The Derna Delay
Corporal JD Delay wiped the sweat from his brow with a sleeve already stiff with salt and dust. The Libyan sun had been beating down like a bosun's whip for fifty days straight. It turned the march from Alexandria into something out of a bad dream. He was one of the nine Marines under First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon. That included eight others plus himself, counting the midshipmen who pretended they knew which end of a musket was up. The rest of the "army" was a motley parade. Four hundred-odd Arabs on camels who argued more than they marched. Seventy Greeks who sang when they were not cursing the heat. And William Eaton himself, the former consul turned self-appointed general, striding ahead like he owned the desert.
JD had joined the Corps back in 1798, when the ink was still wet on the new Navy Act. He had been a deckhand on merchant runs before that, dodging French privateers and worse. The Marines promised steady pay and a chance to shoot at someone who deserved it. What they had not promised was a five-hundred-mile stroll across sand that got in your boots, your food, and your temper.
"Delay," O'Bannon called without turning his head. "Keep those boys in line. If another camel driver tries to bolt with the water skins, I will have you tie him to the cannon ourselves."
"Aye, sir," JD replied. His voice was dry as the ground. "Though if we keep rationing like this, the only thing left to tie is our own stomachs. And mine's already knotted tighter than a miser's purse."
The march had been hell from the start. Eaton's supplies dwindled until it was a handful of rice and two biscuits a day, if the weevils had not claimed them first. Mutinies flared like bad powder. Arabs raided the wagons. Greeks muttered about pay. Camel drivers vanished into the dunes with half the baggage train. Each time, the Marines fixed bayonets and formed a line. JD had taken to standing front and center, musket leveled. He offered the same dry line every time. "You boys want to dance with Tripoli's pirates instead? Step lively, then. Otherwise, march. Or I'll march you myself with the flat of this bayonet across your backside."
It worked. Not because they feared the bayonets, though those helped. It worked because JD's sarcasm cut deeper than steel. "You call that a mutiny?" he would say as he prodded a would-be deserter back into ranks. "My old aunt throws better fits when the bread is burnt. And she only has one good arm."
They reached Bomba in late April. The Argus, Hornet, and Nautilus waited there like guardian angels with twenty-four-pounders. Fresh water, hard tack, and a few casks of rum did wonders. Eaton sent a polite note to Mustafa Bey, the governor of Derna. Safe passage and supplies, or else. Mustafa's reply was shorter. "My head or yours!"
JD chuckled when he heard it. "Man has got style. Too bad it is the wrong kind. I would hate to disappoint him."
April 27 dawned hot and hazy. Derna sat on a low bluff overlooking the sea. Walls were studded with batteries and minarets poked up like defiant fingers. Eaton split the force. Hamet Karamanli's cavalry would swing wide and take the southwest castle. Greeks and Marines would storm the main battery with a field piece dragged ashore from Argus. Naval guns would soften the defenses first.
The ships opened fire at dawn. Cannonballs whistled overhead and smashed into stone. They raised clouds of dust. Tripolitan guns answered, but the Americans' aim was sharper. Within forty-five minutes, the harbor batteries fell silent.
Eaton led the charge on foot, sword in hand. JD marched beside O'Bannon, musket shouldered. The stiff leather stock collar chafed his neck like always. The thing was infernal. Black boiled leather, buckled tight. It was meant to keep your posture parade-ground straight and maybe turn a glancing cutlass blade. Most days JD cursed it. Today he barely noticed.
They advanced across open ground under musket fire from the walls. Balls kicked up sand around their feet. A Greek beside JD yelped and dropped, clutching his thigh. "Keep moving!" O'Bannon barked. "Bayonets!"
JD's musket cracked and dropped a figure on the parapet. He reloaded on the run. Ramrod, powder, ball, prime. Years of drill made it second nature. The field piece lurched forward, crewed by sweating Greeks. Eaton took a ball through the wrist and kept going. Blood soaked his coat.
They reached the battery wall. Tripolitans poured fire from loopholes and rooftops. JD spotted a gap where the wall had crumbled under naval shot. "There!" he shouted to O'Bannon. "Low spot. Get the piece through!"
O'Bannon nodded. "Marines! Greeks! With me!"
They rushed. JD vaulted debris. His boots slipped on loose stone. A Tripolitan leaped from above, scimitar raised. JD parried with his musket barrel. The stock cracked against the curved blade. The man swung again, aiming for the neck. The leather collar took the edge with a dull thunk. JD felt the jolt down his spine but no bite of steel. He drove his bayonet home and shoved the man back.
"Damn thing actually works," he muttered, surprised.
More came. Close work now. Bayonets, fists, clubbed muskets. JD wrestled a scimitar away from one attacker and used it to hack at another. The battery fell in minutes. Greeks turned the captured guns inward and pounded houses where defenders hid. Hamet's cavalry swept in from the flank and routed the rest.
By four in the afternoon, it was over. Mustafa Bey fled his palace. Hamet's men raised the American flag over the battery. It was the first time Old Glory flew over conquered ground in the Old World.
JD leaned against the wall, breathing hard. His collar was scuffed. One buckle bent from the blow. Blood, not his, smeared the leather. O'Bannon clapped him on the shoulder. "Good work, Corporal. You kept us steady."
"Just doing the job, sir." JD rubbed his neck. "This blasted collar saved my hide. Felt like getting hit with a plank. Next time I might just let the blade take my head and save myself the headache."
A Navy midshipman from Argus, who had come ashore with the field piece, overheard as he caught his breath nearby. The young officer, still flushed from the charge, squinted at JD through the dust. "Mon Dieu, you fight like a devil. You French, oui? That name, the fire in you—must be one of Lafayette's boys gone rogue."
JD turned slowly, eyes narrowing to slits. He spat a gob of dust onto the stones. "French? Boy, if I was French I would have surrendered to the first stiff breeze and begged for wine and cheese. No, I am not French." He leaned in, voice dropping to a savage growl. "I am Irish retardation. Delay. Get it? Same damn thing. Slow to start, hard to stop, and twice as stubborn as any frog-eating surrender monkey you ever met. Now shut your yap before I make you eat that fancy epaulet."
The midshipman blinked, face going red, then burst into a nervous laugh. A couple of Marines nearby snorted and turned away to hide grins. O'Bannon just shook his head, lips twitching.
JD straightened and felt the collar's rigid support. "Wear yours proud, boys! And if any of you call me French again, I will personally demonstrate why the Irish do not need bayonets to make a point."
Eaton, arm bandaged, walked over. The city was theirs, though Tripolitan reinforcements would probe for weeks. Hamet would hold Derna until the treaty came down in June and forced evacuation. But for now, the job was done.
That night, around a fire of scavenged wood, the Marines passed a flask. Stories grew. The march. The mutinies. The charge. JD's moment with the scimitar got told twice, each time with more flourish. By the third telling, the collar had "turned three blades at once," and the "Irish retardation" line had already spread like powder flash.
JD just shook his head. "It turned one. And barely. But it will do. And if you lot keep repeating that French nonsense, I will start charging admission."
He looked out at the dark sea, where Argus rode at anchor. Lanterns glowed. The pirates had demanded tribute for years. Jefferson said no. This was the answer.
A Greek mercenary raised his cup. "To the leathernecks!"
The Marines echoed it, half in jest, half in pride. JD joined in, smirking. The word felt right. Tough, unyielding, a little ridiculous in the best way.
In the years that followed, the nickname stuck. Not because of one swing in one battle, but because men like JD Delay wore the collar, took the hits, and kept coming. They marched through deserts. They stormed batteries. They raised the flag where it had never flown before.
And when the Hymn was written, "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli," the leathernecks knew exactly what it meant.
JD Delay never claimed to invent the term. But on that dusty wall in Derna, with a bent buckle, a bruised neck, and a mouth that never quit, he wore it first in victory. And that was enough.
