VI

THE STUDENT WHO SPOKE HIS MIND

Puller landed in one of the crack classes of the Army’s Infantry School. This year the classrooms were full of talented men of all services—four of them Marines—and a number of foreign officers.

The assistant commandant was a famous officer of the World War, newly returned from duty in China, Lieutenant Colonel George C. Marshall. Half a dozen other stars-to-be of the second World War were on hand: Major Omar N. Bradley, Major Joseph W. Stilwell, Lieutenant Lightning Joe Collins, Walter Bedell Smith, John R. Hodges and Charles Willoughby.

Puller made himself known from the moment he reported to Fort Benning, September 11, 1931. When he went to the supply officer for uniforms and equipment he was given a bronze holder and one hundred cards imprinted with his name, for display on his uniform—and was asked to pay $1.80 for them. The young Marine roared: “Hell, no! What’s the sense of wearing your name around? Anybody worth his salt will know the name of every man in his outfit in a couple of days. I’ll never pay for such foolishness.”

“Very well, sir,” the soldier said, but the next day Puller learned that the supplyman had reported him, and he was called to Colonel Marshall’s office. The Colonel was polite, but firm, and Puller thereafter wore the name tag. As old V.M.I men, they had a brief exchange:

“You’re a V.M.I alumnus too, Lieutenant?”

“Not really, sir. I spent just one year there.”

“Well, if you ever matriculated, you’re a V.M.I man, all right. Great place.”

“The finest military school in America, sir,” Puller said.

Marshall called Lewis into his office several times, evidently to get acquainted with the unorthodox young jungle fighter whose name constantly bobbed up in the reports of instructors, and in whom Marine Corps Headquarters had such an interest.

“Why do Marines always win the national rifle and pistol matches?” Marshall once asked Puller.

“We have more men to pick from.”

“Why is that? The Army has fifty thousand men, and you have about eighteen thousand.”

“Yes, sir, but all of our men are trained to shoot—and we pick from all of them, and you don’t. The Marines stage matches in every area, in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets, in Latin America, and on both coasts, and the winners always move up to the next stage, to the finals at Quantico. After our team is picked, it trains a month for the nationals.”

“Couldn’t the Army do the same?”

“I don’t know, sir. But I do know that your orders this year are that a team will be picked from the troops here at Benning, just a handful. You can’t train a winning team like that.”

Puller was impressed by Marshall, but was not abashed in his presence, and the colonel seemed to find the Marine’s response refreshing. In one of their talks he surprised Puller:

“The Marine Corps is better than the Army. Why?”

“A smaller organization, of picked men. Elite troops.”

“What do you mean, picked men?”

“We have a high proportion of re-enlisted men, and have room for few recruits. We keep standards high, mental and physical. Your recruiting sergeants ask us to send them those we reject.

“Most of all, we really train recruits, in the two great centers at San Diego and Parris Island. Your people don’t really ground men in basic soldiering.”

“Perhaps the Army is too big for that.”

“Size wouldn’t matter, Colonel, if they wanted to train ’em. You should have more of your people take a look at our boot camps.”

“This method of Marine recruiting on an occupational basis, for professional soldiering, strikes me as unfair. Some day I hope to change it. It isn’t democratic, doesn’t give other services a chance.”

Puller was stunned. “Any young man should have the right to choose his service, sir,” he said.

About a month after he arrived Puller was asked by Marine Corps Headquarters for a full report on his experiences with the Thompson submachine gun under field conditions, and sent in an enthusiastic report on the weapon’s value on patrol.

Perhaps prodded by this communication, he asked Headquarters to keep him in mind, when the school ended the following spring. He asked for future assignment to Nicaragua, China, or sea duty with the Asiatic fleet, in that order.

In December, in the first report period, Puller posted an average score in bayonet drill; a fellow Marine, Lieutenant Gerald Thomas, finished ten places ahead of him. But in marksmanship, with the automatic pistol, he ranked as expert, with a score of 91.13 of 100 points. As a rifleman, he fired 335 of a possible 350, and stood sixteenth in the class of officers. He also ranked as expert with the machine gun, in which he stood high in the top third of the class, with a score of 340.

Puller found that his instructors, who conducted their classes with skill, had been picked from the ranks of schoolteachers and lawyers, and that combat was not a factor. He often found these men at a loss when they were pressed with unexpected questions about field conditions, and that their knowledge was confined to that gained from books. Over a friendly glass, Puller often heard these officers admit that they did not know the answers he was constantly seeking. In truth, it seemed that little had been written about his favorite topic—limited, small-scale, combat.

Lewis drew the attention of Army Lieutenant E. K. Wright, a future general, on the first day, when Puller’s “practical and sensible” answers to questions boomed through the room. When Lewis began, other students soon relaxed, knowing that they would not be called upon to handle that question. His replies often included stories of his jungle fighting in Haiti and Nicaragua.

The officers began a game when Puller spoke, in mockery of his bellowing voice. They shouted: “Louder! Louder!” And as Chesty complied, there was bedlam. One instructor tired of this and announced:

“Unless this clamor comes to an end I will have to deprive Lieutenant Puller of the courtesy he deserves when he is asked a question.”

Puller yelled from the rear of the room: “Louder, sir, louder!” The laughter of the class brought the session to an end.

Puller sometimes came into open disagreement with instructors. One lecturer told the students that volume of fire in the field was more important than accuracy. That brought Puller to his feet:

“You must have forgotten what happened in the American Revolution,” he said. “We won that war with accurate fire, when the enemy had all the volume. It won at Kings Mountain and Saratoga, and every other battle we won. And real shooting almost whipped the mass-firing Federal army in the Civil War. It’s still like that, anywhere I’ve seen men shooting it out. You don’t hurt ’em if you don’t hit ’em.”

There was applause from the class.

The Benning staff asked the Marine officers to provide someone to speak on Nicaragua, since it was fresh in the minds of students and faculty, and the war still raged. Senior Marines were Captains Oliver P. Smith and Gilder Jackson, both to become general officers, but when they were approached, they recommended Puller, who had survived forty bandit skirmishes in Haiti, and dozens in Nicaragua.

But when the combined classes met to hear the Marine Lieutenant speak of his experiences, they were amazed to hear him spiel entertainingly of the lives and customs of the Nicaraguans, including an amusing character sketch of President Moncada, and to speak of geography and climate, plant and animal life—but not a word about the fighting. For some reason, school authorities had forbidden him to speak about his combat experiences, perhaps because they suspected that his pungent observations might reach the public, and precipitate new crises. It was not the last time he would be muzzled in this fashion.

Oliver Smith later recalled that Puller spoke long and well, and that when he ran out of Nicaraguan material, he switched blithely to the Pacific, and expounded on “The Yellow Peril” which threatened America. The Army School had never heard its like.

As Smith left the room an Army officer asked him: “How many men like that do you have in the Marine Corps?”

Smith smiled. “Just the one,” he said. “Just the one.”

Omar Bradley discovered something of this during a field exercise. As Puller recalled it:

“One morning my section had a map problem, and we rode out to the area on horseback, left the mounts with horse-holders, and walked through the problem. We walked about eight miles through woods, mapping defensive positions, and then waited for the horseholders on the other side of the woods. We had a long wait, and Major Bradley suggested that we wait in a field of sedge, where the sun would keep us warm. While we were there he began kidding me:

“‘Mr. Puller, while we’re here, explain just why the Marine Corps sends its officers to this great Army school.’

“I said, ‘Major, I’ve been here four months, and I still don’t understand why the Commandant sends us.’

“Several students sniggered, but Major Bradley was vexed, and kept it up. ‘This school is on the division level. You Marines never command more than a platoon. I don’t see why you come.’

“I asked him if he’d heard of the Second Army Division, and he said he had. I reminded him that it did most of its fighting in Europe under General Lejeune, a Marine, and he said he knew that.

“The students were laughing by then, but the Major kept pressing me, and I finally said, ‘Major, I’ll tell you something Lord Nelson is supposed to have said—that before a British naval officer can aspire to high command, he must first know the duties of a seaman. So I say that Marine officers are fit for high command because they not only know the duties of a platoon leader, but have commanded platoons in combat. It doesn’t happen in every service.’

“The students all laughed, Major Bradley laid off me, and we soon got back on the horses and left.”

Puller also tangled with authority on the rifle range, where he watched an exhibition between two Army teams—first one of ordinary marksmen, and then one of allegedly superior expert riflemen. While students watched, the platoon leaders estimated and announced the range of targets, and the teams fired in turn. The students marched to the targets and counted hits—and a senior officer announced happily: “Look, gentlemen, the experts came out second best!” He looked at Puller. “You Marines waste time and powder trying to make every man an expert rifleman. This test should open your eyes to your error.”

Puller had been watching the shooting through his field glasses. “Not at all,” he said. “You missed the point because you didn’t see where the shots were hitting. All this proves is that the platoon leader of the expert riflemen overestimated his range by about two hundred fifty yards. I could see the impact of the bullets, and though the experts were firing high, their shots were much more accurate in pattern—closer together—than the others. The winning team had the range, and won on points, but their fire was much more scattered. They weren’t holding properly.”

On weekends, when most students scattered to their homes, or visited in nearby Georgia and Alabama towns, Puller rode or walked the vast pine-clad reservation, until he thought that he must know every inch of the rolling terrain.

These explorations paid dividends in the final field exercise of the school year, when two battalions of the Army’s 24th Infantry Regiment were used by student officers in mock warfare. Oliver Smith commanded the Red aggressor forces, which were battling a superior band of Blue defenders. Puller fought under Smith, and was in command of a mule-drawn machine gun outfit which moved in carts, supported by an infantry detachment under Army Lieutenant Armistead D. Mead, who was also to become a general in later life. The young officers had two tanks at their disposal.

Near the end of the day, Smith was ordered to make a daylight withdrawal, hotly pursued by the Blue forces. This was under way across a rough country of timbered ridges when Puller and Mead were brought to bay.

Puller laid a cunning ambush, with his machine guns in line along a hillside, facing across the open to a companion ridge some 1000 yards away. He placed the tanks to his right, with remarkable orders: “When the enemy comes up, and we begin firing, make all the noise you can, go fast for the rear of that ridge over there, turn left, and scatter horseflesh as far as you can.”

The “enemy” appeared, and behaved just as Puller expected. It was a horse cavalry regiment, and when machine guns began firing their blanks, the riders dismounted and sent their horses to the rear, with one holder to every four horses—these to stand in line at the bottom of the ridge. The dismounted riders on the ridge, meanwhile, returned Puller’s fire. They were soon driven from cover, for when the tanks churned into the woods, with furious clanking, frightened horses ran away from their hapless holders and galloped in all directions. There were shouts of rage over this tactic. Down the hill plunged the regimental commander, a full colonel, an old horseman in the Army tradition. Puller would never forget the sight:

“He looked like Buffalo Bill, with flowing white mustaches and beard, and long hair down over his neckerchief. He was afoot, since he’d lost his mount, and he roared at us that he was ruined. By God, I think he was right. I guess that helped bring the horse cavalry to an end.”

As the colonel stormed toward them Lieutenant Mead stepped out to complete the war game victory. “You’re my prisoner, Colonel,” he said.

“Out of my way, you young whippersnapper, before I ride you down!” Puller and Mead collapsed in laughter as the cavalry struggled to recapture some of their animals—many of which were to roam the country for days. A nearby umpire of the exercise ruled one cavalry squadron out of action entirely, and the other out for several hours.

The old colonel complained bitterly that Puller’s guns had opened at such close range as to strike the legs of horses with wadding from the blank cartridges, a violation of principles of fair play and humane warfare. But Puller had learned in the jungles the necessity of point-blank fire for effective ambush.

As night drew on, the cavalrymen, with many mounts missing, continued to press Puller and Mead, and at about 9:00 P.M. some horsemen rode upon the young officers, crying for their surrender. Mead prepared to give up, under rules of the exercise, but Puller blazed angrily: “If this is the way you fight in the buggering Army, I’m leaving.” He shouted orders to his sergeants and the machine guns bounced away in the mule carts before anyone could stop them. They were driven mercilessly through swamps thought to be impassable, until 2:00 A.M., when Captain Oliver Smith was astonished to see Puller report to his rear position, proudly delivering mules and guns intact.

Puller’s final grades in the officers’ school, posted in June:

Excellent: mechanism and marksmanship of the rifle, the automatic rifle, musketry, combat practice, rifle, machine gun and howitzer companies, animal management and transportation, equitation, tactics to include the battalion.

Superior: instructional methods.

Satisfactory: the pistol, three-inch mortar, grenade, bayonet training, military sketching, map reading, training, infantry signal communication, and supply.

Curiously enough, the lone “unsatisfactory” was on the machine gun, with which he had distinguished himself in past combats, and would use with such deadly effect in the future. Puller took some solace in an old memory: Stonewall Jackson’s lowest mark at West Point had been in infantry tactics, a field in which he made a world-wide reputation.

There was little doubt as to the next duty for Lewis, for in addition to his own insistence that he be returned to Nicaragua, there was an urgent appeal to the Commandant of the Corps from General Matthews, who said Lewis had made himself so valuable that the civilian population of Nicaragua was devoted to him. He added: “His services for the remainder of this year during the critical election period and the process of turning over the Guardia organization to the Nicaraguan officers will be of inestimable value.”

Lewis left Benning with many new friends in all services—but most important, carried away a distrust of over-schooling military men: “The trouble with this school business is that we’ve taken it too far, and we sit around in classrooms and will the conditions of battle. Of course in actual battle, you can’t will anything, not a damn thing, because the enemy will do what you don’t want him to do, or expect him to do, almost every time. Then, when results of actual warfare are studied back in the schools, the staff officers and planners, most of whom have never seen battles, wonder what went wrong with their neat plans.

“You just simply cannot learn warfare in a schoolroom, or anywhere else except in combat. And you’ll never know whether you’re a fighting man until you’re under fire.”

Puller boarded a train for New Orleans the day after graduation, and sailed to Nicaragua on a fruit steamer, traveling alone. When he caught the first whiff of land as the ship neared dock in Corinto he realized that he was homesick for the jungle fighting. He was three weeks away from his second Navy Cross.