Source: Patriot Post | VIEW ORIGINAL POST ==>
Tens of millions of Veterans have served our nation since the first Medals of Honor were awarded for the valorous actions of Andrews’s Raiders in 1862. Of those, a split percentage of former combat Vets — 3,528 to be exact — have earned the Medal of Honor. Among them, amazingly, there are 19 double recipients.
Marine Corps SgtMaj Daniel J. Daly is one of the 19 and one of only two Marines who earned that dual distinction — the other being MajGen Smedley D. Butler. Notably, their military service paths crossed several times when earning those Medals.
Dan Daly was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Irish Catholic parents John and Ellen Daly. There is not much historical information about his early years other than that he sold newspapers on the streets of New York City from a young age. When he was a teenager, his parents, along with his sister Mary and brother David, moved to Glen Cove on Long Island. He had a seedling career as a boxer despite being only 5’6″ and 132 pounds. Clearly, he would distinguish himself as a fighter.
Hearing accounts of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War inspired Daly to enlist in the United States Marine Corps in 1899 at age 25. After boot camp, he was assigned to the Asiatic Fleet just ahead of the Boxer Rebellion, led by members of the secret Chinese group known as the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists. The SRHF was brutal in its attacks on Christian missionaries, Chinese Christians, and diplomatic missions. It was the siege of a foreign diplomatic area near Peking that led to U.S. involvement.
After Daly’s Marine detachment arrived in Taku Bay, China, his first combat encounter was retaking a position near the American legation outside of Peking. In that era, Marines were armed only with bayoneted rifles, which meant firing on enemy positions and then approaching those positions in a bloody face-to-face encounter.
After the Marines re-secured the American legation, the Chinese SRHF rebels regrouped, returned after dark, and attempted to destroy the American consulate. It was then they confronted a lone Marine at a critical breach point, whom they thought they could dispatch quickly. But Dan Daly would have none of that and stood his ground. He was armed with his rifle and then an M1895 Colt-Browning “potato digger” machine gun. After defending his post through the night, by daybreak by some estimates, there were almost 200 dead Boxers near Daly’s post.
It was for his actions that night of 14 August 1900 that Daly was awarded his first Medal of Honor for, as the citation briefly notes, having “distinguished himself by meritorious conduct.”
In the years between his first and second Medals of Honor, Daly exemplified heroic actions in other combat engagements.
In July 1915, Woodrow Wilson ordered 330 Marines to Port-au-Prince with orders from the Secretary of the Navy to “protect American and foreign interests” during the Occupation of Haiti and quell the revolution there, which had already accounted for six regime changes since 1911.
On 24 October, then-Gunnery Sergeant Daly and his 35-man platoon of the Fifteenth Company of Marines, under the leadership of Capt William Upshur, 1stLt Edward Ostermann, left Fort Liberte for a six-day reconnaissance mission. Two days later, while crossing a river in the Haitian backcountry, they were ambushed by an estimated 400 Haitian Cacos rebels, who soon had surrounded their platoon. The Marines managed to fight their way to the other river bank and up a hillside where they established a defensive position. But their prospects for survival grew evermore dim after nightfall, under continuous skirmishes to overtake their position, because they had lost their machine-gun in the river during the initial attack.
Daley knew their best chance at survival rested on being able to defend their position at daybreak when a frontal offensive was sure to ensue. Thus, he crept out of their defensive hold late that night amid the skirmishes and returned to the river bank in the off-chance he would be able to find their machine gun. Amazingly, he managed to do that, strapped it to his back, and crawled back to his platoon without being discovered.
As the sun rose, the Cacos rebels were preparing to begin their offensive. But as noted in Daly’s second Medal of Honor citation, he and the two officers divided their badly outnumbered Marines “into three squads,” which “advanced in three different directions” confronting the enemy lines. They dispensed machine gun saturation fire into the rebel lines, “surprising and scattering the Cacos in all directions.”
The expeditionary commander said of the gallantry displayed by the officers and men of this detachment: “The action of the 35 men in the attack made upon them during the night of October 24 can not be commended too highly. It is true that these men were in pitch darkness, surrounded by 10 times their number and fighting for their lives, but the manner in which they fought during that long night, the steady, cool discipline, that prevented demoralization is remarkable. Had one squad failed, not one man of the party would have lived to tell the story. The actual assault upon the enemy, made in three different directions and beginning as soon as the light permitted them to see, was splendid. It meant success or utter annihilation.”
Indeed, GySgt Daly “fought with exceptional gallantry against heavy odds throughout this action.”
Additional Medals of Honor were awarded to Capt Upshur and 1stLt Ostermann.
SgtMaj Daly would further distinguish himself in combat during World War I.
He was the recipient of combat awards for valor, the Navy Cross and the Distinguished Service Cross (Army), which rank the second highest award under the Medal of Honor for the Navy and Army respectively, for repeated acts of heroism at the risk of his life. Both awards were issued for his service with the 73d Company, 6th Regiment (Marines), 2d Division, A.E.F., between 5 and 7 June 1918 at Lucy-le-Bocage, and on 10 June 1918 in the attack on Bouresches, France.
Had the rules at the time permitted a third Medal of Honor, Daly would have qualified.
He was also awarded a Silver Star for his heroic actions while serving with Machine Gun Company, Sixth Regiment (Marines), 2d Division, American Expeditionary Forces at Chateau-Thierry, France, 6 June through 10 July 1918.
At the Battle of Belleau Wood in June 1918, Daly is popularly attributed with having yelled to his men as they prepared to charge the Germans: “Come on, you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?” He would later recount to a Marine historian that he recalled yelling: “For Christ’s sake, men — come on! Do you want to live forever?”
Daly was twice offered an officer’s commission but rejected the offers, saying that he would prefer to be “an outstanding sergeant than just another officer.” MajGen Smedley Butler described his fellow Marine double Medal of Honor recipient as “the fightingest man ever to serve with the Marine Corps,” adding, “It was an object lesson to have served with him.”
Daly was nicknamed “Devil Dog” by those with whom he served, a moniker which stuck with all Marines after the Battle of Belleau Wood.
He retired from the Marine Corps in February 1929, living with his sister in New York and working as a bank guard on Wall Street. In the humility that characterizes such men, he rejected public recognition for his service and, in self-effacement, said he “disdained it and disliked all the fuss made over him.”
He led a quiet life until his death in April 1937 and is buried at Cypress Hills National Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. In 1943, the destroyer USS Daly (DD-519) was named in his honor.
SgtMaj Daniel Joseph Daly: Your example of valor — a humble American Patriot defending Liberty for all above and beyond the call of duty and in disregard for the peril to your own life — is eternal.
“Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
Live your life worthy of his sacrifice.
(Read more Profiles of Valor here.)
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776
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