Joseph Taussig - Cuban Pacification and Inter-war Years

Cuban Pacification and Inter-war Years

Following recuperation from his leg wound, Taussig was assigned to the Nashville in the Philippines and then to the Culgoa, a supply ship carrying food stores for the Army from Australia to the Philippines. Following that, he was assigned to Yorktown commanded by his father, Commander Edward D. Taussig USN. While serving on Yorktown at Yokohama Harbor, Taussig rescued a shipmate who had gone to the rescue of another drowning man. Both men were saved and for his heroism, Taussig was awarded the Silver Life Saving Medal by the U.S. Treasury Department in 1902. Of the numerous personal decorations and service medals he was awarded, it was the medal that Taussig prized most throughout his life.

After two years as a naval cadet, and having participated in three separate conflicts initiated by native interests opposing foreign intervention by the age of twenty-three, Taussig was commissioned Ensign on 28 January 1901 to begin a series of promotions and distinctions that would underscore his service to the Navy. Returning to the United States from the Asiatic Squadron in 1902, he was assigned to Texas and next served as navigator on Topeka. In 1905 he was on Amphitrite the station ship at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The following year he was navigator and executive officer on Celtic. In 1907, Taussig joined the officer staff of Kansas, one of the ships of the Great White Fleet that circumnavigated the globe in 1907 as a demonstration of U.S. Naval seapower and global presence. After the fleet rounded Cape Horn and steamed up the western coasts of South and North America, he detached from Kansas at Mare Island Navy Yard and was assigned to the staff of his father, Edward D. Taussig by then a Rear Admiral and Commandant of the Norfolk Navy Yard. In 1910 he was appointed flag secretary and aide to Rear Admiral Charles Vreeland, commander of the 2nd and 4th Divisions of the Atlantic Fleet.

Promoted to lieutenant commander, in 1911 he took command of the destroyer Ammen, followed by an assignment to the Bureau of Navigation in Washington, D.C. until 1915. This duty gave Taussig the background experience which resulted in his exposing personnel shortcomings in the Navy following World War I. In 1915, he first locked horns with then Assistant Navy Secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt and Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels when he and several other navy officer, notably Admiral David Sims were critical of a program that provided for the use of paroled criminals to fill the depleted ranks of enlisted personnel. Promoted to commander, in 1915 he took command of the newly-commissioned destroyer Wadsworth and command of Division 6, Destroyer Force, Atlantic Fleet.