This Day in History: Daniel “Duke” Heller's Navy Cross

On this day in 2024, Corporal Daniel “Duke” Heller receives a Navy Cross for his actions in the Vietnam War. It had been nearly 56 years since his heroic action.

One silver lining of the late award? His sons—and grandsons!—were present to see him receive the Cross.

The Ohio native joined the Marines after he graduated from high school. “If you want to be a Marine,” Heller later mused, “no can talk you out of it.” But his dad was doubtful.

“I know when I left for boot camp in ‘68,” Heller laughed, “my dad said, ‘You’ll never make that. You’ll be home in a week.’”

Gen. Eric M. Smith, Commandant of the Marine Corps, presents Heller with his Navy Cross.

Let’s just say that Heller managed to achieve the complete opposite of those low expectations?! By February 1969, he was leading a squad with the 1st Battalion, 9th Marines in the A Shau Valley. An effort to disrupt the NVA, Operation Dewey Canyon, had been going on for a few weeks.

Trouble came on February 13 as Heller’s squad patrolled an area with two other squads.

“Visibility was poor,” Marine Commandant Gen. Eric M. Smith later described at Heller’s Cross ceremony, “with thick, high grass on all sides. At around 1400, they found themselves in a well-laid ambush. . . . The North Vietnamese opened fire with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, and automatic rifles. It was a well-coordinated ambush, and the situation was dire.”

The platoon leader shouted at Heller to lead his squad in a flanking action around the enemy. Heller did this, but his squad’s point man was soon hit, as were a few others.

Heller knew what he had to do. He ran through enemy fire to reach his wounded Marines, throwing one over his shoulders.

“Threw him up on my shoulders, you know, started up the hill, and a machine gun opened up on me,” Heller told a journalist years later, “and then an RPG . . . hit on the hill in front of me and knocked us over, and I got hit in my face and my shoulder.”

Naturally, he got up and kept going. In fact, he went up and down that hill multiple times to retrieve wounded Marines and get them to care. He was wounded, too, remember, but the corpsman could not convince him to stay for treatment.

“I was bleeding in my face and my shoulder. I said, ‘I’m OK,’” he remembered. “So, I went back down again.”

It was a humble description of that rescue effort. The Marine Commandant would later give it more color, noting that “[e]ach trip across that battlefield was a journey through hell, with enemy rounds snapping through the air all around him, but Corporal Heller’s focus was on his Marines—getting them out, getting them to medical care.”

He got his Marines to relative safety, then he returned to the fight. He was directing his men, clearing a weapon jam for his machine gunner—and then he did something that would turn the tide of the attack.

Moving to the front of his squad, he “single-handedly charged four approaching enemy soldiers, vanquishing all of them,” his Cross citation describes. “This bold and daring act inspired his squad to violently attack the enemy and drive them from the battlefield.”

Heller was initially awarded a Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal with combat ‘V’. But all of that changed just last year when a review of that “chaotic February afternoon” determined that the award should be upgraded to a Navy Cross. 

It seems that Heller was pretty surprised. “I didn’t do it for a Navy Cross,” he said at his August 28 ceremony, “hell I had never even heard of a Navy Cross. . . . I just want to say how thankful I am, Semper Fi, and how ‘bout them Jarheads!”

Primary Sources:

• Britt Leoni, Former Marine's sacrifice and service is honored with Navy Cross (Gulf Coast ABC; Apr. 4, 2025)

• Corporal Daniel Leroy Heller to Receive Navy Cross (Press release of 1st Battalion 9th Marines Association; Aug. 13, 2024)

• Cpl. Heller’s Navy Cross Ceremony (Aug. 28, 2024) (transcript reprinted HERE)

• Craig McKee, ‘I never expected anything’ | Cleves veteran to receive Navy Cross 55 years after actions during Vietnam War (WCPO Cincinnati; Aug. 26, 2024)

• Joshua Skovlund, Vietnam Marine vet awarded Navy Cross 55 years after saving Marines while wounded (Task & Purpose; Aug. 29, 2024)

• Navy Cross Citation (Daniel L. Heller; Vietnam)

• Patricia Gallagher Newberry, Vietnam veteran to get Marines’ second-highest honor, 55 years after ‘valor in combat’ (Cincinnati Enquirer; Aug. 26, 2024)

• Sgt. Ethan Craw, Cpl. Daniel L. Heller Receives Navy Cross 55 Years After Heroic Actions (U.S. Marine Corps; Aug. 28, 2024)

• Todd South, Marine corporal awarded Navy Cross 55 years after Vietnam heroics (Marine Times; Aug. 30, 2024)