Lance Cpl. Daniel R. Wyatt, 22, of Caledonia, Wisconsin, was a rifleman assigned to Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, a Marine Corps Reserve unit headquartered in Chicago. He joined the Marine Reserves in 2001, right after graduating with honors from Racine Horlick High School, where he nurtured a love of music, reading history, and sports. After boot camp, he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and later attended Milwaukee Area Technical College, where he was studying to become a police officer before his unit was activated on June 1, 2004. He had been in Iraq for only a few weeks when he was killed by enemy action on October 12, 2004, in Babil province southwest of Baghdad. He was the first Fox Company Marine lost in Iraq, and the 23rd service member from Wisconsin killed in the war.
"Daniel proposed to his fiancée, Laura Watson, on March 9, 2004 — the same day he was called up for active duty. "He was like, 'I've been training for three years. This is the time people need me to help,'" she recalled. His stepmother, Kathy Sullivan, remembered: "Some people are born to serve. They feel responsible for that. They enjoy it." In the letters he wrote home to each family member, he told them he loved them and mentioned he might not make it back, but never complained. "Daniel wasn't a whiner," she said. "Nobody wants war, but sometimes it needs to be fought. We will miss him horribly. He lived a short life but a good life.""
"They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old."
— Laurence Binyon