ARE THESE AMERICANS?
A pack of reporters waiting for Puller at San Francisco got unexpected headline copy. The General held himself in check; there was not a word of profanity in his forceful message. He did not so much as mention the Army by name, though he did have a word or so for the Air Force. He gave the writers a grim, candid picture of the Korean war:
“What the American people want to do is fight a war without getting hurt. You can’t do that any more than you can go into a barroom brawl without getting hurt.
“Unless the American people are willing to send their sons out to fight an aggressor, there’s just not going to be any United States. A bunch of foreign soldiers will take over.
“Air power can’t live up to its billing out there. Somebody—not so much the aviators as the aircraft manufacturers—has sold the American people a bill of goods as to what air power can do. From what I’ve seen, one bomb will hit a section of railroad track and one hundred bombs will miss, some of them by miles. The enemy puts coolies on the track with picks and shovels and in twenty-four hours they’re rolling again. The answer is infantry.
“Our officer corps have had far too much schooling and far too little combat experience. They can’t learn war like that.
“Push-button war is as far off as in the days of Julius Caesar. The rifle, hand grenade and bayonet are still the most important weapons. We’re going to lose the next war if we don’t get back to them.… Why, half our infantry out there is still armed with carbines, against the enemy with their fine Russian rifles.”
He then turned to the training of Marines, which he would soon be conducting at Camp Pendleton:
“We’ve got to get ’em tougher to survive. Throw all these girls out of camp. Get rid of the ice cream and candy. Get some pride in ’em—that’s what we need now most of all, pride.”
A reporter piped up: “What do you think of the protest of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union over sending free beer to the troops?”
“It’s news to me,” Puller said. “But if a few cans of beer or a snort of whisky will make men fight better, it might not be a bad idea. At least it’s better than ice cream and all this soft training.”
He said farewell and boarded a plane for the East. More reporters awaited him when he touched down at Chicago. He was quizzed on his remarks in California, and gave swift replies. He expanded on the theme: “There’s too damned much recreation in military training. We should have only one purpose—to fight and win. They’re not being taught that now. You can bet that Marines don’t get ice cream.”
Would he change Marine training methods?
“I’ll train my new men as Marines have always been trained. I want ’em to be able to march twenty miles, the last five at double time, and then be ready to fight.”
He was off again, this time for Washington. Reporters who surrounded him at the airport in the capital were calling questions even as he kissed Mrs. Puller and Virginia Mac, who had come to meet him.
He was pumped for details about the Air Force role in Korea and came out with his theories: “The Air Force does not understand close air support, does not believe in it and has never practiced it. I do not mean to criticize any service, but I’m just stating what I saw in action. All these boys in all services are good American boys. Only their training is different.”
He left for Saluda with his wife and daughter; and when he got home the telephone was buzzing. As more reporters pressed pointed questions and he sensed that the story was growing beyond recognition, Puller complained that he was being misquoted and his remarks distorted. He was astonished to see the headlines the following day:
MARINE GENERAL WANTS BEER & WHISKY FOR TROOPS
ICE CREAM GI’S LAMBASTED BY PULLER
MARINE GENERAL BLASTS AIR FORCE
The furor was reaching across the nation.
Puller turned to other affairs: His younger daughter Martha Leigh, one of the five-year-old twins, had a tonsillectomy in a Richmond hospital. The General carried the child in his arms down a corridor to the operating room, then handed her, wailing, to an orderly. He turned to his wife: “She’ll never forgive me, Virginia. This is worse than Peleliu.”
Martha Leigh recovered quickly, and Mrs. Puller was soon treated to an amusing sight: “I came upon my husband in her room one day, sitting on the floor happily cutting paper dolls for Martha Leigh, smoking his pipe—just a few days out of Korea. And not long after he turned to little Lewis, trying to teach him to march. He had him thumping around the house going ‘Hup! Hup! Hun! Hoo! Hree! Hour!’ I wish some of the people around the country who think he’s such an old iron man could have seen him then.”
There was a brief round of parties for the General in Virginia—one of them in the home of a cousin, Lewis Catlett Williams of Richmond. There was a crowd of forty or fifty for cocktails, and into the midst of this well-dressed throng marched a remarkable band, about twenty strong.
They were the Ampthill Guards, a neighborhood military company of little boys from eight to ten years old, armed with a variety of weapons from wooden guns to BB rifles and a .22. Their spokesman, in the most gaudy of their homemade uniforms, stepped forward:
“We thought General Puller would want to inspect us.”
Their faces fell when they saw that the hero from Korea was in civilian dress, but they presented Puller with a flag made from a bedsheet emblazoned with a crude Marine Corps emblem and their own company name. Puller saluted and walked down the file, solemnly inspecting their arms. He took the name of their captain, and later sent him a sword.
One of the dinner guests that evening was the dean of Civil War historians, and biographer of Lee and Washington, Dr. Douglas S. Freeman. Puller talked intimately of Freeman’s work, since he had practically worn out a set of Lee’s Lieutenants during World War II, and in the course of an animated conversation Freeman led him into the library for a private talk.
“Why don’t you write a history of the Korean war, Dr. Freeman?”
“General, the true history of a war cannot be written for at least eighty-five years afterward.”
“Where would you go to find out the truth about the war in Korea, eighty-five years from now?”
“Why, to the archives of the United States—to the official records.”
Puller grinned wryly. “That’s exactly where you’d never find the truth, Doctor. The truth about battle, by its very nature, can’t get into the records—and the truth about Korea has yet to come out anywhere.”
After a month’s leave in Virginia the Pullers reported to Camp Pendleton, where the Third Brigade was preparing for overseas. There were echoes from the “beer and whisky” incident daily, but not until Puller settled in his new post did he get the full impact. He was shocked by the deluge of vicious letters awaiting him, and the insulting telephone calls which came in salvos. He would grumble to Orville Jones or officers of the staff: “What the hell kind of people have we got in this country? I believe they’d rather have their sons killed in war, for lack of training, than have them made into men. You’d think I was one of the enemy. Look at this.”
One letter opened:
You yellow-livered bastard. I’ll bet my last nickel you’re a fat-headed command post soldier who never heard a shot fired.… I challenge you to fight me in a duel, if you have the guts.
Puller was stung to reply:
I accept your offer. I specify sawed-off double-barreled shotguns at ten paces as the weapons. You may specify the place—any place between San Diego and Richmond. I will meet you.
There was no reply.
Another letter opened: “Dear Sir: You beast!”
A Texas college president began a campaign to have Puller drummed out of the Corps.
Though Jones and aides kept many of these letters from the General, their impact was strong enough; Puller never understood the public reaction and particularly that of people who said that they preferred Russian rule to such a regime as Puller proposed in the armed forces. Within a few days tempers cooled a bit, and a more serious phase of the incident began, with letters from organized groups couched in a vein of injured restraint. A typical one went to an Alabama Congressman from the woman chairman of the Spiritual Life Committee of Birmingham, Alabama, protesting “the diet of beer and whisky General Puller has proposed”:
We understand he is shortly to take over the 3rd Marine Brigade at Camp Pendleton, California, where any number of young men from this area are sent from time to time. In the light of the new draft law, placing the age of draftees at 18, believing firmly in temperance in all things, abhorring the evils of alcohol and its effects upon humanity and knowing that it has never made a good soldier … we hereby petition you to use every ounce of influence that you possess to keep Brigadier General Puller from inaugurating his BEER & WHISKY campaign in the U. S. military training camps.
Marine Corps Headquarters, worried over the attack on one of its most distinguished officers, fired back.
… General Puller did not advocate giving our troops whisky and beer, and if he did the Commandant most certainly would reprimand him for such a gross misrepresentation of Marine Corps moral standards.…
We regret this unfortunate application made in the press, but we are firm in our defense of him and of his later statement in which he denied ever having advocated beer and whisky for our troops. And General Puller would fight such a proposal vehemently, for he is a moral and temperate man.…
No one need fear that General Puller will encourage his troops to drink alcoholic beverages, for believe me, the contrary is true. However, to reassure you I offer an official statement that the Marine Corps today, as it always has in times past, regards intoxication as an offense punishable by court martial and we will never encourage such offenses by issuing our men whisky.
There was a letter from the public information office of the Corps, signed by Brigadier General J. C. McQueen:
It may surprise you to learn that General Puller is a devout church member who would never permit, let alone advocate, intemperance among his troops. The suggestion that he would change an American boy into a booze-hound is a source of deep distress to him, because he and Mrs. Puller are raising their own children in the finest tradition of Christian living. As for his courage, for three decades his name has inspired Marines from Nicaragua to Wonsan; his valor has made him beloved among the enlisted men of the Corps, and we all share a tremendous pride in his leadership.
There also was a scattering of letters of impassioned defense from old Marines in newspapers across the country.
The minority for the defense was led by an old Puller student. Gregory (Pappy) Boyington, the World War II ace who had once been decorated by Harry Truman with the Medal of Honor, presumed on that acquaintance to write to the President about Puller and the “beer and whisky” furor:
I am enclosing a newspaper clipping and I would like to take the liberty of explaining the life of the greatest soldier of any service that has existed. I had the honor and pleasure of serving under General Puller when he was a Captain in the Marine Corps. I never served under General Puller in combat; however, I know his record from A to Z. I would like better than anything in the world to have you look into his record.
General Puller is entitled to the Congressional Medal of Honor more than any living person in the United States. He has been awarded five Navy Crosses and numerous smaller honors.… He has had at least ten men that I know of serving beside him that have received the Congressional Medal of Honor. I know to be a fact that because of professional jealousy in the higher echelon this truly great and courageous man has not been given his just deserts.
Believe me, I want nothing for myself. If my friend can be recognized I will have the one and only wish that I shall ever ask from a President, Congressman or Representative as long as I live.… I pray to God that something may be done for General Puller while he is still living.
When the President’s office passed this to Marine Headquarters there was an official reply that records revealed no recommendation for the Medal of Honor for Puller—but the Corps sent a list of his decorations and copies of citations for the Navy Crosses. There the matter dropped.
On his first tour of inspection of Pendleton, Puller found that the Brigade had no enlisted men’s club. He summoned the officer in charge: “This is Wednesday. By Friday there will be a slop chute open for the men of this brigade, with a free beer party the first night.”
The club opened Friday night somewhat disastrously. Two companies of celebrating Marines staged a free-for-all with such enthusiasm that twenty went to the hospital. The incident shook their regimental commander, who was fresh from Washington headquarters duty and unaccustomed to troop command. Puller calmed him: “If I were in Company A and you were in B, and you told me B was better, I’d punch you in the nose. That’s what happened. It’ll wash out. When you handle this thing don’t forget that I make out your fitness report.”
Soon afterward Puller gave the troops a 72-hour pass, and when they came straggling in on Monday morning sent them on a twenty-mile hike, with orders that no one should ride. Sergeant Jones drove the General out to check results about mid-morning:
“The Old Man came up on the colonel in a jeep, and man, did he blow. He asked him if he didn’t hear the order that all would walk, and then sent the driver back to camp with that jeep. He told the colonel he needed conditioning worse than anyone else.
“That night, we rode way up in the hills and found the colonel soaking his raw feet in a helmet—but after a few months that man was down to a good, hard hundred and eighty pounds. When Puller left the post, the colonel told him he’d done more for him than anyone else in the Marine Corps. He said he felt better than he ever had.”
The General seldom took his eye from the troops and once when he and Jones entered a post exchange and encountered long lines of waiting men Puller asked: “What’s all this about, Jones?”
“They’re getting breakfast, sir.”
“Why don’t they get it at the regular hour? Hell, it’s eight o’clock.”
“They don’t get up for breakfast, General. They turn over for thirty more winks when the bugle blows, and wait until it’s time to go to work, then they come in here later and take their coffee break.”
“Any idea how I can fix that?”
“Yes, sir. March ’em to chow.”
The revival of the old-fashioned system began the next day.
One morning Jones entered the office to find the Old Man angrily tearing a government booklet into ribbons and flinging them into a waste can. “Look at this, Jones,” he said. “A guidebook for liars—they want every officer back from Korea to toe the mark, and carefully avoid saying anything that would frighten the taxpayers. Anything but the truth. Dammitall, I’ll never lie to ’em. Why, twenty years ago, they’d have put you in the brig for proposing something like that to an officer.”
When anyone asked about the fitness of the Third Brigade, Puller responded characteristically. Jones overheard him reply to a question one day: “We’re in perfect shape. I could take it to China today, burn Peking, and be out in ten days.” Jones winked at the duty sergeant: “He could do it, too, boy.”
Many youngsters of the Third Brigade, who were being formed into a new division, had never seen Puller but had heard hundreds of legends about him. Hundreds were introduced on a day when the General inspected a field transport outfit during a training exercise.
Puller went down the ranks and halted before a platoon leader: “Have the men drop their packs, remove boots and socks and make changes, to those in their packs.”
The young Marines stared, for most of them had not obeyed his order to carry extra footgear—an item they never afterward forgot.
“All right,” Puller said. “You march in what you have, under my orders. If you brought boots and socks, good. If you brought socks but no boots, you march in sock feet. If you brought neither, you’ll go barefoot.”
They marched back to barracks over rough, rocky roads. The lesson struck home.
Mrs. Oliver Smith called Mrs. Puller on the morning of February 2, 1952.
“Virginia, I know Lewis probably hasn’t said a word of it, but my husband is pinning his fifth Navy Cross on Lewis today—I thought you’d like to be there.”
“Heavens, no! Not a word. Thank you. We’ll be there.”
Mrs. Puller rushed to the drill field ceremony with her mother in tow and watched with the troops as General Smith awarded medals, including Puller’s Navy Cross.
As he pinned on the gold star for his fifth Cross, Smith said: “Lewis, you ought to be getting the Medal of Honor for this—like they do with the Air Medal, win five, and get the next highest.”
The fifth Cross was for heroism at the Reservoir, holding together the rear guard. The citation summoned up memories: “Fighting continuously in sub-zero weather against a vastly outnumbering hostile force … although the area was frequently covered by grazing machine gun fire and intense artillery and mortar fire, he coolly moved among his troops to insure their correct tactical deployment.… During the attack from Koto-ri to Hungnam, he expertly utilized his regiment as the division rear guard, repelling two fierce enemy assaults which severely threatened the security of the unit, and personally supervised the care and prompt evacuation of all casualties.”
Puller grinned when he came off the parade ground and an officer hailed him: “What’s this one for, Lewie?”
“I guess I got on the mailing list,” he said.
The star was added to the collection of the “most decorated Marine” in history and Sergeant Jones complained, with some reason, that his hardest job was the care of the General’s fifty-odd decorations. The sergeant was forever changing, arranging or repairing these, since regulations required that they be in apple-pie order. Changing of uniforms damaged clasps and ribbons; Jones kept a maintenance kit with needles, thread and soldering tools.
In the summer of 1951 there was a spirited reunion of veterans of the First Marine Division in Philadelphia, where Puller was the star of the show. The crowd drowned out speakers at a banquet program with chants of: “We want Puller! We want Puller!” and was quieted only when the master of ceremonies waved the General to the podium. Puller spoke for about two minutes, and after a brief bedlam of applause the Marines quieted for other speakers.
The climax of the reunion was a street parade led by Puller, which he brought to an end by bellowing from the head of the column without breaking step:
“Fall out! Follow me!”
He strode into a bar, followed by more than fifty men and ordered the stunned bartender to serve the crowd. The General paid the bill.
Puller once opened a package from Korea—the last souvenir from that campaign: It was his copy of Henderson’s Stonewall Jackson, dirty and worn on every page, with much of the text underlined, and Jackson’s mottoes copied in margins and on flyleaves in Puller’s hand. The firm resolve of Stonewall, “Never take counsel of your fears,” was written large on the pages. At the end of the book Puller had listed the casualties of his battalion at Guadalcanal and a list of its decorations. The covers of the book were held on with bicycle tape, but a Marine officer who had found it in Puller’s vacated van in Korea knew that it was priceless to the General.
With more than one hundred officers from other services, Puller was ordered to Sandia Air Force Base, New Mexico, for a briefing on atomic warfare. The Government made an elaborate security check on him before he was allowed to join the group.
Puller met an admiral at the base who spoke with some pride of the vast amounts of money spent on the project:
“General, do you know that it cost the Government three thousand dollars to clear you before you’re allowed to set foot here?”
“That applies to all of us who came in?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well, I’m a general officer of the Marine Corps, and I’ve been in service more than thirty years. Why was all this necessary? You’d think that by the time they promoted me to general that they’d have made all necessary investigation years ago. It looks to me as if they check the wrong people, and pass up the right ones.”
The First Division reunion of 1952, in Washington, all but dissolved in anarchy at its banquet session while the Commandant, General Lemuel Shepherd, was speaking. Puller, still only a brigadier, was not scheduled to speak, but was within view of the rowdy veterans. A chorus began:
“Siddown, Shepherd! Give us Puller. We want Chesty!”
Within a moment it was beyond control. MP’s came in and dragged about fifty men from the room; Colonel Henry Heming, Puller’s World War II paymaster, bailed them out of jail.
The ballroom continued to resound to shouts of “We want Puller!” until Shepherd could no longer be heard. The Commandant cut short his talk, and Puller spoke briefly.
Lewis was acutely embarrassed; when the session was over and he passed a cool, silent Shepherd in a corridor, he had a twinge of alarm.
In the summer of 1952, as the Korean War neared an end, Puller was moved from Camp Pendleton to the amphibious training center at Coronado, California, where he had command of the Troop Training Unit. He was restless at first and missed being with his brigade in the field, but General Shepherd calmed him with an explanation that the post was vital to the Corps as the heart of the amphibious warfare program.
Puller’s fitness reports in these days were glowing tributes: “A highly qualified troop leader, loyal, honest and firm in his convictions … I would very much like to have him with me in the field at any time.… An officer of strong and firm military character and the very highest personal integrity … on the field of battle he would have no superior in leadership. His administration of his present command has left nothing to be desired.… We need more officers of the Puller stamp in our armed services, and I very emphatically recommend him for promotion to Major General at the earliest opportunity.”
Brigadier General J. C. Miller, Jr., who served with him at Coronado, found Puller a good administrative officer, though impatient with paper-shuffling. “He would often call Washington direct on some problem—a thing that would have scared most Marine officers to death. He got things done.”
One of Puller’s chief interests in these months was the building of a Marine Corps for Chiang Kai-shek on Formosa. Miller was in charge of the training of this allied force, but Puller watched every move and made constant suggestions. He insisted that the training be on an individual basis and that every man be taught the use of every weapon, to climb landing nets, get into small boats at sea, and learn all tricks of the amphibious trade. He was intent upon perfection in the creation of the world’s second largest Marine Corps.
Twice a year Puller flew to Formosa to inspect the work of Taiwan’s Marines at first hand. He frequently saw Chiang Kai-shek, who once invited Puller to an intimate luncheon meeting. Chiang used an interpreter:
“The Generalissimo hopes that the General Puller has given thought to his problem of invading the Chinese mainland.”
“I have,” Puller said. “Say to him that he must first have plenty of bullets and beans.”
The interpreter hesitated over “beans,” but Chiang soon understood.
“It matters little where he lands, since the coast is so long,” Puller said. “Just pick a spot where the population would be friendly. Then all he has to do is drive on at full strength. There’s plenty of room to maneuver.”
Chiang grinned his approval.
“But the most important of all,” Puller said, “tell him that he must put to death every Communist bastard he meets. There can be no quarter.”
Chiang’s eyes filled.
“Tell General Puller,” he said, “that I used to have generals like that myself. But no more. No more.”
The old man brightened and added: “I think I know why my generals are not brave like that nowadays—it is because they were trained at your Leavenworth.”
Puller laughed. “You’re right. They teach little war in that place.”
The friendship between Chiang and Puller lasted for years. The Generalissimo does not forget the retired Marine General at Christmas; he sends boxes of fine teas to the family in Saluda, Virginia.
Puller made two visits to the Korean forces while he was at Coronado and was depressed by what he saw: “My God, the men had shoes shined and pants pressed, and irons in every tent to keep them looking trim. It looks to me as if we’ve settled back to an occupation force out here—and that’s never been worth a tinker’s dam.”
In August, 1953, Puller took examinations for Major General and passed; the board which chose the new group of officers of the rank approved him unanimously.
Near the end of his stay at Coronado, in 1954, Puller inadvertently stirred up another hornet’s nest, this time inside the Navy Department. He wrote the Secretary of Navy, pointing out that the two great training bases of the Marine Corps, Camp Pendleton in California and Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, were of limited use. Pendleton, he reminded, could not be used for realistic landing games, since a well-used highway cut between the sea and the camp. Camp Lejeune was similarly handicapped by the Inland Waterway.
Puller proposed that the U.S. take advantage of the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty of 1914 under which Marines might establish a training base in Nicaragua. He suggested the Bay of Fonseca as a perfect spot, for there an entire corps could practice landing at once, rather than splitting into divisions on each coast. “Not since World War II,” he reminded, “has a Marine officer been able to handle a corps.”
The letter was returned from Washington “for consideration.” An admiral told Puller privately: “In all my tour of duty in Washington, yours was the only sensible suggestion that crossed my desk. You’re the only one around who even knew there was such a treaty with Nicaragua. You embarrassed some of the big boys.”
A Navy team investigated the Bay of Fonseca and found the waters and beaches to be ideal, but the matter went no further. Though the plan was approved by General Franklin A. Hart, commander of the Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, and by the Navy’s Pacific Commander, Admiral Radford, it did not get approval of the Marine Corps Commandant.
Puller later thought: “This was the beginning of the end for me in the Marine Corps. They just couldn’t admit to Congress and the public that we’d wasted all that money and time on inadequate training bases.”
Puller’s time on the Pacific Coast was short. In July, 1954, he was sent to Camp Lejeune to lead the Second Division, his first major peacetime troop command. He took over the division on a searing hot day when men toppled from the ranks and were taken away in ambulances waiting in the rear. Puller fretted at the arrangements, for instead of walking down the ranks as he preferred, he was obliged to ride in a brass-railed jeep with the outgoing commander, darting back and forth across the parade ground.
When he took the microphone to call his welcome to the Second Division Puller said: “It gives me great pleasure to assume command of the First Marine Division.” He corrected himself when there was laughter from the ranks, but the men understood that he had spent his career with the First. They seemed to like him from the start.
Sergeant Orville Jones, who was still with him as driver, saw that Puller had not lost his touch with the men. One rain-swept morning when the troops were in the pine woods on maneuvers Puller rode out in a staff car with a colonel. Jones drove them. Puller rolled down his rear window when they neared a marching column so that he could see the men. A raucous and anonymous voice called:
“Yeah, we’re getting wet, Chesty, ya ol’ bastard! Ya satisfied?”
The colonel shook with rage. “Stop!” he shouted. “Stop, Jones! I’ll get the name of that sonofabitch if it’s the last thing I do.”
Jones glanced into the mirror. Puller’s expression had not changed.
“Drive on, Jones,” the General said. “If it had been me out there, and the C.O. had come by in a staff car, I’d have said the same damned thing.”
One of Puller’s first discoveries on the base was that there were staggering numbers of court-martials. He called in his sergeant major for an explanation:
“Well, sir. It’s the beer. They don’t allow beer in the enlisted men’s clubs at noon, and the men have been stepping across the street to the civilian beer joints. The MP’s pick ’em up.”
Puller solved the problem within seconds: “Tell the clubs to serve beer at noon and let me hear no more of this foolishness. You just make sure we have no drunkenness. We’ve got more to do than hold courts.” The problem of absenteeism disappeared.
The new General also canceled orders requiring Marines to wear dress uniforms to baseball games and other sporting events, ending more gripes and discomfort.
Puller was now just past his fifty-sixth birthday, but was evidently in good physical condition. One of his privates, Robert Dutro, long remembered an August day when Puller walked out two miles from headquarters to inspect his unit, and looked at every rifle of every Marine in the ranks. “Colonel’s came puffing up in his rear, trying to catch him,” Dutro said. “He walked ’em down.”
The date was August 26, 1954. Puller inspected more than 800 men of a battalion being sent overseas during the hottest part of the day and in the evening went on a stag party with the mayor of the nearby town of Jacksonville and a few friends. He was out late. The next morning he began inspection of stores in base warehouses, and was not content until he had crawled up ladders in the concrete-and-steel buildings to see that supplies were ready for overseas shipment in case of war. He left the warehouse area just before noon and returned to his office.
He walked across the room toward his desk and bumped into a lounge chair. He retreated—and struck the chair again. The third time he stumbled Puller kicked the chair from his path and sat at the desk. He signed a stack of mail, and when Brigadier General Ed Snedeker, his Assistant Division Commander, entered the room, Puller was ready for lunch.
Snedeker noticed that he was pale and tense, but sensed nothing more until they were seated at the mess table. Puller attempted to snuff out a cigarette in an ashtray and ground it into the table instead. Snedeker saw that he had difficulty getting food to his mouth.
Puller turned to his aide, Captain Marc Moore: “Marc, I feel sick.”
Moore called a car. At the nearby dispensary a young officer greeted them: “All the senior doctors are out, sir. They’ll be back at one o’clock. I suggest you go to the hospital.”
The doctor at the base hospital took quick stock of the General’s condition: Difficulty in vision, intense vertigo, clearing quickly. Fully conscious. Difficulty in releasing an object grasped with the left hand. Blood pressure 150/100, pulse rate 88, respiration 20. He gave Puller an injection of sodium phenobarbital: “Shortly afterward lapsed into an unresponsive state, threshing wildly about. This was controlled with sedation.”
The General went under an oxygen tent.
Snedeker called Virginia Puller: “Brace yourself. We’ve taken Lewis to the hospital, and they can’t say just what’s wrong. He looks pretty sick.”
Doctors and officers found Mrs. Puller less excited than they had expected. She insisted that he have doctors around the clock and not be left to nurses or corpsmen. She slept in a nearby room. At 2 A.M. a doctor entered to tell her the General was noticeably better, but a chaplain who came told her to prepare to lose her husband.
“Oh, no,” she said. “You don’t know him. He’s not about to die. I know he’ll pull through.”
Orville Jones stayed all night in the hospital, waiting for a glimpse of the Old Man. When someone entered the door Puller caught sight of the sergeant and beckoned: “Jones, what happened to me? I crack up out there?”
“No, sir. Just too much heat. The sun got you. That inspection would’ve killed most officers.”
“Jones, you’re the best doctor in this hospital.”
His doctors seemed puzzled that Puller regained consciousness that morning and that his reactions returned quickly to normal. After the third day he complained only of a morning headache, which disappeared after breakfast. Puller carried on a lively campaign to obtain tobacco, and begged a nurse: “How about bringing me a pipe or at least a cigar?”
“General, nobody smokes in this hospital, anywhere, except in the nurses’ quarters.”
“Hell, that’s fine. I’d like that. Let’s go.”
The original diagnosis had been ominous: “A mild stroke, followed by more severe recurrence in the hospital. Cerebral vascular thrombosis.” But as Puller recovered, with no signs of paralysis, all doctors attending him came to the conclusion that he was fit for duty. The diagnosis was changed: “Hypertensive cardiovascular disease (benign).” In lay language, the doctors told Puller, he had high blood pressure, but if he took care of himself, he was fit for any duty. He took a brief sick leave.
In November he passed his annual physical by a board of three Navy doctors who reported: “There is no residual of his thrombosis. The left field defect has completely disappeared. The Board is further of the opinion that the benign hypertensive cardiovascular disease is mild in character and is not disabling. There is absolutely no complication.… The Board is of the opinion that he is fit … to perform the duties of his rank at sea and in the field and recommends that he be returned to a duty status.”
Puller was elated.
There had been many cheering messages. One came from Rear Admiral Arleigh Burke, now commanding Cruiser Division Six of the Atlantic Fleet:
Dear Chesty:
I should like to add my good wishes for your early recovery.… The United States, the Marine Corps, and the Navy owe a great deal to you, who have exemplified over and over again in many battles those tenacious, hard-fighting qualities which are so essential to any military force, and particularly to our men. I will never forget the feeling of pride when you and your troops took Seoul, and the splendid example of the hard-fighting Marines which you led so magnificently. It isn’t often that I get sentimental, but I would like you to know that your brand of leadership is the brand that the United States needs badly.… Take it easy. Best regards,
Arleigh
There was another from Oliver Smith, now commander of the Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic, who knew Puller so intimately:
I am very happy to know that you have come through your ordeal in fine shape. I am sure you will obey injunctions of the doctors to take it easy for a while. The Division, as you well know, is in good hands and you will not have to concern yourself with the Lantflex-1-55 exercise.
You may not realize it, but all hands in the Marine Corps were pulling for your rapid recovery. You occupy in their affections a place which no other officer does. You have every reason to be proud of and grateful for the respect and affection you have earned.
There were hundreds of such messages. One of his mates from Fort Benning, Class of 1932. Major General C. T. (Buck) Lanham, of the Armed Forces Staff College, wrote:
In common with everyone else who has known and admired you, and indeed marveled at you, I have long entertained the conviction that you were immortal.… Ever since those grand days we shared at Benning I have looked on you as a legendary character. All that has happened since has confirmed my original conviction.… If there is anything that you would like, from reading material to rubbing whiskey, give me a ring.…
Brigadier General J. S. (Buzz) Letcher, of Nicaraguan days, wrote:
You are the most distinguished officer of the Marine Corps and your distinction comes from being the greatest combat officer that the Corps ever produced. You epitomize what the Marine Corps stands for in the hearts of the American people … you are its greatest fighter.…
A retired major general, Bill Scheyer, now living in California, sounded a warning:
Perhaps I shouldn’t say this, but anyone who has been through what you have, will probably be threatened with retirement. If you are, remember that there is a bright side to retirement. I have been happier since my retirement than I can remember.… Have you ever thought that “the most decorated man” in the Marine Corps could write the story of his life.… Your story would be an inspiration to every American boy.…
Take it easy. A lot of people have failed in their attempts to kill Puller. Make sure that you don’t do it yourself.…
Puller relaxed. His trouble, he was persuaded, had been sunstroke. He dutifully took the pills doctors prescribed and went about the training of the Second Division.
On a late November day not long after the good news from his annual physical, Puller was jolted by a penciled note from General Ridgely, the personnel officer in Corps Headquarters. General Shepherd had asked, before flying to the Orient, that Puller come to Bethesda, Maryland, Naval Hospital for a further check of his condition. Admiral H. L. Pugh, chief of the Bureau of Medicine, had agreed to this.
Puller telephoned Ridgely in anger. “I’m ready to come up today,” he said.
“You can’t do that. It’ll take two weeks to get ready for the tests.”
“I’ll be there then. What the hell kind of an outfit are you running up there, that it takes all this time?”
Puller was apprehensive, but did not suspect the worst. He never forgot his visit to Bethesda.
“Almost the first person I saw there was Admiral Pugh, rolling in a wheelchair—he’d had a heart attack. We’d been enlisted men together back in World War I days. He asked me what the hell I was doing in the hospital and I told him he’d ordered me there—or Marine Corps Headquarters said that he had. He said he’d done no such thing, and when I showed him Ridgely’s note he said it was not true. He said he hadn’t even talked to General Shepherd about it—but that he had talked with Ridgely and General Pate.
“I could see then what the game was—they were going to retire me, despite all the doctors had said back at Lejeune. They had pulled me up to Washington to get rid of me. I didn’t mind retiring all that much, but the way they did it made me sore. I’d had all the service and honors I needed or wanted; I’d come all the way from private to major general. But I was boiling mad about this thing. I saw lots of officers around Washington in poorer condition than I was, but that wasn’t going to matter.”
He remained in the hospital in Bethesda for about two weeks. After many consultations, the doctors found him unfit for duty. He wrote his wife daily from his room on the sixteenth floor:
Please do not worry. We must take things as they come in this life. There doesn’t seem much that we can do to change events.
He wrote of a visit from the commander of the hospital which produced a surprise from Headquarters:
He brought me up a copy of a modification to my orders. My orders read to report here for a physical examination and not retirement. The modification will send me before a retirement board. Nice people at Headquarters. We now know beyond a doubt what I suspected all along!
General Shepherd phoned with an invitation to dinner, but Puller declined. He attended a conference of Marine generals and appeared at a reception given by Shepherd. He wrote Virginia of this, enclosing a newspaper clipping which mentioned him, saying: “I am glad that when they wrote of my ribbons they mentioned the five Navy Crosses.”
He also wrote briefly of the problem of his retirement:
I spent the morning and early afternoon at the second day of Marine Headquarters conference and talked privately with Shepherd. I went over the whole question again exactly as I did in my talks with you, many times, and his reply was, “It is out of my hands and entirely up to the doctors.” So that is it. Again he remained mute when I asked if he had talked with Admiral Pugh. I hope they will soon send me home to you and happiness.
Just before his return home he wrote:
My retirement board will meet on the 10th of August. We may count on going to the retired list anytime between 10th August and 1st September. Marine Corps Headquarters has decided and that is the end of me in the Corps. I am all right in all respects except that I did have that accident on the 27 of last August. My blood pressure is now 140 over 80. And there are no aftereffects of the accident. The doctors say that if I take care of myself and get plenty of rest, I can expect to reach an old age. I will live only for you and our precious children and my requirements will be your great love, a little food, and a daily can of tobacco.
Puller never changed his opinion that there had been a conspiracy of sorts within Corps Headquarters to shunt him aside, though he mellowed a bit in later years. He took advantage of every appeal, and retained Colonel Paul D. Sherman as his counsel to appear before boards of the Corps.
Toward the end, in September, 1955, Colonel Sherman filed a statement:
Each board in the complicated system of retirement proceedings has arrived at a different conclusion in this case. One board, the Physical Review Council, has expressed two different conclusions.… Furthermore, medical officers, Marine officers and a Naval officer have made diagnoses differing radically from that established by the doctors at the Naval hospitals who examined the evaluee while he was a patient. All of the former have arrived at separate diagnoses without examining the patient.…
If General Puller, with all his professional qualifications, has only the minimum of disability—less than many officers now on active duty, and equal, even, to that of one member of the Board before which his case was appealed—then there is no doubt that he should be given special consideration and his value to the service weighed against that of others who are currently being retained on active duty.… Not only justice to a distinguished officer, but plain humanity requires that his desires be deferred to in the matter of retaining him on the rolls of the Marine Corps.
… It would be improper and unconscionable to use the very minimum of disability found by the Physical Review Council … for eliminating this fine officer from his profession.
It was in vain. The findings of the Bethesda doctors prevailed and Corps Headquarters did not intervene to give Puller further duty which would have retained him as a morale-builder. Oliver Smith thought he should have been kept as commander of a recruit depot. General Frank Lowe, the Army agent for President Truman in Korea, thought Puller’s retirement was not in order and was a grave disservice to the Corps and to the country.
Headquarters had two sharp notes of inquiry from U. S. Senators—John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Herbert H. Lehman of New York, who wanted the reasons behind the departure of the fighting symbol of the Corps. Staff officers replied with a résumé of official facts in the case.
The letters between Shepherd and Puller were unfailingly polite in tone. Shepherd had written:
I am most distressed.… I have personally discussed your case with Admiral Pugh, Admiral Hogan, Captain Tayloe and other medical officers. These officers are unanimous in their opinion that they do not consider you physically capable to perform the strenuous duties of a commander in the field, nor to sustain for any period of time the mental strain of a great responsibility.…
I have made inquiry as to whether I have the authority to disapprove the entire proceedings and order you to full duty. This, I am informed, is outside the scope of my authority.
I fully realize, Lewis, how crushed you and Virginia are at the findings of the Board of Medical Survey. I can assure you of my personal as well as official distress that your illustrious career in the Marine Corps should come to a close at this time. You have served your country with great distinction over a period of many years, including two wars and Korea. Your name is legend as a troop leader and professional soldier and will go down through generations of Marines yet to be born. Frankly, Lewis, you and Virginia must face up to the facts in this case.…
Lest there be the slightest shadow of a doubt in this matter, I wish to make it perfectly clear that neither I personally nor any officer hi this Headquarters was responsible for your being brought to Bethesda for further examination.…
Although I deeply regret to do so, in view of the recommendation contained therein, I cannot leave you in command of the Second Division.
General Shepherd revived the old post of deputy commander of the base at Camp Lejeune and offered it to Puller for five months. He ended with a note of warmth:
This has been a difficult letter for me to write, Lewis, as I know how hard it will be for you to live any other life than that of an active Marine officer. You must realize, however, as I am beginning to do, with only eleven months more of active duty before I retire, that there comes a time when all old soldiers must pass on their swords to those we have been training to take our place. I confess it’s a tough bullet to chew, but I am confident you will face it with the same courage you have demonstrated so many times on the battlefield.
Puller went back to Camp Lejeune to serve as deputy commander until October, 1955, but there was little or nothing for him to do. His office was moved from the bustling quarters he had once occupied to a small room far down the hall, beyond a barber shop and supply rooms. He was so lonesome that an old acquaintance on the base, Sergeant Major Robert Norrish, who had been on Puller’s winning drill team of 1925, was once asked to visit the General, if he had nothing important to do.
The base newspaper conducted a contest to name a new baseball field, and though the vast majority of Marines seemed to be voting for Puller, a Marine baseball player won the honor instead—and still the Corps had accorded Puller no honor beyond those he wore on his chest.
There was little ceremony at his passing from the service. Headquarters sent down a special Cravat to be given to Puller as he was awarded the third star of a Lieutenant General, a rank he would reach as he retired. Washington also asked if Puller would like to have Life magazine send down for a story, as it had offered to do. Puller declined. The troops were away on maneuvers and the base was empty: “I knew it wouldn’t look like anything. I didn’t want a fuss, anyway.”
A day or so before he went out, there was a party in the noncommissioned officers’ club on the base. Puller had declined an offer from the officers’ club, but could not turn down the enlisted men. It began as an intimate party, but when Puller arrived he found a crowd of more than five thousand who had come to say goodbye. Twenty pigs were barbecued and there was feasting and drinking until late in the night. The General made one of his short, brusque talks when they shouted for him, and as Sergeant Orville Jones remembered it, he said only:
“Men, I’d rather be toting a rifle in a rear rank than going out now as Lieutenant General.… Now, if you’re Marine, you’re all Marine. You’ll put the Corps above your family, your country, even God and all else in some cases. You stick to your Corps. God bless you.”
The day came on October 31, 1955. The place was the office of General Russ Jordahl, the acting commanding officer of the base and a companion of Basic School days.
The crowd was small: General Jordahl; Captain Marc Moore, the aide; Sergeant Orville Jones; Sergeant Major Bob Norrish; an officer from the post information office; and a latecomer, a civilian newspaper man.
Puller had broken tradition to the last. It was an unwritten regulation that the senior Marine officer on the post would pin Puller’s third star on his shoulder as he retired—but Puller had called for Bob Norrish, the senior noncom, and the oldest man available who had served with him.
“Okay,” Puller said. “Let’s get it over with.”
Norrish pinned the stars on the shoulders in silence. A photographer’s flash bulb crackled and it was over.
Puller stood at attention, eyes straight ahead. He smiled. “I hate like hell to go.” Someone handed him a three-star flag, he shook hands around and went out.
The reporter who followed him got a formal statement: “In having Sergeant Major Norrish attach my third star at my retirement, I wanted to show my great admiration and appreciation to the enlisted men and junior officers of the Marine Corps. I fully realize that without the help of the enlisted men I’d never have risen from a private to lieutenant general.
“I’ve commanded everything from a squad to a division and without the help of men and junior officers, these units would never have gone forward and achieved their objective, regardless of almost certain death.
“My only regret is that as things now are I won’t be present for the next war.
“I also want to express my regret at the deaths of many hundreds of Marines and the crippling and maiming of other hundreds who followed me blindly into battle. Again I would like to thank all Marines for their feelings toward me.”
There was a flurry of protest from the public, chiefly from old Marines. The magazine Esquire published a biting article, “Waste of an Old War Horse,” deploring the retirement of the Corps’s living legend.
Puller had still more letters from officers in the Corps. General Shepherd wrote:
The glorious history of our Corps has been forever illuminated by your illustrious achievements. Time will not dim the record of your burning devotion to duty, or the brilliance of your leadership.… Marines who served with you in battle were inspired to seek victory and honor at all costs. Marines shall always be inspired by that tradition which honors the name Puller as a symbol of fighting courage.
There was one from Oliver Smith:
My association with you has meant much to me over the years. Your example of devotion to duty is a legend in the Marine Corps. Your methods have always been honest, direct and forthright. There is no indirection or deviousness in your character. You have acted with singleness of purpose guided by your highest sense of right. These are the traits of character I have admired, in which I am joined by your host of friends.
Lieutenant General Eddie Craig, who had served with Puller from Nicaragua to Korea, wrote from retirement in California in a different vein, expressing the feelings of men of the Corps:
It’s a damn shame that they would not let you continue on as you and your many friends would like you to do. So many have been nursed along on active duty regardless of their condition, while you, who are really OK and capable of performing your duty, are forced to retire. It is all hard to understand. However, the way some things go in the service today one feels just as well off on the retired list.
Lewis Puller went home to Virginia. It was just thirty-seven years, four months and two days since he had boarded the train for South Carolina to exchange the uniform of a V.M.I. cadet for that of a Marine Corps boot. He was fifty-seven years old, five years under the mandatory retirement age.