Maj. Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler and Sgt. Maj. Daniel Joseph Daly: Each Marine has a strong claim to the title of America’s greatest fighting man. Between the two of them they were awarded four Medals of Honor, the Marine Corps Brevet Medal, the Navy Cross, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Navy and Army Distinguished Service Medals, the Haitian Medal of Honor and the Médaille Militaire, France’s highest combat decoration. These are among the most legendary of U.S. Marine Corps heroes, and during the first two decades of the 20th century their careers intertwined, each man earning his second Medal of Honor only days apart in the same campaign against rebels in Haiti.

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Smedley Butler was born on July 30, 1881, in West Chester, Penn. He was from a prominent Quaker family and would later earn the moniker “The Fighting Quaker.” His father, Thomas Stalker Butler, was an attorney, a district judge and a Republican congressman. Serving in the House of Representatives for 31 years, the elder Butler was chairman of the House Committee on Naval Affairs for most of the 1920s.

When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, young Smedley quit school and tried to join the Army and the Navy.

Both services rejected him because he was still short of his 17th birthday. Lying about his age and wielding his father’s political clout, he managed to get a temporary wartime commission as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps. After a three-week crash training course at the Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C., Butler sailed for Guantanamo Bay. By the time he arrived in July 1898, however, the bay was secure and the fighting almost over. Butler saw no action in Cuba and was discharged from the Corps the following February.

The regular Marine Corps at the time consisted of only about 2,000 men, but due to its performance in the war, Congress tripled its end strength. Applying for one of the new regular commission slots, Butler was reappointed a first lieutenant in April 1899. Within weeks he shipped out for the Philippines, where he experienced combat for the first time during the attack to capture the Nationalist-held fort at Noveleta. The 18-year-old lieutenant celebrated his initiation into the Brotherhood of War by having a huge Marine Corps Eagle, Globe and Anchor emblem tattooed on his torso.

Dan Daly entered the Corps three months before Butler secured his regular commission. Born on Nov. 11, 1873, in Glen Cove, N.Y., Daly was 25 when he enlisted for the Spanish-American War. Although he stood just 5 feet 6 inches and weighed a notch over 130 pounds, Daly had a good record as an amateur pugilist.

Daly’s and Butler’s paths first crossed in China in the summer of 1900, during the xenophobic Boxer Rebellion. Daly was already in China, as part of the U.S. Legation Guard at Beijing at the start of the rebellion. On Aug. 14, 1900, during the epic 56-day siege of the international compound, a fierce Boxer assault pushed back a German outpost, which created an open flank for the American position. In order to buy time to reestablish the defensive line, Daly volunteered to assume a lone post on the Tartar Wall, about 100 yards in front of the Marines’ main line. Armed with only a bolt-action rifle and a bayonet, he spent the night alone on the dangerously exposed position while the poorly armed Chinese repeatedly attacked him. By morning the front of Daly’s position was littered with the bodies of dead Boxers. Marine Corps legend puts the number at around 200, which is undoubtedly an exaggeration—though probably not that much of one. In a masterpiece of understatement, Daly’s Medal of Honor citation reads, Daly distinguished himself by meritorious conduct.

Butler, meanwhile, had landed in China two months earlier with an expeditionary force sent to relieve Tientsin. On June 21, Butler, Lt. Carl Gamborg-Andresen and four enlisted Marines rescued under fire a wounded Marine private and then held off a force of several thousand Boxers for four hours. On July 13, Butler led his company in the attack on Tientsin, where he again rescued one of his men under fire, this time taking a bullet in the thigh. Recovering in the hospital, Butler was promoted to brevet captain a couple days short of his 19th birthday. By August he was back out of the field with his company during the relief attack at Beijing. He was again wounded, this time in the chest. The main force of the bullet, however, was deflected by a brass uniform button, which in turn gouged out a chunk of skin from the Latin America portion of his Marine Corps emblem tattoo.

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