July 23, 2025 • 34 mins
Dan Daly has been described as “America’s Fightin’est Marine,” who shouted that famous phrase, “Come on you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?” Here, we explore Dan’s legendary (and crazy) adventures– and how his incredible bravery helped shape the modern Marine Corps.
We’re committed to making Medal of Honor even better, and you can help! Leave your feedback for the show by filling out our listener survey at http://bit.ly/mohsurvey
Episode bibliography:
Dieckmann, Edward. Dan Daly: Reluctant Hero. Marine Corps Gazette, November 1960. https://archive.org/details/sim_marine-corps-gazette_1960-11_44_11/page/24/mode/2up
Roberts, Charley. "Devil Dog" Dan Daly: America's Fightin'est Marine. McFarland, November 4, 2021. https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Dog-Dan-Daly-Fightinest/dp/1476686769
O’Connell, Aaron. Keystone Battle Brief: The Boxer Rebellion, China 1900. Marine Corps History Division, United States Marine Corps University, 2019. https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/HD/Brief%20Histories/Boxer%20Rebellion%20Lecture%20Notes.pdf?ver=2019-05-23-084222-070
Iber, Patrick. “The Marine Who Turned Against U.S. Empire.” The New Republic, January 11, 2022. https://newrepublic.com/article/164825/smedley-butler-marine-critic-american-empire.
Gleichauf, Justin F. “Old Marine Corps—‘The Fightin’est Marine'.” U.S. Naval Institute, January 1990. https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/1990/january/old-marine-corps-fightinest-marine
Hough, F. O. “Daly of the Horse Marines.” Marine Corps Gazette, November 1954. https://archive.org/details/sim_marine-corps-gazette_1954-11_38_11/mode/2up?q=Daly&view=theater
Naval History and Heritage Command. “Daniel Joseph Daly” Modern Biographical Files in the Navy Department Library, May 18, 2021. https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/research-guides/modern-biographical-files-ndl/modern-bios-d/daly-daniel-joseph.html
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everyone, We've put together a survey for listeners of
Medal of Honor and we want to hear from you.
Tell us what you love about the show, what we
can improve on, or stories you think we've missed. We're
committed to making this show even better and you can
help to take the survey. Visit bit dot lee slash
MH survey. That's bit dot l y slash MH survey.
(00:27):
The link is also in our show notes below. Pushkin.
On a hot June afternoon in nineteen eighteen, the sixth
(00:50):
Marines were facing a massacre. It was World War One
and the American forces had gathered in Bellowwood in northern France.
They were there to fight the Germans, but to get
to them they would have to cross a wide open
field of wheat, and that field was ringed by enemy
(01:11):
machine gunners. They were hidden in trees and behind boulders,
invisible and deadly, the stalks of grain bent in the breeze.
The sun was shining. It might have been a beautiful day,
but the only sound anyone could hear was the snapping
(01:32):
and cracking of machine gun and rifle fire, and the
screaming of wounded men. There was just one way for
the Marines to eliminate those enemy positions, one at a time,
slowly and painfully, using hand grenades, rifles, bayonets, fighting hand
(01:56):
to hand. If they had to progress seemed possible. The
men had already been there for days, pinned down and stuck,
worn out by the never ending combat. One platoon of
Marines was lying in a shallow fox hole. They had
dug it out by hand, at the edge of a clearing.
(02:18):
They were holding onto that ground for a dear life.
Then a runner came scrambling through the brush. He handed
a piece of paper to their sergeant. The sergeant's name
Dan Day. He was a lot older than the men
he led. He'd been in the Marines for nearly twenty years.
(02:40):
With a bristle of snow white hair and intense gray eyes,
Dan was pretty easy to pick out on the battlefield.
But more than that, Dan was famous, famous for his
courage and battle for his toughness. In fact, the story
goes that when one of the guys in the learned
(03:00):
his sergeant was Dan Daily, he said, quote, he's real.
I thought he was somebody the Marines made up like
Paul Bunyan. Dan Daly read that piece of paper. He
looked across his line of marines, and then Dan made
a forward motion with his hand. The men knew what
(03:22):
it meant. Their sergeant wanted them to advance toward the enemy,
out into the open, into the machine gun fire. They hesitated.
They could already see enemy bullets kicking up the dirt,
inching closer and closer. So Dan stood up and ran
(03:42):
to the center of the platoon, right in the middle
of his men. He swung his rifle over his head,
bayonet glinting in the sunlight, and then he shouted, come on, you,
sons of bitches, do you want to live forever? I'm Jr.
Martinez and this is Medal of Honor Stories of Courage.
(04:05):
The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in
the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery and combat
at the risk of life, above and beyond the call
of duty. Each candidate must be approved all the way
up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer in
the field to the White House. This show is about
those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what
(04:29):
their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice.
Today we'll meet the ultimate Marine, Daniel Daily, one of
the very few people to have been awarded the Medal
of Honor not once, but twice, plus a zillion other awards,
from the Navy Cross to the CUIs Duguerre. So, of course,
(04:50):
his platoon followed him when he yelled that famous battle cry.
They charged into those German defenses, and Dan himself rescued
twelve Marines who were stranded in that wheat field, risking
his life again and again. And this wasn't even one
of the actions. He received the Medal of Honor. For
(05:11):
Dan's story isn't just about incredible courage. It's about a
man who witnessed a totally different and sort of surprising
version of the Marine Corps and whose legend helped make
it the force it is today. Back in the early
(05:35):
nineteen hundreds, the Marine Corps looked nothing like it does now.
It was tiny, just about one hundred and fifty officers
and around fifty five hundred men. Their main duty was
guarding naval installations on land and working as guards on
naval vessels at sea, kind of like cops on ships.
(05:57):
There were bit players in a lot of conflicts all
over the place.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Uncle Sam's most colorful and heroic military units officially formed
by the Continental Congression seventeen seventy five.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
The Marines have been in the thick of things ever sin.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
But they also had a very specific and unusual function.
When there were threats to Americans doing business in foreign countries,
the Marines would go ashore to protect them, which is
how they ended up in China in the summer of
nineteen hundred. For decades, Western nations in Japan had forced
China to accept foreign control over the country's international trade.
(06:35):
American businessmen, bankers, manufacturers, and companies like Standard Oil were
huge presents in the country. They wanted to sell their
goods to the largest population in the world. Not everyone
was happy about this arrangement. A group emerged in northern
China called the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists.
(06:58):
Westerners reduced it to the Boxers. The Boxers thought the colonizers,
and particularly the Christian missionaries, were to blame for their
poor standard of living, so they decided to fight back.
By eighteen ninety nine, the Boxers were destroying churches and
foreign property, killing Chinese Christians and Western missionaries. They got
(07:23):
closer and closer to the country's capital, Peiking, now called Beijing.
That's where the foreigners lived, and a kind of walled
city within the city. They called it the Legation Quarter.
The Chinese government began supporting the Boxers, and the international
community realized that to leave the walled city would probably
(07:47):
mean death for them, so they called in military protection
from their home countries. In May of nineteen hundred, about
three hundred troops from places like Great Britain, Japan, Germany,
and Italy arrived in Peking and from America came the Marines,
except there were just fifty of them, including a young
(08:11):
man named Dan Daily. Dan had joined the corps just
a year before. According to his enlistment papers, he had
been born in Long Island in eighteen seventy three, but
evidence suggests he was born a few years earlier and
thousands of miles away in Ireland. His parents survived the
(08:33):
Great Famine and resettled in America. Young Dan worked in
a kerosene factory on Long Island. It's easy to see
why the Marines appealed to him. America was spreading into
more and more foreign territory. Marines traveled the world, and
that probably sounded a lot better than spending your life
in a factory on Long Island. Plus Dan was a
(08:57):
prize fighter on the side exploring fighting. These were things
Dan loved, so he enlisted, and after a little more
than a year he was in Peking foreigners and their
families were fleeing the Boxers. They poured into the legation quarter.
(09:18):
Thousands of Chinese Christian refugees did too, and on June twentieth,
the Boxers began their siege of the city. That small
international group of military men Dan included was stationed in
the quarter and they were outnumbered forty to one. They
called for reinforcements, but it would take almost two months
(09:42):
for those to arrive. In the meantime, the heat sword
reaching one hundred and ten degrees in the shade. Food
was dwindling. The people in the quarter had to eat
their horses. Dan and the Marines had one main goal
to hold what was called a tartar wall. It ran
(10:05):
along one side of the quarter, about the size of
a four story building. The Boxers built barricades on the
other side of the wall, and they kept building them higher.
They hoped to be able to storm their way inside
the quarter. So the marine spent all their time firing
at the Boxers on the barricades, trying to hold them off.
(10:26):
They were quickly running out of ammunition. If the Boxers
breached the wall, the fight would be over instantly. On
the night of July fourteenth, weeks into the siege, Dan's
captain told him he needed a volunteer to stay on
top of the wall alone. The captain had to go
(10:48):
down to bring up more men and sandbags. Reportedly, the
captain whispered to Dan, I won't order you to stay
out here, but if you can hold them back to noight,
they'll never drive us back tomorrow, to which Dan cheerily replied,
see you in the morning, captain, The night would have
(11:09):
been hot. Dan took cover in a little forty five bastion.
He piled ammunition in front of him, and he waited.
He could hear the Chinese soldiers talking nearby, and then
sure enough they came after him in the dark. The
boxers weren't sure how many Marines were in that bastion.
(11:31):
They didn't know it was just Dan. With this limited
supply of ammo, he was going to need all of it.
First two came Dan's way and he shot them. Then
four more men came. He shot three and used his
bayonet to kill the fourth, but the men kept coming
(11:53):
all through the night. Dan held on for daylight and
watched his pile of bullets get smaller and smaller. He
had to be a perfect shot in the dark. For hours,
he couldn't waste a bullet, and he didn't. Dawn rose
(12:13):
slowly over the tartar wall, and when the captain arrived
back at the top, Dan was there to greet him,
just like he had promised. According to some reports, the
bodies of two hundred enemy soldiers were found that morning
below the wall. This marked the first time that Dan
(12:34):
will receive the Medal of Honor. He had been a
one man barricade. If he hadn't been there, it might
have been the end of the quarter. A few weeks later,
a force from eight nations arrived in China, roughly ten
thousand of them took Peking, defeating the boxers. The siege
was over, and the foreign powers took brutal revenge. They
(12:58):
executed boxers and their supporters. They burned villages to the ground,
they plundered everything, plus the foreign nations demanded reparations from
the Chinese government. These reparations were so large that they
would cripple China for decades. The Marines would stay there
(13:19):
until nineteen forty one. Not Dan Daly, though he kept moving.
(13:41):
Part of what made Dan the ultimate Marine is he
went all in on everything he did. Dan Day arrived
in the Philippines in September of nineteen hundred. While there
were no battles to fight at the moment, he still
had a lot of energy. By October, he was put
(14:02):
on report for failing to return on time from leave.
Then he was on restriction for thirty days after being
ten hours late from leave. Then he was court martialed
for being drunk on his post and was sent to
the brig He got out and promptly went in again
(14:23):
for the same thing drunkenness, along with quote using obscene
threatening an abusive language toward a sergeant of the guard.
All of these offenses and a bunch more in just
ten months not exactly the description of the ideal marine
(14:45):
that the Corps advertised.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
In the Marine Corps, a man is trained first in
those things that will develop him as a man, in
those qualities of general leadership, such as dependability, personal bearing,
physical and metal stamina, should self reliance and self confidence.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Well, he certainly had self confidence. I guess his bad
behavior went on for years. But while he was seeing
the inside of the brig he was also seeing the
world because these years coincided with Teddy Roosevelt's presidency, and
Roosevelt believed that the US should act as a sort
(15:24):
of international policeman, stepping in with force if necessary. So
the Marines were all over the place. Dan was off
the coast of Puerto Rico, then Panama. The Marines were
officially there to protect American citizens and unofficially there to
make sure the US could build the Panama Canal. In
(15:45):
March of nineteen eleven, he was aboard the USS Springfield
and San Juan, Puerto Rico, when a gasoline fire broke out.
Dan risked his life to put out the flames before
the ship blew up. He got a commendation from the
Secretary of the Navy. In nineteen fourteen, Dan went to Mexico,
where the US had investments in oil. He fought in
(16:07):
the Battle of Veracruz. The Marines occupied the city. I mean,
come on, this guy was everywhere. Eventually he became a sergeant.
He was in his early forties mellowing out a little maybe,
and the Marines were changing to The tiny core that
(16:27):
Dan had joined in eighteen ninety nine was up to
ten thousand men by nineteen fourteen, but their role was
still a little odd. They weren't exactly fighting in war zones.
They were kind of like a police force for American business.
That's how Dan wound up in Haiti. Haiti was a
(16:49):
major port in the Sea Lane between the New Panama
Canal and the Atlantic Ocean, so it was more important
to the US than ever. The United States move Haiti's
gold reserve to New York in nineteen fourteen. Then they
used that as leverage to pressure Haiti to hand over
control of its finances. By July of nineteen fifteen, the
(17:14):
country was on the brink of civil war.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Having suffered a succession of weak presidents and almost continuous
civil wars, Haiti is now on brink of bankruptcy and
laws of the land have been virtually lost in chaos
of island wide anarchy.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
A civil war would be bad for business, so President
Woodrow Wilson sent in the Marines. Dan's major was the
awesomely named Smedley Darlington Butler His man nicknamed him Old
gimblet Eye because he had a crazy, intense stare. Anyways,
Butler had been in China and Mexico with Dan. He
(17:54):
loved him, He said. Dan was quote the fightingist man
I avenue. His hair was gray even then. He was
smooth faced, with skin like leather, hard boiled as the devil,
but fine clear through. I admired his courage and modesty
and became very much attached to him. The Marines took
(18:18):
charge of Haiti's ports and set up camps throughout the country. Meanwhile,
US officials got veto power over government decisions. They had
the constitution change to allow foreigners to buy property. Pretty
sweet deal for the US, maybe not so much for
the Haitians. Everything was settling in for a long occupation,
(18:42):
except that a group of rebels called Cacos began ambushing
Marine patrols, attacking outposts, and so the Marines and the
Cacos went to battle.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
And then in nineteen fifteen, United States Marines land in
Haiti to battle Haitian bandits threatening destruction of American properties,
and native bandits quickly head for the hills. This puts
immediate end to troubles in populated areas, but marines prepare
to drive into interior and rout the insurgents out.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
In late October, Smedley Darlington, Butler, Dan and around thirty
five other men went to find a CaCO stronghold in
the mountains. They set out from a base camp on
horseback with pack animals, carrying food, ammunition, and a machine gun.
On the third day of their mission, they came across
a Haitian man, and Butler made him an offer. Show
(19:36):
us the Caco's forked. If you do, you'll get five dollars.
If you don't, you'll get a bullet, and not much
of a choice. The man chose the money. Soon the
marines had the Caco's fortress in their sights. It was
(19:56):
perched on a mountain surrounded by rough stone walls and trenches.
Butler immediately realized his single platoon of men would be
no match for that, so they retreated. They rode in
the rain. They reached the banks of a fast running
river too deep for them to wade across, so the
(20:17):
men dismounted and the horses began to swim, with the
marines hanging onto their tails. Suddenly, bullets zipping past the
men into the water. That guy they threatened with death.
He had led them right into a trap. The marines
(20:39):
were surrounded by hundreds of cacos. By a stroke of
crazy luck, all of the marines made it across the river.
Their animals weren't so fortunate. After the men got to safety,
Butler ordered Dan to set up the machine gun, but
it had been strapped to the back of one of
the pack horses, and that horse was at the bottom
(21:02):
of the river. Butler tried to figure out what they
can do instead, and Dan just disappeared. He crawled back
to the river through the underbrush. That caco's bullet sheared
off the sticks and leaves around him. Then he plunged
into the river. He dived over and over into the
(21:26):
depths of that cold and murky water, trying to locate
each dead horse, until finally he found the one with
the machine gun tied to its back. Then he dove
even deeper, holding onto the horse underwater, Dan cut the
gun loose. He broke the surface of the water and
(21:48):
gasped for air. Then he swam back to the river bank,
dragging the gun somehow, dodging bullets. He made it to
shore and then He strapped the gun to his back
and carried it to the high ground where the rest
of the Marines were. Dan threw the gun down, and
I can only imagine they were like, how the hell
(22:11):
did you get that? But by now they were surrounded.
Butler said, quote all the men were praying, Even hard
boiled marines pray when they feel helplessly snared in a
death trap. Don was breaking. Butler divided the men into
three squads and told them to go in three different directions,
(22:34):
shooting everyone they could see. That machine gun helped a
whole lot. The Marines were eventually able to make their
way back to safety, sleepless, exhausted, and hungry, marching one
hundred and twenty miles in five days, all without losing
(22:57):
a man. Later on, Butler recommended Dan for the Medal
of Honor, saying quote, I wouldn't have had the courage
to do that. Remember, he went back on his own
initiative without a hint or suggestion from me, And that's
how fighting Dan Daily got his second medal. Dan left
(23:19):
Haiti in January of nineteen sixteen, headed for New York,
where his mom and siblings still lived, but the Marines
would stay in Haiti for another nineteen years, fighting the
rebels and anyone else who objected to the US presence.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Till nineteen thirty four. Contingents of the United States Marines
keep border in Haiti, withdrawing only when Haiti finally becomes
nation of peace and prosperity.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Well that's not exactly what happened, is it. Dan and
Smedley Darlington Butler and the rest of the Marines had
risked life and limb, but one of them at least
would look back in wonder for what. Let's go back
(24:22):
to France where we started this episode. It was World
War One, the Zillian conflict. Dan had seen just one
more port of call for him. But the Marines had
changed massively in the almost twenty years that Dan had
been enlisted. For one thing, they were so much bigger.
(24:44):
By the end of World War One, there would be
about twenty four hundred officers and seventy thousand enlisted men.
Dan put his combat experience to work. He trained new
recruits and got them ready for war. Ironically, he was
a stickler for detail, ready to restrict a man's leave
(25:07):
if his uniform wasn't pressed right, A far cry from
old drunk Dan, who spent weeks in the brig Anyway,
he and the rest of the six Marine shipped out
to France in October of nineteen seventeen. Dan was still
in fighting shape. Are we surprised and ready to go
(25:28):
to the front. It was chaos, but Dan just kept
being Dan. He single handedly put out a fire in
an ammunition train. He destroyed enemy machine guns, He captured
fourteen Germans all by himself, you know the usual. Then
(25:52):
came June tenth, the day on that heel where he
gave that famous battle cry. And when Dan yelled, come on,
you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?
Maybe his men thought, well, he's kind of lived forever, right,
and he was a legend. So his men entered that
field with a roar Dan leading the way. They fought
(26:17):
for many days. Eventually they were victorious, but Dan was wounded.
His injuries would keep him out of the rest of
the war. But let's go back to that famous line.
When Dan got back to the United States, he claimed
he never actually said it. The real version he said
(26:38):
was more like, for gracious sakes, you chaps, leave us
charge the foe, Not exactly convincing from a man who
could reportedly swear in seven languages and never repeat the
same curse twice. But anyway, Dan was one of the
most decorated men of World War One, but he didn't
(27:01):
care about the hardware. As he once put it, quote,
any stiff can go out and win a few medals
if he ain't entirely out of luck. He was recommended
for yet another Medal of Honor after France, but he
received a Distinguished Service Cross instead. Maybe the higher ups
thought three medals of honor would be overkilled. He didn't
(27:25):
need them anyway. Every Marine knew his name. In fact,
his bravery and service helped to define what it meant
to be a marine. Dan Daley retired from active service
in the Marines in nineteen twenty and fully retired in
nineteen twenty nine. In pictures from that time, he's fit
(27:49):
and trim as ever, with posture that would make Mary
Poppins proud. He had never married, and when asked why,
he responded, quote, I can't see how now a single
man could spend his time better than in the Marines.
He lived with his sister and her family and queens,
and took a job as a bank guard. He liked
(28:11):
to work at night so he could go to baseball
games during the day, and the kids in the neighborhood
loved him. One of them remembered quote, I've never met
a quieter, more thoughtful man, so kind, so cheerful. He
loved all of us children, and we all loved him.
(28:32):
Not what you were expecting, am I right? Dan wasn't
much for speeches or interviews. He refused to talk about
his famous battles. He told his boss at the bank quote, oh,
there really wasn't much to it. But while Dan hated
the spotlight, remember his commander, Smedley Darlington Butler Old Gimlday.
(28:57):
Butler was a major general, also received two Medals of Honor,
the only other Marine to do so. And while Dan
kept quiet, Butler did the exact opposite. He looked back
and questioned what he and Dan had been doing in
all those countries for all those years. Sure, in World
(29:22):
War One, the Marines were fighting for democracy, for a
principle they could actually believe in. But what about those
other random places where they'd put their lives on the line.
Butler retired from the Corps in nineteen thirty one, just
as the Great Depression was pushing the country deep into poverty,
(29:44):
he went on a lecture tour talking about how marines
had been pawns, risking death to put profits in the
hands of private citizens. Recordings of those speeches haven't survived,
But here's old Gimletai speaking to a group of unemployed
World War One veterans.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Thanks me, so damn man. A whole lot of people
speak of you tramps.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Why God, they didn't speak of his tramps. In nineteen
seventeen and nineteen.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
He wrote quote, I spent thirty three years and four
months in active service as a member of our country's
most agile military force, the Marine Corps. And during that
period I spent most of my time being a high
class muscleman for big business, for Wall Street and for
(30:34):
the bankers. I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests.
I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for
the National City Bank boys in China. I helped to
see to it that standard oil went its way unmolested.
(30:55):
To be clear, Butler wasn't a crank. He was a
decorated veteran who loved his country and love the core
Butler helped push the Marines even further from being a
police force for American business and into what they are today.
We don't know what Dan Daly made of his former
(31:15):
commander's views, but when I think about Butler's outrage about
the Marines risking their lives for big business, I think
he must have been imagining Dan racing back to that
rushing river, diving through the bullets to save his men.
Butler must have thought a man like that should only
(31:38):
be asked to serve the highest cause. In nineteen thirty seven,
when he was in his mid sixties, Dan accepted an
invitation to march in the parade for Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
second inauguration. It fell on a wet and cold January day.
(32:00):
He spent hours standing and marching in the downpour. He
caught a cold, which led to pneumonia, which weakened his
already damaged heart. Dan died just a few months later.
He was buried back on Long Island with full military honors.
Even he couldn't live forever. But that famous quote, well,
(32:25):
that quote is never going to die. It's carved into
the wall of the National Museum of the Marine Corps
in Quantico. It speaks to a time when men like
Dan set a new standard for bravery in the service
of something that wasn't always clear. Dan didn't ask to
(32:46):
share in the spoils of war. None of the Marines did.
They didn't fight for standard oil or the National City Bank,
as the Marine Corps him puts it. They fought for
right and freedom and to keep their honor clean. And
that is what they put their lives in the line for,
(33:10):
over and over again. Medal of Honor Stories of Courage
(33:46):
is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins
and Jess Shane. Our editor is Ben Adolf Hoffriy. Sound
design and additional music by Jake Gorsky. Our executive producer
is Gonstanza Gayadovo. Fact checking by Arthur Gomperts and original
music by Eric Phillips. Production support by Suzanne Gabber. Don't
(34:08):
forget we also want to hear from you. Send us
your personal story of courage or highlight someone else's bravery.
Just email us at Medal of Honor at Pushkin dot fm.
You also might hear your stories on future episodes of
Metal of Honor, or see them on our social channels
at Pushkin Pods. I'm your host, JR. Martinez
Hey everyone, We've put together a survey for listeners of
Medal of Honor and we want to hear from you.
Tell us what you love about the show, what we
can improve on, or stories you think we've missed. We're
committed to making this show even better and you can
help to take the survey. Visit bit dot lee slash
MH survey. That's bit dot l y slash MH survey.
(00:27):
The link is also in our show notes below. Pushkin.
On a hot June afternoon in nineteen eighteen, the sixth
(00:50):
Marines were facing a massacre. It was World War One
and the American forces had gathered in Bellowwood in northern France.
They were there to fight the Germans, but to get
to them they would have to cross a wide open
field of wheat, and that field was ringed by enemy
(01:11):
machine gunners. They were hidden in trees and behind boulders,
invisible and deadly, the stalks of grain bent in the breeze.
The sun was shining. It might have been a beautiful day,
but the only sound anyone could hear was the snapping
(01:32):
and cracking of machine gun and rifle fire, and the
screaming of wounded men. There was just one way for
the Marines to eliminate those enemy positions, one at a time,
slowly and painfully, using hand grenades, rifles, bayonets, fighting hand
(01:56):
to hand. If they had to progress seemed possible. The
men had already been there for days, pinned down and stuck,
worn out by the never ending combat. One platoon of
Marines was lying in a shallow fox hole. They had
dug it out by hand, at the edge of a clearing.
(02:18):
They were holding onto that ground for a dear life.
Then a runner came scrambling through the brush. He handed
a piece of paper to their sergeant. The sergeant's name
Dan Day. He was a lot older than the men
he led. He'd been in the Marines for nearly twenty years.
(02:40):
With a bristle of snow white hair and intense gray eyes,
Dan was pretty easy to pick out on the battlefield.
But more than that, Dan was famous, famous for his
courage and battle for his toughness. In fact, the story
goes that when one of the guys in the learned
(03:00):
his sergeant was Dan Daily, he said, quote, he's real.
I thought he was somebody the Marines made up like
Paul Bunyan. Dan Daly read that piece of paper. He
looked across his line of marines, and then Dan made
a forward motion with his hand. The men knew what
(03:22):
it meant. Their sergeant wanted them to advance toward the enemy,
out into the open, into the machine gun fire. They hesitated.
They could already see enemy bullets kicking up the dirt,
inching closer and closer. So Dan stood up and ran
(03:42):
to the center of the platoon, right in the middle
of his men. He swung his rifle over his head,
bayonet glinting in the sunlight, and then he shouted, come on, you,
sons of bitches, do you want to live forever? I'm Jr.
Martinez and this is Medal of Honor Stories of Courage.
(04:05):
The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in
the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery and combat
at the risk of life, above and beyond the call
of duty. Each candidate must be approved all the way
up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer in
the field to the White House. This show is about
those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what
(04:29):
their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice.
Today we'll meet the ultimate Marine, Daniel Daily, one of
the very few people to have been awarded the Medal
of Honor not once, but twice, plus a zillion other awards,
from the Navy Cross to the CUIs Duguerre. So, of course,
(04:50):
his platoon followed him when he yelled that famous battle cry.
They charged into those German defenses, and Dan himself rescued
twelve Marines who were stranded in that wheat field, risking
his life again and again. And this wasn't even one
of the actions. He received the Medal of Honor. For
(05:11):
Dan's story isn't just about incredible courage. It's about a
man who witnessed a totally different and sort of surprising
version of the Marine Corps and whose legend helped make
it the force it is today. Back in the early
(05:35):
nineteen hundreds, the Marine Corps looked nothing like it does now.
It was tiny, just about one hundred and fifty officers
and around fifty five hundred men. Their main duty was
guarding naval installations on land and working as guards on
naval vessels at sea, kind of like cops on ships.
(05:57):
There were bit players in a lot of conflicts all
over the place.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Uncle Sam's most colorful and heroic military units officially formed
by the Continental Congression seventeen seventy five.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
The Marines have been in the thick of things ever sin.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
But they also had a very specific and unusual function.
When there were threats to Americans doing business in foreign countries,
the Marines would go ashore to protect them, which is
how they ended up in China in the summer of
nineteen hundred. For decades, Western nations in Japan had forced
China to accept foreign control over the country's international trade.
(06:35):
American businessmen, bankers, manufacturers, and companies like Standard Oil were
huge presents in the country. They wanted to sell their
goods to the largest population in the world. Not everyone
was happy about this arrangement. A group emerged in northern
China called the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists.
(06:58):
Westerners reduced it to the Boxers. The Boxers thought the colonizers,
and particularly the Christian missionaries, were to blame for their
poor standard of living, so they decided to fight back.
By eighteen ninety nine, the Boxers were destroying churches and
foreign property, killing Chinese Christians and Western missionaries. They got
(07:23):
closer and closer to the country's capital, Peiking, now called Beijing.
That's where the foreigners lived, and a kind of walled
city within the city. They called it the Legation Quarter.
The Chinese government began supporting the Boxers, and the international
community realized that to leave the walled city would probably
(07:47):
mean death for them, so they called in military protection
from their home countries. In May of nineteen hundred, about
three hundred troops from places like Great Britain, Japan, Germany,
and Italy arrived in Peking and from America came the Marines,
except there were just fifty of them, including a young
(08:11):
man named Dan Daily. Dan had joined the corps just
a year before. According to his enlistment papers, he had
been born in Long Island in eighteen seventy three, but
evidence suggests he was born a few years earlier and
thousands of miles away in Ireland. His parents survived the
(08:33):
Great Famine and resettled in America. Young Dan worked in
a kerosene factory on Long Island. It's easy to see
why the Marines appealed to him. America was spreading into
more and more foreign territory. Marines traveled the world, and
that probably sounded a lot better than spending your life
in a factory on Long Island. Plus Dan was a
(08:57):
prize fighter on the side exploring fighting. These were things
Dan loved, so he enlisted, and after a little more
than a year he was in Peking foreigners and their
families were fleeing the Boxers. They poured into the legation quarter.
(09:18):
Thousands of Chinese Christian refugees did too, and on June twentieth,
the Boxers began their siege of the city. That small
international group of military men Dan included was stationed in
the quarter and they were outnumbered forty to one. They
called for reinforcements, but it would take almost two months
(09:42):
for those to arrive. In the meantime, the heat sword
reaching one hundred and ten degrees in the shade. Food
was dwindling. The people in the quarter had to eat
their horses. Dan and the Marines had one main goal
to hold what was called a tartar wall. It ran
(10:05):
along one side of the quarter, about the size of
a four story building. The Boxers built barricades on the
other side of the wall, and they kept building them higher.
They hoped to be able to storm their way inside
the quarter. So the marine spent all their time firing
at the Boxers on the barricades, trying to hold them off.
(10:26):
They were quickly running out of ammunition. If the Boxers
breached the wall, the fight would be over instantly. On
the night of July fourteenth, weeks into the siege, Dan's
captain told him he needed a volunteer to stay on
top of the wall alone. The captain had to go
(10:48):
down to bring up more men and sandbags. Reportedly, the
captain whispered to Dan, I won't order you to stay
out here, but if you can hold them back to noight,
they'll never drive us back tomorrow, to which Dan cheerily replied,
see you in the morning, captain, The night would have
(11:09):
been hot. Dan took cover in a little forty five bastion.
He piled ammunition in front of him, and he waited.
He could hear the Chinese soldiers talking nearby, and then
sure enough they came after him in the dark. The
boxers weren't sure how many Marines were in that bastion.
(11:31):
They didn't know it was just Dan. With this limited
supply of ammo, he was going to need all of it.
First two came Dan's way and he shot them. Then
four more men came. He shot three and used his
bayonet to kill the fourth, but the men kept coming
(11:53):
all through the night. Dan held on for daylight and
watched his pile of bullets get smaller and smaller. He
had to be a perfect shot in the dark. For hours,
he couldn't waste a bullet, and he didn't. Dawn rose
(12:13):
slowly over the tartar wall, and when the captain arrived
back at the top, Dan was there to greet him,
just like he had promised. According to some reports, the
bodies of two hundred enemy soldiers were found that morning
below the wall. This marked the first time that Dan
(12:34):
will receive the Medal of Honor. He had been a
one man barricade. If he hadn't been there, it might
have been the end of the quarter. A few weeks later,
a force from eight nations arrived in China, roughly ten
thousand of them took Peking, defeating the boxers. The siege
was over, and the foreign powers took brutal revenge. They
(12:58):
executed boxers and their supporters. They burned villages to the ground,
they plundered everything, plus the foreign nations demanded reparations from
the Chinese government. These reparations were so large that they
would cripple China for decades. The Marines would stay there
(13:19):
until nineteen forty one. Not Dan Daly, though he kept moving.
(13:41):
Part of what made Dan the ultimate Marine is he
went all in on everything he did. Dan Day arrived
in the Philippines in September of nineteen hundred. While there
were no battles to fight at the moment, he still
had a lot of energy. By October, he was put
(14:02):
on report for failing to return on time from leave.
Then he was on restriction for thirty days after being
ten hours late from leave. Then he was court martialed
for being drunk on his post and was sent to
the brig He got out and promptly went in again
(14:23):
for the same thing drunkenness, along with quote using obscene
threatening an abusive language toward a sergeant of the guard.
All of these offenses and a bunch more in just
ten months not exactly the description of the ideal marine
(14:45):
that the Corps advertised.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
In the Marine Corps, a man is trained first in
those things that will develop him as a man, in
those qualities of general leadership, such as dependability, personal bearing,
physical and metal stamina, should self reliance and self confidence.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Well, he certainly had self confidence. I guess his bad
behavior went on for years. But while he was seeing
the inside of the brig he was also seeing the
world because these years coincided with Teddy Roosevelt's presidency, and
Roosevelt believed that the US should act as a sort
(15:24):
of international policeman, stepping in with force if necessary. So
the Marines were all over the place. Dan was off
the coast of Puerto Rico, then Panama. The Marines were
officially there to protect American citizens and unofficially there to
make sure the US could build the Panama Canal. In
(15:45):
March of nineteen eleven, he was aboard the USS Springfield
and San Juan, Puerto Rico, when a gasoline fire broke out.
Dan risked his life to put out the flames before
the ship blew up. He got a commendation from the
Secretary of the Navy. In nineteen fourteen, Dan went to Mexico,
where the US had investments in oil. He fought in
(16:07):
the Battle of Veracruz. The Marines occupied the city. I mean,
come on, this guy was everywhere. Eventually he became a sergeant.
He was in his early forties mellowing out a little maybe,
and the Marines were changing to The tiny core that
(16:27):
Dan had joined in eighteen ninety nine was up to
ten thousand men by nineteen fourteen, but their role was
still a little odd. They weren't exactly fighting in war zones.
They were kind of like a police force for American business.
That's how Dan wound up in Haiti. Haiti was a
(16:49):
major port in the Sea Lane between the New Panama
Canal and the Atlantic Ocean, so it was more important
to the US than ever. The United States move Haiti's
gold reserve to New York in nineteen fourteen. Then they
used that as leverage to pressure Haiti to hand over
control of its finances. By July of nineteen fifteen, the
(17:14):
country was on the brink of civil war.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Having suffered a succession of weak presidents and almost continuous
civil wars, Haiti is now on brink of bankruptcy and
laws of the land have been virtually lost in chaos
of island wide anarchy.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
A civil war would be bad for business, so President
Woodrow Wilson sent in the Marines. Dan's major was the
awesomely named Smedley Darlington Butler His man nicknamed him Old
gimblet Eye because he had a crazy, intense stare. Anyways,
Butler had been in China and Mexico with Dan. He
(17:54):
loved him, He said. Dan was quote the fightingist man
I avenue. His hair was gray even then. He was
smooth faced, with skin like leather, hard boiled as the devil,
but fine clear through. I admired his courage and modesty
and became very much attached to him. The Marines took
(18:18):
charge of Haiti's ports and set up camps throughout the country. Meanwhile,
US officials got veto power over government decisions. They had
the constitution change to allow foreigners to buy property. Pretty
sweet deal for the US, maybe not so much for
the Haitians. Everything was settling in for a long occupation,
(18:42):
except that a group of rebels called Cacos began ambushing
Marine patrols, attacking outposts, and so the Marines and the
Cacos went to battle.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
And then in nineteen fifteen, United States Marines land in
Haiti to battle Haitian bandits threatening destruction of American properties,
and native bandits quickly head for the hills. This puts
immediate end to troubles in populated areas, but marines prepare
to drive into interior and rout the insurgents out.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
In late October, Smedley Darlington, Butler, Dan and around thirty
five other men went to find a CaCO stronghold in
the mountains. They set out from a base camp on
horseback with pack animals, carrying food, ammunition, and a machine gun.
On the third day of their mission, they came across
a Haitian man, and Butler made him an offer. Show
(19:36):
us the Caco's forked. If you do, you'll get five dollars.
If you don't, you'll get a bullet, and not much
of a choice. The man chose the money. Soon the
marines had the Caco's fortress in their sights. It was
(19:56):
perched on a mountain surrounded by rough stone walls and trenches.
Butler immediately realized his single platoon of men would be
no match for that, so they retreated. They rode in
the rain. They reached the banks of a fast running
river too deep for them to wade across, so the
(20:17):
men dismounted and the horses began to swim, with the
marines hanging onto their tails. Suddenly, bullets zipping past the
men into the water. That guy they threatened with death.
He had led them right into a trap. The marines
(20:39):
were surrounded by hundreds of cacos. By a stroke of
crazy luck, all of the marines made it across the river.
Their animals weren't so fortunate. After the men got to safety,
Butler ordered Dan to set up the machine gun, but
it had been strapped to the back of one of
the pack horses, and that horse was at the bottom
(21:02):
of the river. Butler tried to figure out what they
can do instead, and Dan just disappeared. He crawled back
to the river through the underbrush. That caco's bullet sheared
off the sticks and leaves around him. Then he plunged
into the river. He dived over and over into the
(21:26):
depths of that cold and murky water, trying to locate
each dead horse, until finally he found the one with
the machine gun tied to its back. Then he dove
even deeper, holding onto the horse underwater, Dan cut the
gun loose. He broke the surface of the water and
(21:48):
gasped for air. Then he swam back to the river bank,
dragging the gun somehow, dodging bullets. He made it to
shore and then He strapped the gun to his back
and carried it to the high ground where the rest
of the Marines were. Dan threw the gun down, and
I can only imagine they were like, how the hell
(22:11):
did you get that? But by now they were surrounded.
Butler said, quote all the men were praying, Even hard
boiled marines pray when they feel helplessly snared in a
death trap. Don was breaking. Butler divided the men into
three squads and told them to go in three different directions,
(22:34):
shooting everyone they could see. That machine gun helped a
whole lot. The Marines were eventually able to make their
way back to safety, sleepless, exhausted, and hungry, marching one
hundred and twenty miles in five days, all without losing
(22:57):
a man. Later on, Butler recommended Dan for the Medal
of Honor, saying quote, I wouldn't have had the courage
to do that. Remember, he went back on his own
initiative without a hint or suggestion from me, And that's
how fighting Dan Daily got his second medal. Dan left
(23:19):
Haiti in January of nineteen sixteen, headed for New York,
where his mom and siblings still lived, but the Marines
would stay in Haiti for another nineteen years, fighting the
rebels and anyone else who objected to the US presence.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Till nineteen thirty four. Contingents of the United States Marines
keep border in Haiti, withdrawing only when Haiti finally becomes
nation of peace and prosperity.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Well that's not exactly what happened, is it. Dan and
Smedley Darlington Butler and the rest of the Marines had
risked life and limb, but one of them at least
would look back in wonder for what. Let's go back
(24:22):
to France where we started this episode. It was World
War One, the Zillian conflict. Dan had seen just one
more port of call for him. But the Marines had
changed massively in the almost twenty years that Dan had
been enlisted. For one thing, they were so much bigger.
(24:44):
By the end of World War One, there would be
about twenty four hundred officers and seventy thousand enlisted men.
Dan put his combat experience to work. He trained new
recruits and got them ready for war. Ironically, he was
a stickler for detail, ready to restrict a man's leave
(25:07):
if his uniform wasn't pressed right, A far cry from
old drunk Dan, who spent weeks in the brig Anyway,
he and the rest of the six Marine shipped out
to France in October of nineteen seventeen. Dan was still
in fighting shape. Are we surprised and ready to go
(25:28):
to the front. It was chaos, but Dan just kept
being Dan. He single handedly put out a fire in
an ammunition train. He destroyed enemy machine guns, He captured
fourteen Germans all by himself, you know the usual. Then
(25:52):
came June tenth, the day on that heel where he
gave that famous battle cry. And when Dan yelled, come on,
you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?
Maybe his men thought, well, he's kind of lived forever, right,
and he was a legend. So his men entered that
field with a roar Dan leading the way. They fought
(26:17):
for many days. Eventually they were victorious, but Dan was wounded.
His injuries would keep him out of the rest of
the war. But let's go back to that famous line.
When Dan got back to the United States, he claimed
he never actually said it. The real version he said
(26:38):
was more like, for gracious sakes, you chaps, leave us
charge the foe, Not exactly convincing from a man who
could reportedly swear in seven languages and never repeat the
same curse twice. But anyway, Dan was one of the
most decorated men of World War One, but he didn't
(27:01):
care about the hardware. As he once put it, quote,
any stiff can go out and win a few medals
if he ain't entirely out of luck. He was recommended
for yet another Medal of Honor after France, but he
received a Distinguished Service Cross instead. Maybe the higher ups
thought three medals of honor would be overkilled. He didn't
(27:25):
need them anyway. Every Marine knew his name. In fact,
his bravery and service helped to define what it meant
to be a marine. Dan Daley retired from active service
in the Marines in nineteen twenty and fully retired in
nineteen twenty nine. In pictures from that time, he's fit
(27:49):
and trim as ever, with posture that would make Mary
Poppins proud. He had never married, and when asked why,
he responded, quote, I can't see how now a single
man could spend his time better than in the Marines.
He lived with his sister and her family and queens,
and took a job as a bank guard. He liked
(28:11):
to work at night so he could go to baseball
games during the day, and the kids in the neighborhood
loved him. One of them remembered quote, I've never met
a quieter, more thoughtful man, so kind, so cheerful. He
loved all of us children, and we all loved him.
(28:32):
Not what you were expecting, am I right? Dan wasn't
much for speeches or interviews. He refused to talk about
his famous battles. He told his boss at the bank quote, oh,
there really wasn't much to it. But while Dan hated
the spotlight, remember his commander, Smedley Darlington Butler Old Gimlday.
(28:57):
Butler was a major general, also received two Medals of Honor,
the only other Marine to do so. And while Dan
kept quiet, Butler did the exact opposite. He looked back
and questioned what he and Dan had been doing in
all those countries for all those years. Sure, in World
(29:22):
War One, the Marines were fighting for democracy, for a
principle they could actually believe in. But what about those
other random places where they'd put their lives on the line.
Butler retired from the Corps in nineteen thirty one, just
as the Great Depression was pushing the country deep into poverty,
(29:44):
he went on a lecture tour talking about how marines
had been pawns, risking death to put profits in the
hands of private citizens. Recordings of those speeches haven't survived,
But here's old Gimletai speaking to a group of unemployed
World War One veterans.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Thanks me, so damn man. A whole lot of people
speak of you tramps.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Why God, they didn't speak of his tramps. In nineteen
seventeen and nineteen.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
He wrote quote, I spent thirty three years and four
months in active service as a member of our country's
most agile military force, the Marine Corps. And during that
period I spent most of my time being a high
class muscleman for big business, for Wall Street and for
(30:34):
the bankers. I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests.
I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for
the National City Bank boys in China. I helped to
see to it that standard oil went its way unmolested.
(30:55):
To be clear, Butler wasn't a crank. He was a
decorated veteran who loved his country and love the core
Butler helped push the Marines even further from being a
police force for American business and into what they are today.
We don't know what Dan Daly made of his former
(31:15):
commander's views, but when I think about Butler's outrage about
the Marines risking their lives for big business, I think
he must have been imagining Dan racing back to that
rushing river, diving through the bullets to save his men.
Butler must have thought a man like that should only
(31:38):
be asked to serve the highest cause. In nineteen thirty seven,
when he was in his mid sixties, Dan accepted an
invitation to march in the parade for Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
second inauguration. It fell on a wet and cold January day.
(32:00):
He spent hours standing and marching in the downpour. He
caught a cold, which led to pneumonia, which weakened his
already damaged heart. Dan died just a few months later.
He was buried back on Long Island with full military honors.
Even he couldn't live forever. But that famous quote, well,
(32:25):
that quote is never going to die. It's carved into
the wall of the National Museum of the Marine Corps
in Quantico. It speaks to a time when men like
Dan set a new standard for bravery in the service
of something that wasn't always clear. Dan didn't ask to
(32:46):
share in the spoils of war. None of the Marines did.
They didn't fight for standard oil or the National City Bank,
as the Marine Corps him puts it. They fought for
right and freedom and to keep their honor clean. And
that is what they put their lives in the line for,
(33:10):
over and over again. Medal of Honor Stories of Courage
(33:46):
is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins
and Jess Shane. Our editor is Ben Adolf Hoffriy. Sound
design and additional music by Jake Gorsky. Our executive producer
is Gonstanza Gayadovo. Fact checking by Arthur Gomperts and original
music by Eric Phillips. Production support by Suzanne Gabber. Don't
(34:08):
forget we also want to hear from you. Send us
your personal story of courage or highlight someone else's bravery.
Just email us at Medal of Honor at Pushkin dot fm.
You also might hear your stories on future episodes of
Metal of Honor, or see them on our social channels
at Pushkin Pods. I'm your host, JR. Martinez
Host
Malcolm Gladwell
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com