He shouted battlefield orders in a bellow that rattled the Halls of Montezuma.
He thrived on combat until he became a legend to his troops
the toughest fighting man in the whole United States Marine Corps.
And when he was retired in 1955 as a Lieutenant General, he was the most decorated man in Marine Corps history.
Here is the story of the most courageous warrior and legendary Marine of all time
General Lewis “Chesty” Puller.
Next on Marking History!
This is the historical marker for Lt. General Lewis Burwell “Chesty” Puller.
This marker is located in West Point, Virginia, where he was born and raised.
In his thirty-seven years of service in the United States Marine Corps, Lewis Puller, nicknamed “Chesty,”
would rise through the ranks from Private to General, and become the most decorated Marine in American history.
So how does a guy get a nickname like “Chesty”?
We will answer that question and more when we learn about the man behind the marker!
Lewis Burwell Puller was born on June 26, 1898 in the village of West Point, Virginia to parents Matthew and Martha Puller.
Puller came from a military family.
He was a grandson of Civil War veteran, Major John W. Puller,
and cousin to another more famous soldier, U.S. Army General George S. Patton.
Puller enrolled at his school of choice, the Virginia Military Institute in 1917 when he was 19 years old.
However, Lewis wanted to get into combat so strongly that he left VMI a year later and enlisted.
Inspired by the Marines at Belleau Wood during World War One, he enlisted as a private in the United States Marine Corps.
June 27, 1918 Puller entered the Marine boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina.
He showed himself as a natural born leader and was ordered to drill instructor training school.
Months later, Puller and his men were given orders to prepare to ship out for France.
Days later those orders were cancelled before he could kill any Germans.
It was Armistice day, November 11, 1918. And World War One was over!
Later the next year, on June 4, 1919, Lewis Puller graduated from Marine Officer Training School
at Quantico, Virginia as a second lieutenant.
On June 16, Puller was discharged with hundreds of others of his rank due to postwar troop reductions.
He had been a Marine officer for only two weeks!
Now the reason he had enlisted in the Marines was to pursue combat action.
He found it in Haiti.
When he heard about conflicts in Haiti, 21 year old Puller reenlisted as a Marine corporal
and deployed to the island in 1919 to battle the fierce jungle-wise Caco rebels.
His first taste of combat came soon after arrival and without warning.
About 4:00am the pack train pack was ambling around a wooded bend
when they met an oncoming Caco band of about a hundred rebels.
Proving his instinct for combat, Puller spurred his horse and yelled “Charge! Attack! Hurry!
The column charged, horses, mules and all. The Caco rebels broke for the hills.
Puller's only casualties were superficial bullet wounds to five of his horses and mules.
For the next four years in Haiti, Puller made a name for himself
by leading several very successful jungle engagements against the Caco rebels.
Puller fought some 40 battles and gathered valuable experience in soldiering
and hand to hand combat during those guerilla encounters.
Puller developed his instinctive talent for using terrain in battle and learned the lessons of jungle warfare.
After his stint in Haiti, Puller returned to the US in March 1924
and was re-commissioned as a second lieutenant.
Subsequently, he was assigned to the 10th Marine Artillery Regiment.
During his training, Puller learned that junior officers were no help in learning about the big guns.
It was the enlisted men and senior non-commissioned officers who were the experts.
Puller's next assignment was to handle the Marine silent drill attachment.
For years, Army, Navy and Coast Guard teams had outshone the Corps in the national silent drill competition.
They had never won, despite their reputation as crack marching units.
Lieutenant Puller took over with vigor. His message was “we would bring home the cup or die trying.”
Puller took out the silent drill manual and started the training from scratch.
When he was through, the men moved as one. The drill team gave him their all.
At the Boston drill competition in 1925, the Marines wore rosin on their soles for safe, silent footing
and went through their incredibly complex drill without a sound.
When the competition was over, they had won their first trophy.
In December 1928, Puller followed war to Nicaragua, a country even more rugged than Haiti.
The Marine Corps was sent to train and lead the new Guardia Nacional forces
against the guerrilla force led by the rebel chief, Augusto Sandino.
Chesty Puller's legend preceded him and served him well leading young men.
They knew that he had their backs because he had humped through jungles,
endured the harshest of conditions, and been wounded in battle, just like them.
Puller's Company M would earn notoriety among the rebels due to the ferocity they would employ in flushing them out.
Puller's determination would earn him the nickname, “El Tigre,” in Nicaragua.
Puller would lead his men and Nicaraguan National Guard forces in over 60 battles against insurgents.
Some say Puller got his famous nickname because of his big, thrust-out chest.
Others state that “chesty” was an old Marine expression meaning cocky.
A few claimed that he developed the chest from shouting commands above the noise of battle.
We don't need no frontline communications," men under Puller bragged.
"Chesty yells commands up and down the line. You can hear him for miles."
It wasn't long before Chesty Puller was awarded his first Navy Cross,
second-highest commendation for valor in combat.
According to the citation, between Feb. 16 and Aug. 19, 1930, Puller systematically “led his forces
into five successful engagements against superior numbers of armed bandit forces.”
His valor and accomplishments in battle earned him rapid promotions,
and by the time he was shipped out from Nicaragua in 1930, he was a First Lieutenant.
In September 1931 Puller reported to Fort Benning, Georgia and the Army's Infantry School.
It wasn't long before Puller started open disputes with his Army rifle training instructors.
One lecturer told students that volume of fire in the field was more important than accuracy.
That brought Lieutenant Puller to his feet.
Puller returned to Nicaragua in September 1932.
Upon hearing this news, the rebel bandit Sandino put a price of five thousand pesos on the head of “El Tigre”.
Lt. Puller earned his second Navy Cross for his combat leadership in actions between September 20 to October 1, 1932.
During that time, Puller's Company M completed a daring 10- day march of over 150 miles,
fought four engagements and killed at least thirty bandits.
Although Chesty appeared to be a confirmed bachelor, he kept steady correspondence to a pretty brown-eyed girl
which he met at a local dance in 1926 - Miss Virginia Evans.
Like a battle, Lewis Puller kept up his siege to marry this girl, writing to her each day for the next 11 years.
After his service in Nicaragua, Puller was assigned to many commands during the next eight years.
1933 Peking, commanding the famous Horse Marines.
1934 on the U.S.S. Augusta Navy Cruiser, serving under Captain Chester Nimitz.
1936 at the Philadelphia Officer Training School where he was promoted to Captain.
1937 November 13th to be exact where he married his sweetheart Virginia Evans.
1939 Returned to U.S.S. Augusta as commander of an onboard Marine detachment
1940 Shanghai commanding officer of 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines
As tensions increased in the Pacific between Japan and China, the American military presence in China was drawn down.
In August 1941 Puller returned to the US and reported to the new Marine base
in the North Carolina swamplands at New River, later renamed Camp Lejeune.
There he trained his Marines for a war he knew was coming.
Guadalcanal was a jumbled land mass about 90 miles long and the nearest Japanese outpost to Australia.
And a threat to American supply lines in the South Pacific.
Soon after arriving on Guadalcanal in September 1942,
Lt. Col. Puller led his battalion in fierce action along the Matanikau River.
It was Puller's quick thinking that saved three of his companies from annihilation.
In the action, these companies were surrounded and cut off by a larger Japanese force.
Puller ran to the shore and signaled a United States Navy destroyer, the USS Ballard.
After boarding the ship, Puller directed the destroyer to provide fire support
while landing craft rescued his Marines from their precarious position.
For his actions, Lt Colonel Puller was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V".
Chesty felt every problem had a solution.
Late one night Chesty deliberately lit his pipe in the open,
then quickly fell and rolled over in the dirt, to draw machine gun fire from an enemy nest.
His own gunners cleaned it out the Japanese machine gun nest by firing at the muzzle flashes.
Although Puller was a warrior to his men, he was a softy with his family.
Not only did Chesty write to Virginia each day, he also sent his beautiful wife
a dozen roses every 13th day of each month to commemorate their wedding anniversary.
If we know Chesty, it was standing orders for the local florist.
Later on Guadalcanal, Puller was awarded his third Navy Cross,
in what became known as the "Battle for Henderson Field”.
Colonel Chesty Puller and his famed 1st Battalion Seventh Marines saved Henderson Field on Guadalcanal
one long, rainy night by fighting off the equivalent of a Japanese division.
Puller's men shoved away Japanese bodies to keep open their fields of fire.
When the water supply gave out, they urinated into their liquid- cooled machine guns to keep them operating.
Puller was wounded twice by bullets and half a dozen times by shell fragments.
During the three hour firefight, Puller's Marines suffered only seventy casualties.
The Japanese force suffered over 1,400 killed in action.
And the Americans held the airfield.
It was in this battle that fellow Marine gunnery Sergeant John Basilone would earn the Medal of Honor for heroism.
Puller was awarded his fourth Navy Cross for overall performance of duty at the Battle of Cape Gloucester
on the island of New Britain, New Guinea.
After the commanding officer and executive officer were wounded,
Lieutenant Colonel Puller did not hesitate to expose himself to rifle, machine-gun and mortar fire
from strongly entrenched Japanese positions, moving from company to company in his front lines,
reorganizing and maintaining a critical position along a fire- swept ridge.
He led the successful attack against heavily fortified Japanese defensive positions.
Casualties during operations to secure Cape Gloucester amounted to 310 Americans killed.
The Japanese losses exceeded 2,000 killed.
In September and October 1944, Puller led the 1st Marine Regiment into the meat-grinder called Peleliu,
one of the Palau Islands.
They were sent in there to capture an airfield on this small coral island.
It was one of the bloodiest battles in Marine Corps history.
And where Puller received his first of two Legion of Merit awards.
The First Marines suffered 1,749 casualties from 12 September until relieved on 30 September.
No Marine Regiment has ever suffered as many casualties in a single campaign.
Because of the incredible number of casualties, Puller's famed reputation was severely tarnished.
Harsh criticism, much of it unjust or misplaced, would dog his reputation thereafter.
At the outbreak of the Korean War, Puller was once again assigned as commander of the First Marine Regiment.
He led his old regiment in a daring amphibious assault on Inchon,
during vicious street fighting in Seoul,
and through the maelstrom of subfreezing weather and relentless Chinese human-wave attacks
attacks in the Chosin Reservoir campaign.
It was during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir that Colonel Puller won his fifth Navy Cross for heroism.
Massively outnumbered, Puller was quoted as saying,
Puller and his Marines conducted a fighting withdrawal from Chosin Reservoir
that crippled seven Chinese divisions in the process.
The final toll was 718 dead Marines and 3500 hundred wounded.
Communist losses, supported by captured documents: 25,000 dead, 12,500 wounded.
Over the next few years Chesty Puller received promotions.
Brigadier General, Major general and finally Lieutenant general.
He served in various command capacities until he suffered a stroke on August 26, 1954.
In 1955, over his roaring protests, Lieutenant General Chesty Puller was retired from the Corps
on the grounds that he was suffering from high blood pressure.
After a decidedly noisy life, he died quietly on October 11, 1971.
Surprisingly, not in Arlington Cemetery, but in his small Virginia town of Saluda
is buried the most decorated US Marine of all time.
In 1925 Lewis Chesty Puller was photographed with the Marine Corps' first mascot,
the muscular, stubborn, and courageous bulldog.
Today, each new Marine bulldog mascot is named “Chesty Pullerton”
to honor the toughest leatherneck of all time.
To this day, Marines at Parris Island end their day by saying the unofficial “lights out” slogan of the Corps:
“Good night Chesty, wherever you are!”
If history can be taught with stories
they can never be forgotten.
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