Corporal Daylon Skaflestad , U.S. Marines, 2018 – 2022

Corporal Daylon Skaflestad started looking at the various branches of the military once he got out of high school and decided that “A bunch of guys that rode around on boats and shot guns and drank a little bit on the side with their buddies sounded pretty familiar…” so he enlisted with the U.S. Marines.  The next week he flew up to Anchorage and entered the Military Entrance Processing Station, then spent three months of boot camp at Camp Pendleton, San Diego. 

Regarding his boot camp experience, Corporal Skaflestad said “I owe a lot to my upbringing… I think that being from Alaska gave me a great, distinct advantage… I know how to fire firearms… being out in the woods, you know, it’s like what we do, out fishing, out hunting in bear country, it can be a pretty stressful thing, it can really test your bearing sometimes… it’s getting dark and you got a bear on your trail and a deer on your back… these are stressful situations and as Alaskans we grew up with it… I’m very grateful to be from Alaska… I’m very proud to be serving and very proud of carrying on a heritage from the Marine Corp but also a heritage from Hoonah Alaska…”

After combat training he was shipped off to Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina to learn his military occupational specialty: 0481 Landing Support Specialist.  The Landing Support Specialist performs various duties that support the establishment, maintenance and control of transportation throughput systems on beaches, landing zones, ports (air and sea), and terminals (rail, truck, and container) used in support of Marine Air-Ground Task Force operations and deployments. They are trained in the doctrinal concepts of landing support and the landing force support party, conducting port, arrival/ departure airfield, helicopter landing zone, and rail head operations.  This position is critical to successful Marine operations for various reasons including “An army marches on its stomach.”

Corporal Skaflestad’s 2nd Maintenance Battalion is a battalion of the United States Marine Corps that provides intermediate-level maintenance for the II Marine Expeditionary Force's tactical ordnance, engineer, motor transport, communications electronics and general support ground equipment. They are based out of Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

Corporal Skaflestad got to stand security detail for the President of the United States when he arrived in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian, an extremely powerful and devastating Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that became the most intense tropical cyclone on record to strike the Bahamas, and is regarded as the worst natural disaster in that country's history. 

Corporal Skaflestad is currently in Cherry Point, NC, preparing to be shipped off to a Marine Expeditionary Unit.