Medal of Honor · Boxer Rebellion
Calvin Pearl Titus
Corporal, U.S. Army
- Date of Action
- August 14, 1900
- Location
- Peking (Beijing), China
- Medal Presented
- March 11, 1902
Values Embodied
- Courage
- Commitment
Official Citation
This citation is paraphrased from public-domain histories and is pending verbatim verification against the Congressional Medal of Honor Society archive.
Gallant and daring conduct in the presence of his colonel and other officers and enlisted men of his regiment; was first to scale the wall of the city.
Biography
Before the War
Calvin Pearl Titus was born October 22, 1879, in Vinton, Iowa, the son of a Methodist pastor. He grew up in a musical family, played cornet in the Salvation Army band in New York City as a teenager, and enlisted in the Army in 1899 as a musician assigned to Company E of the 14th U.S. Infantry — expecting to sound calls, not to climb walls.
The Action
On August 14, 1900, the multinational relief column reached the walls of Peking, where the besieged diplomatic legations had been under Boxer siege for eight weeks. The 14th Infantry drew an assignment on the Tartar Wall at the southeast corner of the city. The outside face rose nearly thirty feet of dressed stone. The regiment had no ladders.
Titus — twenty years old, an unarmed bugler — volunteered to climb. He worked up through cracks in the masonry, finding hand- and footholds on the weathered stone, and reached the top unobserved. Other soldiers followed on a line he helped secure, opened a gate from the inside, and got the regiment into the city. The colors of the 14th Infantry were the first Allied flag raised over Peking that day.
After the War
For the climb, Titus received the Medal of Honor and a personal nomination from his colonel to the United States Military Academy. He graduated from West Point in 1905, served thirty more years as an infantry officer, and retired as a lieutenant colonel. He died May 27, 1966, in San Diego, and is buried in Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery.