Joseph P. McCaffery was born on 20 August 1906 in Chester, Pennsylvania. He accepted a commission in the United States Marine Corps Reserves in March 1929, after resigning a commission in the Army Reserve held from 1927. A veteran of the Guadalcanal campaign and New Georgia campaign, he was fatally wounded in the Landings at Cape Torokina, Bougainville on 1 November 1943, as he led his Marine Raider battalion against entrenched Japanese positions. He was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross.