During the Philippine Insurrection at Bud-Dajo in the Philippine Islands, Joseph S. Cecil served as 1st LT. in the 19th U.S. Infantry and earned the Congressional Medal of Honor on March 7, 1906 for carrying a wounded man and the body of another soldier, killed beside him, to a sheltered position while at the head of a column about to assault the first cotta under superior fire at short range.