Las Vegas vet remembers his grandfather’s service 115 years ago

The citation for his Medal of Honor credits Marine Pvt. William Charlie Horton with heroism for helping “to erect barricades under a heavy fire” for 28 days.

Horton’s grandson, Las Vegas Air Force veteran Rick Mills, says his grandfather did more than that.

Like the other Marines who received the nation’s highest award for valor in the Boxer Rebellion — 33 in all — Horton went above and beyond the call of duty to take the American flag to the U.S. Embassy compound and keep it flying high 115 years ago.

“He went into the ship’s locker and found a flag, and he wrapped it around his body, underneath his uniform. It was a 44-star flag although there were 45 states at the time,” said Mills, 78.

One of Horton’s comrades, then known as Pvt. Harry Fisher, was the nation’s first Marine to be awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously.

Fisher was killed July 16, 1900, by heavy enemy fire while erecting barricades. “He gallantly gave his life for his country,” reads the citation for “Fisher,” whose real name was Franklin J. Phillips of McKeesport, Pa. A former U.S. Army soldier who served in the Spanish-American War, he had joined the Marines under an alias.

It is for Marines like Fisher and all the nation’s war dead that Memorial Day is observed today.

The tradition of Decoration Day, tied to placing May’s spring flowers on their gravesites, goes back to the Civil War era, as does the Medal of Honor itself. Congress made Memorial Day a national holiday in 1971.

FIGHTING THE FISTS

Horton and Fisher were among a few dozen Marines trying to prevent thousands of rebels from overrunning the embassy, where hundreds of Americans had sought refuge.

It was the summer of 1900 in the city then known as Peking. The Boxer Rebellion — an uprising against foreigners by the Chinese Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists — had begun.

The “Boxers” already had killed more than 200 foreigners. Tens of thousands from the eight-nation alliance, with Chinese sympathizers, would die before reinforcements arrived to quash the revolt.

“He told me the Boxers were tough guys, but they didn’t have the weaponry to put up a good fight,” Mills said, recalling his grandfather’s telling. “The Boxers’ main weaponry were muskets and broad swords. That’s all they had” besides explosives for mines.

“The Marines had repeating rifles and a cannon. It was pretty hard for the Boxers to put ladders up and get up on top of the wall without getting killed,” Mills said. “Their lack of weaponry didn’t make them a real powerful enemy, but their positive thing was their numbers. There were lots of them.”

Horton, a railroad worker from the Seattle area, had joined the Marines in 1898. He was on board the USS Oregon in the East China Sea “when word got out that the boxers were going to kill all of the foreigners in that part of China so they had to bring all the American citizens into this compound,” Mills said.

His knowledge of steam locomotives played a pivotal role in getting the Marine security team to the compound, 65 miles from the seaport where the Oregon had sailed.

When he got off the ship, he noticed a marshaling yard and saw steam billowing from an engine’s stack. “He said, ‘Go get the rest of the guys, we’re going to commandeer this train,’ ” Mills said.

They captured the train and loaded their gear. Then his grandfather drove them to within three blocks of the embassy in what was called the Legation Quarter.

“They fought their way up to the compound with their cannon and everything else they brought with them,” Mills said.

“Once he got in the compound, he raised that flag on a bamboo pole on the outer wall. It was shot down several times, and he went out there and put it up again.”

The struggle over the Legation Quarter continued through the summer, with the Marines in control of the walls by August 1900. Fighting continued in China for another year until the Boxer Protocol was signed between the alliance and the Qing empire.

Before it ended, Horton was awarded the Medal of Honor. He was discharged a few years later as a sergeant.

REMEMBERING GRANDPA

Horton returned to the Seattle area, where Mills’ mother was born in 1913. “The thing I remember best about him is for some reason my cousin, Mike, and I were his favorite grandchildren, and he loved both of us dearly,” Mills said.

“Back in the ’50s, when Korea broke out, he said to Mike, ‘You owe your country. Get down there and sign up.’ … Then in ’55 he said the same thing to me. He said go do your duty, so I did as well.”

Mills’ cousin, Michael Rosaia, 82, of Woodinville, Wash., said their grandfather fit the mold of a true war hero. He was humble and “was pretty quiet” about the battles other than to say that when the Boxers quit fighting at night, the Marines would sneak out and take their guns and ammo.

“Envision a few Marines and a million Chinese at their back door,” Rosaia said.

Instead of the Marine Corps, though, both grandsons served in the Air Force.

“He was disappointed when I joined the Air Force but happy when I got out,” said Rosaia, who was a gunner with the 19th Bomb Group in Okinawa.

Among their fondest memories is when Horton visited the White House to meet President John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s. At the time, he was the oldest living Medal of Honor recipient. As he shook Kennedy’s hand, he asked the president, “Where’s Jackie?”

“He thought she was gorgeous,” Rosaia said, recalling how Kennedy and the other VIPs broke into laughter. “He was a flirt.”

TAKING THE FLAG BACK

Horton died in 1969 and was buried in Seattle’s Evergreen Washelli veterans cemetery. The Marine barracks at Naval Submarine Base in Bangor, Wash., was named for him in 1977. Parades are held there in his honor every year. On special occasions, a Marine wears Horton’s uniform from the museum to pay tribute to his service in the Boxer Rebellion and the Spanish-American War.

Mills’ dream in 2000 was that he and Rosaia “go to China and find this compound and actually stand in it.”

“One night I phoned him. I said, ‘Mike, think about this. If you don’t go to China on the 100th anniversary of Grandpa winning that medal, you’re going to spend the rest of your life wishing you had,’ ” Mills recalled. “And he said, ‘OK. That’s it. We’re gone.’ ”

They took along some personal items — their grandfather’s VFW cap, his Medal of Honor citation and some of his photographs from the Boxer Rebellion — for the Marine detachment to have at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

At their request, Rear Adm. George Voelker arranged for Horton’s 44-star flag, which is on display in the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes, to be delivered to his command for them to take to China. The flag was rededicated when they returned to the submarine base.

“I thought this is right what Mike and I did, taking this flag back. … It made me feel real American,” Mills said.

He said Memorial Day is a day to stop and think about “the freedoms that we have because of the military and the things we’ve been involved in. We always come up landing on our feet.”

Contact Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308. Find him on Twitter: @KeithRogers2.