Paths to Glory: Medal of Honor Ricipients Smedley Butler and Dan Daly
By David T. Zabecki

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For their heroic actions on June 21, the four enlisted Marines received the Medal of Honor. Butler and Gamborg-Andresen received recommendations for brevet promotion to captain. Under the statutes that governed establishment of the Navy version of the Medal of Honor in 1861, naval and Marine officers were not eligible for the award. Until 1915, brevet promotions were the only way the Marines had to recognize an officer’s combat valor above and beyond the call of duty. In 1921 the secretary of the Navy established the Marine Corps Brevet Medal to recognize Marine officers who had received brevet promotions. Butler and Gamborg-Andresen each received one of the only 23 such medals ever awarded.

After China, Butler and Daly served with the Marines in all the far corners of the world.

Butler went to Honduras in March 1903, where he defended the U.S. Consulate from local insurgent attacks. It was there he earned the nickname “Old Gimlet Eye,” for his fierce battle stare. He returned to the Philippines from 1905 to 1907, and in December 1909, as a 28-year-old major, he commanded the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, in Panama. Butler served in two expeditions to Nicaragua in 1910 and a third in 1912. During that period of foreign expeditions, Butler developed his high-profile and long-running feud with the upper echelons of the Navy Department. Whenever he believed that the Navy’s ignorance of the Corps’ basic mission and capabilities led to misuse of his Marines, Butler never hesitated to complain to his father on the House Naval Affairs Committee. Such tactics earned him the enduring animosity of those he derisively called “swivel-chair admirals.”

In April 1914, Daly led a platoon of Marines ashore at Vera Cruz, Mexico, in response to a diplomatic incident at Tampico. Butler served there too, but he had gone ashore much earlier. Arriving in Vera Cruz bay with his battalion aboard USS Minnesota in January, Butler went ashore clandestinely in civilian clothes to gather intelligence. Posing as an American railroad official, Butler penetrated deep into the Mexican interior and spent three days in Mexico City, mapping out key military installations. When the local police grew suspicious of him, he made it back to Vera Cruz one step ahead of the Mexican secret service. He had to fight his way through a local mob before reaching the docks, where a launch was waiting to take him back to his ship.

When the Americans landed on April 22, Butler went ashore in command of a company of sailors and a company of Marines from another battalion. As his force moved into the city, hidden riflemen pinned them down. Armed with only a swagger stick, Butler calmly walked down the center of the main street fully exposed. Whenever he drew fire, he used his swagger stick to designate the target to his own riflemen.

Under the new criteria, Butler received his first Medal of Honor for his actions at Vera Cruz—but he refused the award and sent it back. The Navy Department returned the medal to Butler, testily ordering him to accept and wear it.

Daly, meanwhile, had logged a number of tours at sea, including service aboard USS Newark, Panther, Cleveland, Marietta, Mississippi, Ohio and Machias. While serving on USS Springfield in 1911, he saved the ship when he spotted and extinguished a gasoline fire near the ship’s main powder magazine.

In 1915 the 42-year-old gunnery sergeant participated in the peacekeeping Haiti Campaign. On October 22, he was the senior NCO of a reconnaissance patrol of 38 mounted Marines sent into the interior of the island to locate the Fort Dipitie and Fort Capois strongholds of the Cacos rebels. At dusk on the 24th some 400 Cacos ambushed the small force as it was crossing a river in a deep jungle ravine. The Marines managed to get ashore without losing a man, but they lost 12 horses and the mule carrying their only machine gun. Moving away from river, Daly pulled his troops into a tight defensive perimeter.

Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, People

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