On June 5, Daly bravely extinguished a fire on the verge of igniting a cache of explosive ammunition. The 44-year-old continued to write his name into the history books during June 1918’s Battle of Belleau Wood, a month-long offensive that was one of the first major World War I battles fought by U.S. Marine Sergeant Dan Daly entered World War I as one of the United States’ most famous Marines, having already won the Medal of Honor on two separate occasions for his service during the Boxer Rebellion and the U.S. At the time of his death in 1990, he was the last surviving Medal of Honor recipient from World War I. Though his information ultimately proved of little use so late in the war, he was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1920, and went on to serve several years in Congress. Izac spent the next several days sneaking through hostile territory and living off the land before swimming the Rhine River into the safety of neutral Switzerland. He finally pulled off a successful jailbreak in October 1918, when he scaled the barbed wire fence of his prison camp, stopping along the way to draw fire from the guards to allow other prisoners to flee. He later received the Distinguished Service Cross in 2003.ĭetermined to get this intelligence to the Allies, Izac later made several failed escape attempts, including once diving out the window of a moving train. Both he and Roberts were later given the Croix de Guerre-one of France’s highest military honors-but Johnson’s heroic stand went unrewarded in the United States until 1996, when he was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart. When the dust cleared, Johnson had inflicted at least a dozen casualties on the Germans and suffered 21 wounds from gunfire and bayonets. When Johnson saw that the Germans were trying to take Roberts prisoner, he drew his one remaining weapon-a bolo knife-and slashed and stabbed several men until the raiding party finally fell back. Despite being shot several times, he returned fire until his weapon jammed, and then used it as a club and fought hand to hand until it broke into pieces. Both men had soon been wounded-Roberts so severely that he was unable to stand or shoot-but Johnson held fast and fought back with hand grenades and his rifle. the duo was attacked by a detachment of some 20 German troops. On May 14, 1918, Johnson and another “Hellfighter” named Needham Roberts were serving sentry duty in the Argonne Forest. He later worked to introduce new schools to his mountain community. Shunning the spotlight, the reluctant soldier returned to his home in Tennessee after the war and took up farming. For his efforts, he was awarded the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross and several other citations for bravery. All told, York and his men captured 132 enemy soldiers, and he may have singlehandedly killed around 20 German troops. He had soon forced the remaining Germans to surrender, and later claimed even more prisoners on his way back to the American lines. When six of the enemy tried to charge York with bayonets, he drew his.
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Nine of the Americans were quickly wounded or killed, but York-a crack shot from his days as a turkey hunter-escaped unscathed and began picking off the German gunners with his rifle. He and around 17 other Americans had just captured troops from a German regiment when they found themselves under heavy fire from enemy machine guns. York would make his name on Octoin a famous incident during the Meuse-Argonne offensive.