oday is January 26, 2017 which would have been Navy SEAL Danny Dietz’ 37th birthday. Petty Officer Dietz was a Navy SEAL who was killed in action on June 28, 2005 in Afghanistan during Operation Red Wings. Despite being numerically outnumbered Danny fought courageously to protect himself and his teammates in a epic gunfight until he was mortally wounded. Danny was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross and the Purple Heart.
Below is excerpt from teammate Marcus Luttrell the author of the New York Times bestseller Lone Survivor, “but he managed to clamber to his feet, trying to tell me he was okay even though he’d been shot four times. Danny couldn’t speak now, but he wouldn’t give in. He propped himself up against a rock for cover and opened fire again at the Taliban, signaling he might need a new magazine as his very lifeblood poured out of him. I just stood there for a moment, helplessly, fighting back tears,
witnessing a brand of valor I had never before been privileged to see.
What a guy. What a friend.”
Danny’s mother, Cindy, set up the Danny Dietz Memorial Fund which provides scholarship opportunities to graduating high school seniors from Danny’s alma mater, Heritage High School, in Littleton, Colorado. The memorial fund also provides scholarship opportunities for ROTC students through the Military Order of the Purple Heart.
It is our goal that the memory and story of Petty Officer Danny Dietz will never be forgotten.
