A Cause Greater than Self: The Journey of Captain Michael J. Daly, World War II Medal of Honor Recipient

Chapter 12: Escaping the “Hero’s Cage”

170 Fairfield, Connecticut, August 24, 1945. Shortly after 6:30 p.m., Capt. Michael Daly returned to a hero’s welcome in his hometown of Fairfield. Banners reading “Welcome Home, Captain Michael Daly, CMH” hung all over town, especially along Boston Post Road (US Highway 1) in the business district. A crowd of more than two thousand, including a marching band, braved a downpour to line the platform of the Fairfield train station. As the young hero stepped off the special train that had borne him and his family home from Washington, DC, the band played “We Won’t Go Home Till Morning,” and the gathering greeted Daly with unrestrained cheering. Mike Daly was the toast of the town! The pride of Fairfield! When the cheering stopped, however, the twenty-year-old would face a dilemma: what to do as an encore with the rest of his life? On April 23, 1945, a military plane evacuated Daly by air to Paris and then to the 105th General Hospital, in England, where his jaw was wired shut. He stayed in a ward that held only men suffering from facial wounds. He couldn’t feel sorry for himself after seeing others so “horribly wounded.” His own wound left him with a partially paralyzed palate that caused difficulty in enunciating clearly and also a noticeable hoarseness in his voice, but by the time he departed for the United States on board a hospital ship, he was ambulatory. During the voyage he used a problem he was having with his ear to entertain the other guys. As a result of the wound and his surgery, a small air passage had been created from his ear to his palate. When saliva formed in his mouth, Daly would pull on his cheek and spit it out his ear! Arriving in the States, he was flown to Cushing Hospital in Framingham, Massachusetts, outside Boston.1 His parents did not know the exact time and date of their son’s arrival. Once he had checked into Cushing Hospital, Daly—who did not yet know that he had been recommended for the Medal of Honor—secured a pass and traveled home. He was anxious to see how his father’s recovery was proceeding and to reassure his parents that he was physically whole and all right. 12 Escaping The Hero’s Cage Escaping The Hero’s Cage 171 Glad to be back home to see his family and its menagerie of pets, including his horse, Woodsmoke, Daly nevertheless described feeling “strange” in the setting. About his war experiences he said little to either of his parents because he felt “awkward” doing so. His father was convalescing, and his mother, who struggled with bouts of depression, had a large family to manage . Mike did not want to burden them. Father and son, both veterans, had shared a common experience, and each surmised what the other had gone through. Actually, Mike rarely discussed his experiences with anyone in the family except perhaps to recount a humorous incident. When his sister Madge visited him at Cushing Hospital, however, where he was undergoing speech therapy, he did whisper to her that when he was in a tight spot, he thought of Roland and Oliver—an implied tribute to his father’s influence.2 The parallels between Mike and Paul Daly’s experiences at West Point and their gallantry on the battlefield raise two interrelated questions. How much did Mike consciously or unconsciously seek to emulate his father? And how much of his combat performance stemmed from an attempt to prove himself to his father or even to surpass his father’s achievements? Reflecting about it decades later, Mike observed that his father’s record influenced him in that it mirrored what his father stood for. “Brought up like that with a father like that—it became a part of me. I never gave it a particular thought. I never consciously thought, ‘What would he do?’ or, ‘Would I do better than he?’ At that juncture, what he stood for and the way he had raised me influenced A hero’s welcome. Courtesy Connecticut Post. A crowd of 2,500 welcomed Daly home to Fairfield, Connecticut. “This is the ‘swellest’ thing that ever happened to me,” he told the cheering throng. 172 Chapter 12 me, but it was not as evident...