ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) – Six years before he died in a car crash, Daniel W. Quinlan was among the 138 World War I veterans to receive the first Purple Heart medals issued by the U.S. military.
His family lost track of the medal he received during a 1932 ceremony held at the Hudson Valley historic site, where historians say Gen. George Washington issued a precursor to the Purple Heart, which is awarded to those wounded or killed in combat. This week, Quinlan’s recently found Purple Heart will be displayed at the site before it’s draped across his nearby gravestone. Afterward, the medal will be sent to his grandson in Florida.
“It going to be amazing when I put my hands on that medal, to think that my grandfather actually held it in his hands,” said William Quinlan, a 58-year-old real estate broker in Key West.
Born in East Fishkill in Dutchess County, Daniel Quinlan was 20 when he enlisted in the Army in September 1917, five months after the U.S. declared war on Germany. He was a member of the 77th Infantry Division, made up mostly of soldiers from New York City and other parts of the state. Quinlan was assigned to the 305th Regiment, where he served in the unit’s sanitary detachment, the forerunner to today’s medical corps.
He was injured in a poison gas attack along the Vesle River in northeastern France in August 1918. A month later, he braved heavy German fire to help a fellow soldier care for wounded men. His actions earned him the Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest military combat decoration.