On August 14, 1900, Iowa-born Calvin Pearl Titus of the U.S. Army’s 14th Infantry Regiment was the first to scale the wall of the Peking Palace in China during the Boxer Rebellion. When his fellow troops were pinned down by enemy fire and needed to gain a higher position to counter, Calvin responded to his commander, “I’ll try, Sir!” and courageously climbed the wall. He received the Medal of Honor two years later. Today, the 14th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army is known as “The Golden Dragons.”
Titus’s daring ascent on August 14th was a brilliant display of frontline nerve that unlocked the final, desperate rescue of the international Legation Quarter. Clambering up the jagged, thirty-foot brick masonry of the ancient Tungpien Gate entirely unarmed and under the direct sights of hidden Boxer snipers, he carried a heavy rope up to the parapet to pull up reinforcements. His legendary reply, “I’ll try, Sir!”, instantly became the permanent, immortal organizational motto of the 14th Infantry, transforming a destitute former Salvation Army musician into a premier symbol of military initiative and securing his historic place as the very last American soldier to receive the Medal of Honor for valor on the Asian mainland during the nineteenth century.
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