Daut aspired to become a Marine like his two older brothers, He left Frankford High School after a year, worked briefly as a yarn boy in a local mill and then enlisted in the Marines. "He really loved the Corps," his mother recalled. The 21-year-old rifleman was sent to Vietnam, and in February 1967 suffered a serious thigh injury when he stepped on a poison-tipped punji stick. He had recovered from the wound and returned to the field with Company A of the 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division, when he was killed by mortar fire in Quang Tn Province on May 8, 1967. In addition to his brothers, the private first class was survived by his parents and a sister.