ELMHURST’S 88th MEMORIAL DAY PARADE
GRAND MARSHAL SERVED PROUDLY IN IRAQ
ELMHURST, Ill., May 1, 2006 — The Grand Marshal for Elmhurst’s 88th Annual Memorial Day Parade is Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran Daniel Wallace Foot, 23, of Elmhurst, a medal-winning United States Marine Corps Sergeant who earned two Purple Hearts.
The 2006 parade is presented by the Elmhurst Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Elmhurst American Legion T.H.B. Post 187, Elmhurst Veterans of Foreign Wars Walter A. Glos Post 2048 and the City of Elmhurst.
A member of the battle-tested Ohio-based reservists of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, Foot serves as a Mortar Section Leader in his Weapons Platoon, with nine soldiers reporting to him. Lima Company is stationed in Brook Park, Ohio, just outside of Cleveland.
Foot, then a Corporal, and his fellow reservists arrived in Iraq on March 4, 2005, to help secure the Sunni-controlled trouble spot of Haditha, which is located 140 miles northwest of Bagdad. They were strategically stationed near the Haditha Dam and hydropower complex along the Euphrates River.
“I lived out of my humvee,” said Foot, who only fired four rounds as a mortarman. “We were always out doing (patrols). Most of the time we were just clearing cities, engaging the enemy or looking for them.”
On May 27, 2005, the United States deployed a contingent of 1,000 Marines, sailors and soldiers to Haditha as part of a major counterinsurgency operation.
Lima Company lost 24 Marines and one Corpsman out of a fighting force of 150—or one out of every six soldiers in action—while another 30 percent, Foot among them, suffered wounds and other injuries.
That death toll accounted for more than half of the 3rd Battalion’s 48 fatalities (46 Marines and two Corpsmen). The first Lima Company fatality came on Mother’s Day of 2005, when a 24-year-old Marine was killed while leading a house search. On the first day of August, insurgents gunned down six snipers in an ambush. The worst incident came August 3, 2005, when 14 Marines (including nine from Lima Company) and an Iraqi interpreter died in a roadside bombing that flipped their Amtrac personnel carrier.
“We were the tip of the spear,” said Foot, “knocking on doors and taking names.”
Foot was awarded his Purple Hearts—presented by Vice President Richard B. “Dick” Cheney at Camp Lejeune, N.C., a few days after Lima Company’s return stateside—for wounds he suffered while on patrol.
His first wounding came April 25, 2005, at 4:30 p.m. near Haqlania from a roadside bomb that exploded by the front left tire of the humvee in which Foot was manning the 50-caliber machine gun. The shrapnel from the two 155 naval gunfire shells used to make the bomb cut up his face and blew the ballistic glasses and Kevlar helmet off his head.
“It was a big (explosion), too,” said Foot. “I didn’t here it. I was just rocked.”
Marines quickly caught the bomber, who had gunpowder residue on his hands, after rounding up every military age male (or mam) in house raids within the area.
It was July 15, 2005, at 3:30 p.m. while on foot patrol in Hit when a bomb exploded alongside the wall of a mosque, hurtling shrapnel into his left wrist, left arm and right thigh.
“That one sent me flying,” said Foot. “I woke up in midair.”
Foot was the lucky one. The Iraqi army soldier behind him was killed instantly and the corpsman across the street died six days later from a neck wound.
“ I don’t know how I survived that,” said Foot. “When you’re that close, you never know.”
Upon his return home, Elmhurst Mayor Thomas D. Marcucci proclaimed October 7, 2005, as “Daniel Wallace Foot Day” in Elmhurst, and family, neighbors and friends surprised him by throwing a “big shindig outside my house.”
Foot lived in Philadelphia before his family moved to Elmhurst near Butterfield Park in August of 1989. His parents are Wally “Jay” Foot, a 1976 graduate of York Community High School, and Margaret. Siblings are sisters Catherine, 21, also a YHS grad, and Elizabeth, 6, and brother John, 7.
A graduate of Jefferson Elementary School and Bryan Middle School, Foot attended York for two months before transferring to Northridge Preparatory School in Niles, graduating in 2001.
Foot was a freshman at the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio, when he enlisted in the Marine Corps in February of 2002. He headed off to boot camp at Paris Island, S.C., in May of 2002, graduating on August 9. After a 10-day leave, he went off to Camp Lejeunhe for infantry school, finishing on October 4. As a Marine Corps reservist, he returned to college in 2003 and 2004, only to have his junior year interrupted by a January 4, 2005, call for military duty.
“I wouldn’t mind going back,” said Foot. “Somebody’s got to do it.”
Foot is proud of the rebuilding that has taken place in Iraq thanks to America’s military presence. Schools were built for the children and non-combatant Iraqis received food and money.
“A lot of the families, when we went into their houses, would thank us in the privacy of their own homes,” said Foot. “The kids loved us. If there were kids around, you knew that nothing going to happen.”
Foot works for West Suburban Lawn Maintenance in Lombard during the week and spends his weekends in Ohio on reservist duty. He plans to attend the University of Illinois in Champaign next fall, majoring in finance and marketing.