Jan 22 , 2026

Daniel Joseph Daly, Two-Time Medal of Honor Marine at Belleau Wood

The weight of that night sat heavy—smoke curling, fire biting the flesh of every man around me. They came like shadows, clawing for the walls. I stood in the breach, one man against the tempest. There was no room for fear. Only duty. Only resolve.

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Background & Faith

Daniel Joseph Daly was born in 1873, an Irish Catholic son of Brooklyn’s rough streets. The city forged him, hammered him into an unforgiving shape. No silver spoon, just grit and grind. Enlisted at 17, joined the Marines—became the steel spine of the Corps through decades soaked in blood and cannon smoke.

Faith was never spectator sport for Daly. His life was punctuated by bits of scripture muttered under breath in the trenches, reminding him why to fight—beyond medals, beyond glory: the protection of brothers, the preservation of honor.

“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” — Joshua 1:9

His code was simple: protect the vulnerable. Face death with fists unclenched. He wielded faith as much as his rifle.

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The Battle That Defined Him

The year was 1900. China. The Boxer Rebellion boiled over in the streets of Tientsin. The foreign legations were under siege, and the Marines were the thin wall holding back chaos.

Sergeant Daniel Daly stood at the parapet, the night alive with gunfire and screams. Four times that night, attackers swarmed the walls. Four times Daly charged into the breach, a lone force battling back the shadows with a rifle and an unbreakable will.

One moment, a mass of Boxer rebels pressed in, hoping to overwhelm the defenders. Daly, without hesitation, leapt forward with a pistol in hand, cutting through the tide. His order was simple: hold the line at all costs.

For this ferocity, Daly earned his first Medal of Honor, cited for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity.” He became the first Marine—and one of the very few in American history—to receive the Medal twice. The second came years later, in a different theater, under a different kind of hell.

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Valor in the Great War

World War I’s mud-choked fields tested Daly in ways even Tientsin did not. By 1918, as a Sergeant Major, he found himself at the crest of the battle for the village of Belleau Wood, France.

The woods burned with mortal chaos. Machine guns spat death like twin devils. The Marines took hit after hit, bleeding ground like never before.

Daly saw a machine gun nest mowing down his men. Without orders, without hesitation, he charged with a pistol in hand—cutting down the enemy and inspiring a wave of renewed fury from his battalion.

His courage burned like wildfire, pulling shattered men from the jaws of defeat, holding battered lines by sheer force of will.

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Recognition Among Brothers

Three Medals of Honor were awarded to Marines in the Boxer Rebellion and WWI, and Daly walked with two of them. His citations told a story of relentless courage, but his men spoke louder.

Lieutenant Colonel Earl Ellis called him “the fightingest Marine I ever knew.” Fellow Marines remembered Daly as the embodiment of the Corps' indomitable spirit.

The Marines’ hymn says, “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli,” but Daly’s fight took that creed deeper—into the very marrow of combat itself.

“I’d rather have a company of Daly’s Marines any day… because when bullets fly, Dan Daly fights.”

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Legacy & Lessons

Daly's life is a testament not just to courage, but to relentless sacrifice and unwavering leadership. He didn’t seek glory; he demanded responsibility. The medals followed, but the real victory was surviving hell on earth with the souls of his men intact.

His story is a raw, unfiltered reminder: true heroism lives in the grit between the bursts and the silence. It is how a man stands after he’s been broken. How he lifts others when his own hands are bloody and weary.

Daniel Joseph Daly carried not just weapons, but the weight of salvation for those who fought beside him. He walked through fire and left a path of redemption—a legacy that reminds us all:

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” — John 15:13

In a world quick to forget, let us remember the fierce heart of Sgt. Maj. Daly. Not for his medals, but for the scars he bore to keep the darkness at bay.

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Sources

1. Department of the Navy, Naval History and Heritage Command – “Two Medal of Honor Recipients: SgtMaj Daniel J. Daly” 2. Millett, Allan R., Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps 3. Associated Press archive, "Daly Receives Second Medal of Honor," 1918 4. Ellis, Earl B., letters and memoirs, USMC Archives

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