NEW SKILLS
The corporal on sentry duty at the liberty gate, Portsmouth Navy Yard, was Homer Litzenberg, a future Marine general. He checked throngs of passing sailors, out for the evening, and when traffic slowed, retired to his kiosk. A young lieutenant approached—Lewis B. Puller, the officer of the day.
Puller entered the tiny building and struck up a conversation, and then was one moment Litzenberg never forgot: “Puller hooked his elbows over our little shelf, looked down at the new bars on his shoulders and said, ‘Well, I’ve got ’em, now. All I need is a war.’”
At Portsmouth Lewis served as post adjutant under the commander, General Carter Berkeley, as post exchange officer and then as instructor in the Sea School, preparing men for boarding ships and standing guard duty there. Within a few months, in February, 1925, he was sent to Basic School in Philadelphia, where he was outstanding in a small class of eleven men. Instruction in fundamental military skills was not enough for Puller, and during his six months in Philadelphia he took correspondence courses in bookkeeping, accounting and auditing through the Marine Corps Institute.
The earnest young jungle fighter was impervious to practical jokes by his schoolmates, and their efforts soon ceased. Once when a companion, Russ Jordahl, cut up rubber bands and put them into his tobacco pouch, Puller continued to puff at his stubby pipe without a sign of distress. The pranksters concluded that he did not notice the fumes of burning rubber, or was determined to give them no satisfaction.
In July of that year Puller was tossed headlong into the mysteries of artillery, assigned to the Tenth Regiment at Quantico. He confessed to his new commander an almost total ignorance of the big guns. The captain waved airily.
“I’ll give you a first lesson.” He sketched a triangle, turned to answer a telephone and left the drawing incomplete. When he returned to Puller he said: “Lieutenant, I have permission to begin my leave now. The battalion will begin thirty days of training to prepare for the interservice firing at Camp Meade next month.” The commander picked up his cap and halted at the door: “By the way, you’ll have to fire a battery problem next Wednesday. God help you.” He disappeared.
Puller conferred with his first sergeant, who told him that other junior officers would be of no help, but that the enlisted men and noncommissioned officers were experts.
Lewis spent the noon hour in a gun shed, sweating under the direction of one Bernoski, a gunnery sergeant, who interpreted the sheets of the battalion schedule for the next month, day by day, and then put him to work: “Here are the textbook references you will need, sir. You can study those every night, and keep ahead of the men. And now, if the Lieutenant pleases, I can show him the insides of the 75.”
Puller tore down and reassembled the big gun for five hours, learning the parts and nomenclature, reciting them until he was intimate with the secrets of the weapon and its shells. He spent the weekend studying for Monday’s firing, and when the battery began blasting, felt somewhat at home. On Wednesday he fired for a critical audience which included the post commander, General Kelly Cole; Colonel Moses, the regimental commander; and Major Freddie Erskine, the battalion commander.
The artillery of the time used the No. 2 gun of a battery as a base, with the three others firing parallel to it. The base gun was corrected after three rounds if necessary, and other guns adjusted to conform. Sergeant Bernoski gave Puller final advice: “Sir, just leave it all to us. Good gunners are supposed to be right on target. General Cole and the Colonel will be watching. Their eyesight ain’t too good, sir.
“Now, after the third shot, no matter where we’re hitting, if you’ll just crack loose right away with a salvo from the whole battery, turn and salute the officers and yell like hell, ‘Sir, I’m right on target!’ then we’ll get away with it. They’ll never know the difference.”
The battery followed instructions, and in the roar of the guns Puller went through Bernoski’s paces. The senior officers were pleased. To Lewis, it was evidence that the Corps was in fact operated by its senior noncoms and that too few officers knew the basic details of their trade.
Puller’s next assignment was more to his liking. His old Parris Island instructor, Captain Jimmy Wayt, now at Quantico, chose Lewis to handle the Marine drill detachment. For years, Army, Navy and Coast Guard teams had outshone the Marines in the national drill competition held in Boston’s Mechanics Hall. The Marines had never won, despite their reputation as crack marching units.
Puller took over with vigor. Private Bob Norrish, a company clerk drafted for the detachment, shared the astonishment of his mates: “The Lieutenant told us the first day that we would bring home the cup, or die trying, and from the cold eye he gave us, we believed it. We found we weren’t mistaken. He took out the silent drill manual and started us from scratch. He drove us day after day until we figured we’d never live to see Boston. When he was through with us, we literally thought as if we had one head, instead of eighty. Yet somehow, though he was as hard as nails, he could be friendly with us like no officer we’d ever seen. We gave him all we had.”
The team entrained for New York, where it faced a crisis in a subway station, the first most of the men had seen. Four or five trains whirled past before Puller contrived to get the whole crew aboard: “Sergeants, each of you take a door, and hold it until the men are aboard. I’ll count ’em as they come on. If we lose one here, we’ll never find him.” The scheme worked.
The Boston drill competition was an all-Marine show. One sergeant remembered: “Puller won that cup all by himself. He didn’t look like flesh and blood, he stepped out so smartly and proud and soldierly that it was like watching a mechanical man. He just carried them on his back, and it was hard to keep your eyes off him to watch the ranks.”
The Marines wore rosin on their soles for safe, silent footing, and went through the maze of their drill soundlessly, except for the clatter of their weapons. When it was over and the victory had been announced, Puller handed Norrish a dollar bill: “Send Captain Wayt a wire. Just say, ‘The cup is ours. Puller.’”
The Governor of Massachusetts presented the cup to Puller, and the men left to stage a brief celebration in downtown Boston. The only casualty was a man who fell from the back of a camel, in a moment of hilarity when the Marines met a circus parade. A number of congratulatory telegrams went into Puller’s record, one of which praised him as “an inspiring drill officer.”
Back at Quantico, Puller was thrilled by a message from General Lejeune:
The Major General Commandant is highly gratified over the winning of the cup.… The winning of this trophy, which for the past two years has been won by the Army, is a most praiseworthy achievement. You are heartily commended for your excellent leadership … and congratulated upon your well-deserved success.
A few weeks afterward Puller was whisked off to his next duty—assigned as a flying cadet at Pensacola, Florida, a chance for which he had been pleading since his first flights in the improvised Jenny bomber in Haiti.
In five months at Pensacola he found that his talents for combat were by no means those required to handle the seaplanes in which he trained. He fell behind in ground school work, where he was considered “average,” and though he was “satisfactory” in his five-hour flight test, his instructor noted that he landed “hot” and made sweeping turns. He finally flew in his tenth hour of instruction, but failed two solo tests.
A board advised, after hearing his instructors, that Puller was not “suitable aviator material” and recommended his detachment. Lewis stoutly filed a reply:
I have nothing to say except that I think I can fly. They said I could not fly a kite until my tenth hour. I could not land until the tenth hour; up to that time, my time was wasted, but I believe I can fly all right now. My ground school work is behind, I know, but I can correct that on examination. When most of the other students were going to school I was in the Marine Corps at that age.
He added that he had been given considerate treatment—and left Pensacola disappointed, but convinced that aviation and ground warfare had an intimate relation and that all infantry field commanders should know the uses of close air support.
The Puller-Pensacola affair went on for some time. In September, 1928, three years after Lewis had left flying school, a medical board in Washington, in answer to his plea for one more chance, found him “physically fit to fly, but not temperamentally adapted for aviation training.” Admiral E. J. King declined to give him a waiver, and the aerial phase of Puller’s career was over.
In his last days at Pensacola, Puller requested a return to Haiti, citing his experience—but insisting on foreign duty of some kind. His orders sent him to the Marine Barracks at Pearl Harbor.
In the spring of 1926 he had a few days’ leave and went home to West Point. He found the town changed; most of his friends had gone. Lewis had never had a sweetheart, despite some high school flirtations, and he now found that the girls he had known were married, and most of them had moved away.
He went to a dance one night in the village of Urbanna, on the Rappahannock, and discovered that the freckle-faced daughter of his family’s friend Judge Evans had been transformed. She was now a ravishing brunette of about seventeen, the belle of the ball, and evidently little impressed by the returning war hero. Lewis was dazzled by Virginia Evans’ smile; so, apparently, were most of the young men in the ballroom.
He danced with her three times with fumbling attempts at conversation. During the next dance he made up his mind; his manner became assured. “Will you marry me?” She laughed. “Heavens, no! How can I do that, when I haven’t even finished school?”
“You will.”
He spent the night in the stag line, watching, and dancing with her. She noticed that he danced with no other girl.
After that meeting he did not see her again for almost eleven years, but he never lifted the long-range siege. She was on her way back to school at St. Mary’s, in Raleigh, North Carolina, when he departed for Hawaii—he sent her orchids, three of them, in a day when they were so rare that the florist made them into separate corsages; he had spent ten dollars on this display. She wrote him an ecstatic letter, and weeks later had his terse reply: “Marry me, and I’ll buy you three dozen orchids, every month of your life.”
He sailed for San Francisco on the President Coolidge, and arrived in Hawaii in late July, 1926.
He found some 20,000 Army troops on the beautiful islands and a little complement of 620 Marines on guard duty. The chief defenses, Puller noted, were a chain of small Coast Artillery forts. Lewis quickly made himself known.
One day he reported to Lieutenant Albans, the adjutant in the office of the commander, Colonel Newton Hall, and the door was closed behind him. Albans took a heavy book from a vault:
“These are the plans for the defense of the Hawaiian Islands. Familiarize yourself with them. You must read ’em and certify to me that you understand.”
“I’ll read them now.”
“No hurry. At your convenience.”
“Just show me the parts that apply to the Marines, and let me read that now. Who knows what might happen?”
The plans designated the Marine detachment as a machine gun battalion, ready to act in an emergency. Puller soon went to his platoon sergeant and asked to see the machine guns.
“Sir, I’ve been here a year, and I’ve seen no machine guns.”
Puller went to his company commander.
“Captain Curtis, I’ve read the defense plans, but I can find no guns. Where do you keep ’em?”
“Don’t try to start anything, Puller. The Quartermaster has ’em.”
Captain Harry Gamble, the Quartermaster, assured Puller that the guns were stored, and in order, but when Lewis persisted and found a clerk, Dickie, he was shown an account book: “Look for yourself. We have guns and tripods, but no water cans, no hoses—not a single stool, and no belts or asbestos gloves, not even a loading machine, for the ammunition.”
“Hell, we couldn’t fire a shot.”
“You tell somebody else, Lieutenant. I’ve known it all along.”
When Lewis went back to Colonel Hall with the problem the commander said:
“I had no idea this was going on, Puller. I’ll take immediate steps.”
The equipment came from the states some months later; in the interim Puller took four guns and tripods and drilled his platoon in nomenclature and function of machine guns, and was soon teaching his entire company. When the equipment arrived Puller became battalion machine gun officer and instructed all men in gunnery. He also served as rifle range officer.
Puller retained the memory for years: “It was no surprise to me when the Japs caught us asleep at Pearl Harbor. I readily understood the situation. I’ve been through there many times since, and served there later—and I’ll bet we’re in the same condition now, more or less. Our trouble is that common sense has gone out the window, and we make generals today on the basis of their ability to write a damned letter. Those kinds of men can’t get us ready for war.”
Lewis held firm discipline in his company, and some men were probably resentful until they learned that he spared himself less than he did others.
He was ruthless with violators of safety precautions where firearms were involved, and every time a man shot a weapon on the base without good reason, the fine was automatically twenty dollars. One day, on inspection, Puller saw a .45 in the guardhouse, picked it up, released the clip and pulled the slide and trigger. The gun fired unexpectedly, and a bullet furrowed the ceiling. Though he had taken all precautions except a look into the firing chamber, Puller fined himself $100, which he gave to the guards to buy beer for a liberty party.
Lewis also improved his skills in Hawaii. He considered himself a good shot, had for five years been rated an Expert Rifleman, and was thus nettled when a veteran sergeant suggested that he teach him to shoot.
“I know how to shoot, Sergeant.”
“I can give you enough pointers in two weeks to raise your score twenty points.”
Puller became the sergeant’s pupil, shooting when targets became vacant during the training, and shot an average of two bandoleers daily. He improved rapidly, and brought his record score from 306 to 326, of a possible 350. During all these years he qualified as expert with both rifle and pistol, and when a rifle team was sent from Pearl Harbor to a competition in San Diego in 1928, Puller was a member.
While he was in California he bombarded Headquarters with pleas to send him to Nicaragua, where war had broken out and the Marines were trying to put down a native bandit uprising. He reminded the Corps once more of his service in Haiti—and added that if he could not be given duty in Nicaragua, he wanted to go to China, where the Third Marine Brigade was posted. In November, after six months of effort, the orders came through: He was to proceed to Nicaragua at once. He took the transport Château-Thierry from San Francisco, and landed at the western port of Corinto, Nicaragua, in early December.