Army & Navy – MARINES,OCCUPATION,SUPPLY: Man of War

MARINES

In front of Bloody Nose ridge on Peleliu. a Marine colonel fretted in his command post—a piece of tin under a poncho which shaded him from the sun. He worried the end of a frazzled cigaret, surveyed the field before him with hard, bloodshot eyes. For many days his regiment had been fighting it out in this sector against Jap troops dug into the limestone face of the ridge.

The field telephone buzzed. The colonel listened and growled into it: “We’re still going but some of my companies are damned small.” A Jap mortar opened up and the men around the colonel flattened out. The C.O. himself did not change his position. He stuck out his chest and spat: “The bastards.”

The C.O.’s name was Lewis Burwell Puller, and leathernecks around the world have a special patent of excellence for him. “Chesty” Puller, one of the Corps’ most famed field officers, is more than a good marine—he is known as a great marine.

God and Puller. Chesty is Virginia-born. (In Saluda, Va., his wife and four-year-old daughter are waiting out the war.) He was a youngster of 19 when he shipped as a private in 1917. During World War I he chafed aboard ship, a bored, seagoing marine. He saw more action after the war. In Haiti he won the Haitian Military Medal. In Nicaragua he twice won the Navy Cross. He served with the Horse Marines at Pekin, with the famed Fourth at Shanghai.

Leathery, compact, of medium height, with a belligerent jaw and a mouth like a trap, Chesty Puller became the model of a professional fighting man.

In 1942 he was a battalion commander when the ist Division landed on Guadalcanal. Marines will always remember the day when Puller and his outfit, standing one man to every five yards, held a line 2,500 yards long in the jungles of Lunga sector, mowing down charging Japs for four frenzied hours. Puller was everywhere. All through the rain-drenched night Puller coolly kept his thin line intact. A machine gunner said afterward: “I gave thanks to God and Puller.”

For his conduct that night: a third Navy Cross.

Fourth Cross. A month later he got in the way of a bursting shell. Seven fragments landed in the indignant Puller’s body. The surgeon wanted to tag him as a casualty and evacuate him. “Take that tag and label a bottle with it,” Puller roared, “I’ll stay here.” Later, he ruefully noted in his combat journal: “I found myself unable to keep up with my battalion,” and he had to go back to the hospital compound. But he did not stay long.

In December 1943, he landed on Cape Gloucester. He was put in command of a hard-luck battalion which had never been able to work well together. His inspired men paced the attack.

For his heroism and conduct there, Chesty Puller got his fourth Navy Cross—a record in the Corps.

Wooden Crosses. It is not Puller’s belligerence and cold nerve alone which make him a great field officer. Chesty says: “It takes a lifetime to become a good, officer.” Devoted to his men, he watches over them like an old hen. Said a sergeant: “You’re afraid to talk about the old man because likely as not he’ll be right behind you whether you’re in a foxhole, on the line during an attack, or standing in line for chow.”

He regularly visits the wounded at hospitals, talking to them in his Virginia drawl with a pipe clenched between his teeth, which produces such Pullerisms as “biz-ouack” for bivouack, “Nitmitz” for Nimitz. Before an attack he spends days with his men encouraging them and carefully inspecting their weapons. They will follow him to hell.

It was hell on Palau for his ist Regiment—as hot a hell as Chesty has ever stepped into. Some 60% of his unit were casualties.

Weary and unkempt, 46-year-old Chesty watched from under his awning as his men dug the Japs out of their limestone caves. “How do we get them out?” he said somberly. “By blood, sweat, and hand grenades.”