FEARLESS FIGHTING MIDGETS OF THE ARMED FORCES: A history

Many different military units have been forgotten by all but history buffs for one reason or another. Alexander the Great’s rape troops who sexually violated men on the losing side of a battle. The Buffalo Soldiers of the American West. And now, the rarely researched midget troops of the U.S. military. Very few “little people” served together at the same time, but their likes have a distinguished history of service in various wars. It is unfortunate that their courage and honor have been ignored, but this will be the case no longer.





The earliest known midget to enter service was Napoleon Keene, a performer in a traveling medicine show until he joined the Army in 1862. According to records, the recruiting officer laughed at young Mr. Keene and attempted to turn him away. Keene was not one to be trifled with, as an arrest record would show (over the course of two years in three different states, he’d been arrested seven times for brawling), and he proceeded to batter the recruiting officer with his fists. He was arrested by soldiers, but when the matter came up in court, it was decided that Keene would be put to better use in a Union Army uniform.




The road to Gettysburg was difficult for Keene, who was barely over three feet tall. He could not keep up with the other men and was soon relegated to the care of Thomas “Strongman” Burns, a seven-foot tall giant known for his prodigious strength. He carried Keene in a harness on his back until occasion for battle came upon them.




It was at Gettysburg where they met their demise. Burns was decapitated by a cannon ball, and Keene was shot down coming to the aid of a drummer boy named Henry Smith. The midget was posthumously commended for this act of bravery, which spared the young boy’s life, but memory dimmed too soon, and he was forgotten by all but one.




In World War I, twin midgets, Daniel and Donald O’Leary, whose older, normal-sized brother died fighting the Germans, decided to lie about their age (sixteen) to enlist in the fight against the Kaiser. If they’d gone to any other recruitment office, who is to say what might have happened? But the brothers met with an aged veteran of the Civil War by the name of Henry Smith, who remembered well the midget who had saved his life at Gettysburg. He had no difficulty in accepting the brothers O’Leary into the United States Army.




They fought the Germans bravely, and to everyone’s surprise, both emerged alive at the end of the war and heavily decorated to boot. Daniel, however, was never able to cope with the horrors he’d seen, and after a long struggle with alcoholism, he shot himself in 1927. His brother lived a long and happy life which ended in 1962. He was survived by two sons of average height, twins, who were proud of their father’s heroism.




Timothy Duff had no Henry Smith to aid his recruitment in 1941. Eager to defend his country in the wake of Pearl Harbor, Duff attempted to enlist and was promptly turned away because of his height. He was tenacious, however, and he tried many other branches of the military. The Army said no, the Rangers laughed at him, the Navy politely refused him, but he managed to convince the Air Force he’d be an excellent machine-gunner. His size made him a perfect fit for the planes, and he was soon flying missions in German airspace.




Unfortunately, his plane was shot down in 1942, and all traces of him ceased until 1945, when American troops discovered documentation of his extermination in the ovens of Buchenwald.




Duff was not the only American midget to serve in the Greatest War. William Takeshido, a Harvard graduate and master of theatre and languages, was recruited by the U.S. Government to spy on Hirohito. At first he protested this honor due to the treatment of his parents in a Japanese-American concentration camp, but he accepted the offered challenge provided his mother and father were granted their freedom. The government agreed and was true to its word, and Takeshido was bound for Tokyo, where he quickly gained Hirohito’s trust. Unfortunately, a bodyguard became suspicious, and the ruse was soon discovered, as no record of Takeshido’s birth or citizenship could be found. He was swiftly beheaded by the Emperor’s bodyguard. The head, it is rumored, is still traveling Japan as a curiosity, now pickled in a jar.




It wasn’t until 9/11 that another midget sought service with the U.S. military. Josh McQueen, lifetime resident of New York City, was there to see the Twin Towers fall, and he was one of the first to join the hunt for Osama bin Laden. The recruiters, desperate for soldiers, asked him no questions and sent him immediately to Afghanistan, where he still serves as an American soldier.




“I’m going to get bin Laden myself if I have to,” McQueen says. “That son of a b***h killed my countrymen. I’ll die before letting him walk free.”




Good luck, Sgt. McQueen. Your country depends on you.