Calvin Pearl Titus – America’s last Standard Bearer & the First American over the wall during the Boxer Rebellion

Came across this article the other day on the retirement from the US Army of Lieutenant-Colonel Calvin Pearl Titus, bugler, the last American Standard Bearer and the first American over the wall during the Boxer Rebellion. This article from the American press shows he retired in 1930.

So, here’s the story….born in Clinton, Louisiana in 1879 and raised mostly in Wichita, Kansas, Titus is a veteran of the Spanish-American War (he saw service in the Philippines with Company K of the First Vermont Volunteers) and now a musician with the 14th Infantry’s E Company, the chaplain’s assistant and their Standard Bearer (the guy who holds the flag up front, often was a musician, and invariably the first to get killed!). the 14th were deployed to China as part of the Allied Army to put down the Boxer Rebellion and relieve the Siege of the Legations. When the Americans reached the Tung Pien Gate in Peking (now the Dong Bian Gate, or previously known as the Fox Tower – which readers of my Midnight in Peking will be familiar with) they came under heavy fire. There was an urgent need for volunteers to scale the wall close by the Fox Tower, gain a better vantage point on the other side and then lay down supressive fire while the rest of the 14th advanced. 20-year-ld Titus volunteers. He slings a rope over his shoulder, is hoisted over to the wall, climbs all 30 feet of it, and starts firing off so the rest of the Company can follow his lead. Told what his job was legend has it he replied “I’ll try Sir.” the US Army immortalised in a commissioned painting….

Titus himself obviously knew the value of a good quote, or at least a newspaper editor back home did – “The trouble in bad in China, so we may have a good time but this regiment knows only one way to go – that is forward.” The rest of the regiment apparently followed him up the wall hoisting up their rifles and ammunition behind them.

Meanwhile Titus, as the Standard Bearer, stuck the Stars and Stripes in the wall and sounded the bugle for the attack – (the Fox Tower and the portion of the wall Titus climbed are still there…

Titus got a medal, the Medal of Honor, from President Teddy Roosevelt himself when he docked back home in 1901 at San Francisco. He also got an appointment to West Point from President McKinley. He retired from the army in 1930 after 30 years service (he’d been a volunteer in the Spanish-American War) and died in 1966, being buried with full military honours in Hollywood, California.