his tour in Vietnam on Jan 5, 1969 and was assigned to the 2nd Pltn Bravo Co 2/27 Wolfhounds 25th Inf Div working out of Cu Chi Base Camp. I remember the night, Feb 24, and early morning of Feb 25, at a small patrol base called Diamond near the Cambodia border. We were prepared for a follow up ground attack from a previous attack two nights prior. We had Vietnamese nationals coming up to our wire in the late afternoon saying "bocoupe NVA coming". As darkness approached, we could look out in three directions and see huge bonfires burning. We were told that the enemy was getting "potted up" to help them get up the courage to attack us. Shortly after dark, the first RPG's started coming in, and that nights battle had** started. There would be peaks to the onslaught of mortars, rockets and RPG's coming into the perimeter. Then there would be lulls, when our supporting artillery and air strikes would bombard the areas around and out away from the small perimeter. This went on, back and forth, until shortly after midnight. At this point, the enemy began an intense volley of incoming munitions toward and into the perimeter. This is when they sent in their sappers to try to reach the wire to blow holes in it with bangalor torpedoes, followed by sappers with satchel charges strapped to themselves, their goal being to breach our perimeter. Then followed by a human wave of enemy soldiers coming at us to continue the attack. As this all started and proceeded, PFC Walton Daley was assigned to be down in a corner bunker manning the hand fired detonators connected by wires to several claymore mines that were positioned out in front of his bunker and between the two rows of razor wire. He had been instructed to blow the claymores when the enemy hit and/or was in the wire. Everyone else at his bunker was outside firing from behind the bunker or from the trenches between bunkers. During the fury of the firefight, Daley kept raising up to look out thru the rifle port hole in the front of the bunker. A fellow soldier on the outside, near the back of the bunker, kept telling him to stay down, that he would tell him when to fire the claymores. But the last time he raised up to look out, a mortar round hit out front of the bunker and a piece of shrapnel hit him in the jugular vein and he feel down in the bunker and started bleeding out. After the concussion from the explosion, the fellow soldier realized that Daley was hit, so he called for a medic and jumped down in the bunker to try to stop the bleeding. The medic arrived and proceeded to help stop the bleeding, but their efforts were in vain, he died there in the bunker while under intense mortar bombardment and fire from the enemy.

~ You will never be forgotten ~

~ Rest in peace, brother ~

Submitted by Gerald Maddock representing the members of the 2nd Platoon.

Walton Garland Daley