They say he once took a bullet in the face, yet still fought beside his men for hours. Historians noted his knack for finding the toughest action, and dishing out the fiercest mayhem. He conquered Hitler’s mountain retreat, caused a Cold War kerfuffle by referring to Moscow as a “slum,” and helped launch America’s ultimately disastrous Southeast Asia escapades. 

He even proved adept at the occasional cutting quip, claiming once that his proudest war trophy was a pair of Nazi Hermann Goering’s spaciously tailored trousers—which he referred to as “a lot of pants.” 

Known as “Iron Mike” for his indomitable resolve, Lt. Gen. John W. O’Daniel just may be history’s most famously obscure and resolutely pugnacious Blue Hen. His portrait still hangs in Alumni Hall, but his feats remain mostly footnotes nearly a half century after his death. 

But what footnotes they are.  

After graduating from UD in 1917 with an agricultural degree and a lieutenant’s ROTC commission, the young Newark native led men in some of WWI’s bloodiest battles, winning the Distinguished Service Cross for leading an attack with a severe head wound. In WWII, his units captured Algiers, broke through the Siegfried Line, crossed the Rhine, and captured Munich and Nuremburg. 

War would also bring less glorious moments: O’Daniel’s brother James died when his plane was shot down over France in WWI, and his son would perish during WWII’s Holland offensives.  

O’Daniel soldiered on, ever outspoken and gravel-voiced, feared and admired, a 5-foot-6-inch force of nature. A French general once said that his face “might have been carved out with an axe.” German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, who would surrender to O’Daniel, called his division “the best we faced.” 

O’Daniel died in March 1975.