Early Military Career and World War I
After graduation from Delaware College in 1917 he was commissioned a second lieutenant of the Infantry Reserve on August 15 at Reserve Officers Training Camp at Fort Myer, Virginia. He received his regular commission on October 26 and was assigned to the 11th Infantry Regiment (United States) at Camp Forrest, Tennessee.
He shipped out for overseas duty and participated in the St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne Offensives. He was wounded at St. Mihiel on September 12, 1918. Testifying to his endurance and aggressiveness in battle was his nickname, “Iron Mike”, awarded by his peers, said to be a result of his actions at St. Mihiel, where he fought for twelve hours, even though he was hit in the face by a German machine gun bullet and severely wounded. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions as well as the Purple Heart. He returned to the United States with the 11th Infantry on September 1919 and was transferred to the 25th Infantry Regiment (United States) at Camp Stephen D. Little at Nogales, Arizona.
Read more about this topic: John W. O'Daniel
Famous quotes containing the words war i, early, military, career, world and/or war:
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
“The girl must early be impressed with the idea that she is to be “a hand, not a mouth”; a worker, and not a drone, in the great hive of human activity. Like the boy, she must be taught to look forward to a life of self-dependence, and early prepare herself for some trade or profession.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“In all sincerity, we offer to the loved ones of all innocent victims over the past 25 years, abject and true remorse. No words of ours will compensate for the intolerable suffering they have undergone during the conflict.”
—Combined Loyalist Military Command. New York Times, p. A12 (October 14, l994)
“They want to play at being mothers. So let them. Expressing tenderness in their own way will not prevent girls from enjoying a successful career in the future; indeed, the ability to nurture is as valuable a skill in the workplace as the ability to lead.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)
“And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think. And so on for all the other things which made merry with my senses. Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
“This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)