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.
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
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Pushkin. On a hot June afternoon in nineteen eighteen, the
sixth Marines were facing a massacre. It was World War
One and the American forces had gathered in bellow Wood
in northern France. They were there to fight the Germans,
(00:28):
but to get to them they would have to cross
a wide open field of wheat, and that field was
ringed by enemy 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
(00:51):
have been a beautiful day, but the only sound anyone
could hear was the snapping 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
(01:18):
hand grenades, rifles, bayonets, fighting hand to hand. If they
had to progress seemed impossible. 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
(01:38):
in a shallow fox hole they had dug it out
by hand, at the edge of a clearing. 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.
(02:00):
He was a lot older than the men he led.
He'd been in the Marines for nearly twenty years. 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
(02:24):
goes that when one of the guys in the platoon
learned his sergeant was Dan Daly, 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
(02:44):
a forward motion with his hand. The men knew what
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 enemy bullets kicking up the dirt, inching
closer and closer. So Dan stood up and ran to
(03:08):
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.
(03:31):
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
(03:55):
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 duguer So. Of course,
(04:16):
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
(04:37):
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
(05:01):
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.
(05:23):
There were bit players in a lot of conflicts all
over the place on.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Uncle Sam's most colorful and heroic military unit. Officially formed
by the Continental Congress in seventeen seventy five.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
The Marines have been in a thick of things ever since.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
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 chips.
(06:00):
That's 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.
(06:24):
Westerners reduced it to just 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.
(06:49):
They got closer and closer to the country's capital, Peiking,
now called Beijing. That's where the foreigners lived, and a
kind of wall old 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
(07:11):
city would probably 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
(07:37):
a young man named Dan Day. 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
(07:59):
the 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
(08:23):
a 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. Thousands of Chinese Christian refugees did too, and
(08:48):
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 for those to arrive. In the meantime, the heat
(09:12):
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 the Tartar Wall. It
ran along one side of the quarter, about the size
(09:33):
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 Marines spent all their
time firing at the Boxers on the barricades, trying to
hold them off. They were quickly running out of ammunition.
(09:55):
If the Boxers breached the wall, the fight would be
over instant Late 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 down to bring up more men
(10:16):
and sandbags. Reportedly, the captain whispered to Dan, I won't
order you to stay out here, but if you can
hold them back tonight, they'll never drive us back tomorrow,
to which Dan cheerily replied, see you in the morning, Captain.
The night would have been hot. Dan took cover in
(10:38):
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. They didn't know. It was
(10:59):
just with his 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 all through the night. Dan
(11:21):
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 slowly over the tartar wall,
(11:42):
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 will receive the Medal of Honor.
(12:02):
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 Peiking, defeating
the Boxers. The siege was over, and the foreign powers
took brutal revenge. They executed boxers and their supporters. They
(12:27):
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 until nineteen forty one. Not
(12:49):
Dan daily, though he kept moving. Part of what made
Dan the ultimate Marine is he went all in on
(13:12):
everything he did. Dan Daley 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 on report for failing to
return on time from leave. Then he was on restriction
(13:34):
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 for the same thing, drunkenness,
along with quote using obscene threatening an abusive language toward
(13:58):
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 that the Corps advertised.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
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 mental stamina, initiative, self reliance, and self confidence.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
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
(14:50):
of international policeman, stepping in with force if necessary. So
the Marines were all over the place Dan was off
the co to Puerto Rico than Panama. The Marines were
officially there to protect American citizens and unofficially there to
make sure the US could build the Panama Canal. In
(15:11):
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 accommodation from the Secretary
of the Navy. In nineteen fourteen, Dan went to Mexico,
where the US had investments in oil. He fought in
(15:33):
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
(15:54):
Dan had joined in eighteen ninety nine was up to
ten thousand men by nineteen four 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
(16:15):
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 had moved
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,
(16:40):
the country was on the brink of civil war.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
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 the anarchy.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
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
(17:20):
loved him, He said. Dan was quote the fightingist man
I ever knew 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
(17:43):
Marines took 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
(18:05):
for a long occupation, 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 (18:18):
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 prepared
to drive into interior and routed the insurgents out.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
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. Butler made him an offer, show us
(19:02):
the cacos, 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
perched on a mountain surrounded by rough stone walls and trenches.
(19:26):
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 men
dismounted and the horses began to swim, with the marines
(19:48):
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 were
surrounded by hundreds of cacos. By a stroke of crazy luck,
(20:10):
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
of the river. Butler tried to figure out what they
(20:32):
could do instead, and Dan just disappeared. He crawled back
to the river through the underbrush that Kaco's bullet sheared
off the sticks and leaves around him. Then he plunged
into the river. He dived over and over into the
(20:52):
depths of that cold and murky water, trying to locate
each dead horse, until final 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
(21:14):
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 did
(21:37):
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.
Dawn was breaking, Butler divided the men into three squads
and told them to go in three different directions, shooting
(22:01):
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 a man.
(22:25):
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 for me, And that's how fighting Dan Daily
got his second medal. Dan left Haiti in January of
(22:47):
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 till.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Nineteen thirty four. Contingents of the United States Marines keep
order in Haiti, withdrawing only when Haiti finally becomes nation
of peace and prosperity.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
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
(23:48):
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, there were so much bigger.
(24:10):
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
(24:33):
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
(24:54):
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
(25:18):
came June tenth, the day on that hill 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
(25:43):
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
(26:04):
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
(26:27):
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
(26:51):
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 Day 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
(27:15):
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 a single man
could spend his time better than in the Marines. He
lived with his sister and her family and queens, and
(27:35):
took a job as a bank guard. He liked 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. Not what
(27:59):
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 Gimldai. Butler was
(28:24):
a major general. He had 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
(28:48):
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.
(29:10):
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 gimlet I speaking to a group of
unemployed World War One veterans.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Thanks me, so damn man. A whole lot of people
speak of your tramps.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Why God, they didn't speak of his tramps. In nineteen
seventeen to nineteen.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
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
(30:00):
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.
(30:21):
To be clear, Butler wasn't a crank. He was a
decorated veteran who loved his country and loved 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 Day made of his former
(30:41):
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
(31:04):
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.
(31:26):
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,
(31:51):
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
(32:12):
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
(32:34):
for over and over again. Medal of Honor Stories of
(33:11):
Courage is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith
Rollins and Jess Shane. Our editor is Ben Nadaf Hoffrey.
Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski. Our executive
producer is Gonstanza Gayado. Fact checking by Arthur Gomperts and
original music by Eric Phillips. Production support by Suzanne Gabbert.
(33:33):
Don't 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
Medal of Honor or see them on our social channels
at Pushkin Pods. I'm your host, JR. Martinez
Pushkin. On a hot June afternoon in nineteen eighteen, the
sixth Marines were facing a massacre. It was World War
One and the American forces had gathered in bellow Wood
in northern France. They were there to fight the Germans,
(00:28):
but to get to them they would have to cross
a wide open field of wheat, and that field was
ringed by enemy 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
(00:51):
have been a beautiful day, but the only sound anyone
could hear was the snapping 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
(01:18):
hand grenades, rifles, bayonets, fighting hand to hand. If they
had to progress seemed impossible. 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
(01:38):
in a shallow fox hole they had dug it out
by hand, at the edge of a clearing. 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.
(02:00):
He was a lot older than the men he led.
He'd been in the Marines for nearly twenty years. 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
(02:24):
goes that when one of the guys in the platoon
learned his sergeant was Dan Daly, 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
(02:44):
a forward motion with his hand. The men knew what
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 enemy bullets kicking up the dirt, inching
closer and closer. So Dan stood up and ran to
(03:08):
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.
(03:31):
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
(03:55):
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 duguer So. Of course,
(04:16):
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
(04:37):
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
(05:01):
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.
(05:23):
There were bit players in a lot of conflicts all
over the place on.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Uncle Sam's most colorful and heroic military unit. Officially formed
by the Continental Congress in seventeen seventy five.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
The Marines have been in a thick of things ever since.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
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 chips.
(06:00):
That's 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.
(06:24):
Westerners reduced it to just 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.
(06:49):
They got closer and closer to the country's capital, Peiking,
now called Beijing. That's where the foreigners lived, and a
kind of wall old 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
(07:11):
city would probably 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
(07:37):
a young man named Dan Day. 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
(07:59):
the 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
(08:23):
a 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. Thousands of Chinese Christian refugees did too, and
(08:48):
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 for those to arrive. In the meantime, the heat
(09:12):
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 the Tartar Wall. It
ran along one side of the quarter, about the size
(09:33):
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 Marines spent all their
time firing at the Boxers on the barricades, trying to
hold them off. They were quickly running out of ammunition.
(09:55):
If the Boxers breached the wall, the fight would be
over instant Late 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 down to bring up more men
(10:16):
and sandbags. Reportedly, the captain whispered to Dan, I won't
order you to stay out here, but if you can
hold them back tonight, they'll never drive us back tomorrow,
to which Dan cheerily replied, see you in the morning, Captain.
The night would have been hot. Dan took cover in
(10:38):
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. They didn't know. It was
(10:59):
just with his 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 all through the night. Dan
(11:21):
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 slowly over the tartar wall,
(11:42):
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 will receive the Medal of Honor.
(12:02):
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 Peiking, defeating
the Boxers. The siege was over, and the foreign powers
took brutal revenge. They executed boxers and their supporters. They
(12:27):
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 until nineteen forty one. Not
(12:49):
Dan daily, though he kept moving. Part of what made
Dan the ultimate Marine is he went all in on
(13:12):
everything he did. Dan Daley 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 on report for failing to
return on time from leave. Then he was on restriction
(13:34):
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 for the same thing, drunkenness,
along with quote using obscene threatening an abusive language toward
(13:58):
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 that the Corps advertised.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
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 mental stamina, initiative, self reliance, and self confidence.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
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
(14:50):
of international policeman, stepping in with force if necessary. So
the Marines were all over the place Dan was off
the co to Puerto Rico than Panama. The Marines were
officially there to protect American citizens and unofficially there to
make sure the US could build the Panama Canal. In
(15:11):
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 accommodation from the Secretary
of the Navy. In nineteen fourteen, Dan went to Mexico,
where the US had investments in oil. He fought in
(15:33):
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
(15:54):
Dan had joined in eighteen ninety nine was up to
ten thousand men by nineteen four 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
(16:15):
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 had moved
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,
(16:40):
the country was on the brink of civil war.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
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 the anarchy.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
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
(17:20):
loved him, He said. Dan was quote the fightingist man
I ever knew 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
(17:43):
Marines took 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
(18:05):
for a long occupation, 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 (18:18):
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 prepared
to drive into interior and routed the insurgents out.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
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. Butler made him an offer, show us
(19:02):
the cacos, 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
perched on a mountain surrounded by rough stone walls and trenches.
(19:26):
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 men
dismounted and the horses began to swim, with the marines
(19:48):
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 were
surrounded by hundreds of cacos. By a stroke of crazy luck,
(20:10):
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
of the river. Butler tried to figure out what they
(20:32):
could do instead, and Dan just disappeared. He crawled back
to the river through the underbrush that Kaco's bullet sheared
off the sticks and leaves around him. Then he plunged
into the river. He dived over and over into the
(20:52):
depths of that cold and murky water, trying to locate
each dead horse, until final 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
(21:14):
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 did
(21:37):
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.
Dawn was breaking, Butler divided the men into three squads
and told them to go in three different directions, shooting
(22:01):
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 a man.
(22:25):
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 for me, And that's how fighting Dan Daily
got his second medal. Dan left Haiti in January of
(22:47):
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 till.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Nineteen thirty four. Contingents of the United States Marines keep
order in Haiti, withdrawing only when Haiti finally becomes nation
of peace and prosperity.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
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
(23:48):
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, there were so much bigger.
(24:10):
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
(24:33):
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
(24:54):
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
(25:18):
came June tenth, the day on that hill 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
(25:43):
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
(26:04):
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
(26:27):
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
(26:51):
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 Day 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
(27:15):
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 a single man
could spend his time better than in the Marines. He
lived with his sister and her family and queens, and
(27:35):
took a job as a bank guard. He liked 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. Not what
(27:59):
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 Gimldai. Butler was
(28:24):
a major general. He had 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
(28:48):
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.
(29:10):
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 gimlet I speaking to a group of
unemployed World War One veterans.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Thanks me, so damn man. A whole lot of people
speak of your tramps.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Why God, they didn't speak of his tramps. In nineteen
seventeen to nineteen.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
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
(30:00):
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.
(30:21):
To be clear, Butler wasn't a crank. He was a
decorated veteran who loved his country and loved 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 Day made of his former
(30:41):
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
(31:04):
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.
(31:26):
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,
(31:51):
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
(32:12):
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
(32:34):
for over and over again. Medal of Honor Stories of
(33:11):
Courage is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith
Rollins and Jess Shane. Our editor is Ben Nadaf Hoffrey.
Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski. Our executive
producer is Gonstanza Gayado. Fact checking by Arthur Gomperts and
original music by Eric Phillips. Production support by Suzanne Gabbert.
(33:33):
Don't 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
Medal of Honor or see them on our social channels
at Pushkin Pods. I'm your host, JR. Martinez
Host
Malcolm Gladwell
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