Daniel Preston Whitten

West Point, 2004

Be Thou At Peace

Posted by SSG Michael Skinner on February 26, 2010:

Cpt Whitten was my Platoon Leader while in Iraq. When you have a group of men only 35 or so deep, you grow to know everyone so well. I really think that he was a brave man, I know we all got scared but he never showed it. People would always get us confused because we looked similar an were about the same height. People were always calling me sir, or saluting, until they say it was me just a private at the time. I knew him off the battle field, playing poker with us, or at platoon parties. Our platoon was different from the rest of the battalion. We won every event from gunners courses, long marches with stress shoots, platoon mock take downs, you name it. I received numerous awards, and coins just because our platoon was that good. It was men like Dan that made us work hard, and be prepared. He wanted us all to come back from Iraq. We did however banged up or injured he brought us home and did his job excellent. As an enlisted man you hope for a good PL, and he was one. I am proud to have served side by side with him. He was a guy with a permanent smile on his face, and could always laugh with you. When I was a private we had to take some hummvees to Al Asad, which was a 3 day drive from Kuwait. I was the turret gunner and he was the truck commander so we had the headsets on, and we talked the whole way. I forgot all about where we were, he was a fun guy to talk with and made me feel like everything was going to be fine. I got so comfortable on that trip I realized that I had been calling him "dude" for an hour or so. I corrected myself, he didn't say anything while I was calling an officer "dude". I think at that moment he knew it was just two brothers in arms. That's the way I'll always remember him, smiling.

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