Profiles In Courage: Daniel J. Daly
Only two Marines have received the Medal of Honor for two separate actions: Maj. Gen Smedley Butler and Sgt. Maj. Daniel J. Daly. And you know it has to mean something when Butler called Daly "the fightingest Marine I ever knew."
Daly served in the Marine Corps for 30 years, seeing every major Marine Corps campaign between 1899 and 1929. Growing up in New York City as a slender youth, he had to be tough; he even became a semi-pro boxer before joining the Marines at age 25. His first assignment took him halfway around the world aboard the USS Newark, then a cruiser assigned to the U.S. Asiatic Fleet – and it was about to take him to his first Medal of Honor action.
Not long after Daly joined up, China was in upheaval. Anti-foreigner and anti-Christian sentiment boiled over into open rebellion against outsiders interfering with life in China. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese peasants, known as Boxers, rose up and began murdering missionaries, Christians, and other foreigners. At first, the Imperial Qing government stood opposed to the Boxers, but in 1900, it suddenly turned on the foreigners as the Boxer armies approached the capital at Peking (now Beijing).
On June 5, 1900, the Boxers cut Beijing off from the rest of China and, by June 11, had burst into the city by the thousands, murdering missionaries and Christians while burning churches. British Adm. Edward Seymour tried to reach the city with more than 2,100 multinational troops but was turned back by a Boxer force at Langfang. Dowager Empress Cixi then ordered all foreigners to leave the capital within 24 hours. Instead, British, American, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Austrian, Italian, and Russian troops reinforced their legations and prepared for battle.
This international force protected thousands of foreign citizens from certain death in the Legation Quarter of the city as the Boxers laid siege. Inside, Pvt. Daniel J. Daly was positioned on the Tartar Wall, part of the city's defenses and used by the Americans to protect their diplomatic compound. The Boxers' intense fire forced the Americans to leave the wall, but Daly and his commanding officer quietly retook their positions.
On August 14, Daly was left to hold the wall by himself as his commander went for reinforcements. Private Daly then held off 400 enemy troops, trying to storm his position while under sniper fire until his backup could arrive. The action earned him his first Medal of Honor, presented in December 1901.
Undeterred by the vicious combat in China, Daly continued his career with postings in the Philippines, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Maine. He also landed with the Marines to capture the Mexican city of Veracruz in 1914. Around that same time, Haiti descended into chaos, with seven different presidents taking office and being ousted by assassinations and coups between 1911 and 1915. Its close ties to Germany and strong German presence on the island were a national security threat in the years leading up to American entry in World War I.
When Haitian President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was lynched by an anti-American mob, President Woodrow Wilson saw a threat to U.S. financial interests. The incoming president, Rosalvo Bobo, was staunchly anti-American and backed by the Caco peasant militias. In July 1915, Wilson sent in the Marines. First, they captured the capital of Port-Au-Prince and then moved to take over the entire country. For the next 19 years, the U.S. ruled Haiti, with its authority enforced by the Marine Corps – but that didn't mean everyone was happy with the situation.
Almost immediately, the Cacos launched an insurgency against the Marines. On Oct. 24, 1915, Daly, then a Gunnery Sergeant, was among a detachment of 40 Marines crossing a river under the command of then-Maj. Smedley Butler. The small force was ambushed by 400 Cacos near Fort Dipitié, and they were forced to take a defensive position on high ground, one they had held through the night under constant fire. When day came, the outnumbered Marines formed three squads (one led by Daly) and attacked the Cacos from three different directions, scattering the enemy and moving on to destroy the fort. His leadership led to a historic second Medal of Honor.
But it's not really just Daniel J. Daly's two Medals of Honor that continue to echo through history. Perhaps his most famous moment came three years later, during the World War I Battle of Belleau Wood. Daly would fight in some of the most vicious and contested battles of the war, but it was at Belleau Wood that he became famous for leading outnumbered and outgunned Marines in a successful counterattack with the battle cry: "Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?"
When Sgt. Maj. Daly's Marine Corps career came to an end in 1929, he went home to New York, where he worked as a bank guard, a job he held for the next 17 years. He died of a heart attack in 1937 at age 63.