2
Young
Daughtry
fortified
communications
as Americans
battled to
defeat Japanese
Bill Daughtry was trudging around Leyte island,
where less than a year earlier during World War
II U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur famously waded
ashore declaring "I have returned" to the Philippines.
Daughtry was looking for a tree that would make a
good pole on which to mount a radio antenna. He had
learned the skill of erecting and climbing poles to string wire
as a telephone lineman for the Army Signal Corps — a skill
he would later use to get a job as a lineman with Alabama
Power.
With the 304th Signal Operations battalion in
1945, he was accompanied by Filipino troops on
his pole hunt.
"One of them caught me on the
shoulder and told me to halt,"
Daughtry said from Eastdale
Estates Retirement
Community in Montgomery
shortly before he died on
Sept. 25, the day after his
97th birthday. "He told
me to look down."
Daughtry saw a
tripwire tied to an
explosive hand grenade
across an unoccupied
foxhole.
"I was standing a
foot from it. If I had
stepped one more
foot, I would have
pulled the pin and
been gone."
continued
