Lt. Gen. Lewis Burwell Puller, known as Chesty, is the most decorated US Marine ever. Included in his medals were five Navy Crosses, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and the Purple Heart. From Virginia, he was born in 1898 and died in 1971. He was in the USMC for 37 years.
…He was a blunt, profane, cigar‐chewing officer who walked with his beribboned chest thrown out like a bantam rooster and with a belligerent thrust to his jaw. He had an intense, almost noisy, loyalty to his service and a fierce contempt for weakness in men, and he reveled in fighting as other men do in leisure…
– New York Times Oct. 12 1971 “Gen. Chesty Puller Dies; Most Decorated Marine”
General Puller unwillingly missed a few wars due to his age. He tried to enlist in the US Army to fight in the 1916-1917 Border War with Mexico, but his mother wouldn’t sign the consent form. In 1918 he joined the Marine Corps. But by the time he was set to go overseas, World War I ended. Over forty years later in 1966, a retired Lieutenant General, his request to return to service in the Vietnam War was refused due to his age and health.
Private to General in 5 wars
In the intervening years, however, he was there. Haiti from 1919 to1924, Nicaragua from 1928 to 1932, the rest of the 1930s in China. WWII in the Pacific, then Korea. It was during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in December 1950 that he earned his fifth Navy Cross and promotion to Brigadier General – and made his best-known quote. “We’ve been looking for the enemy for some time now. We’ve finally found him. We’re surrounded. That simplifies things.”
He returned to the USA in 1951. While Deputy Camp Commander at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, he retired in 1955 after he had a stroke. In 1957, the new USMC bulldog mascot was named after him. The current mascot (pictured here) is Col. Chesty XVI.
The respect in which he was – and is – held is due to his skills and bravery as well as his loyalty to those under his command. Gen. Puller fought alongside his men, and fought for them. “When a second lieutenant had ordered an enlisted man to salute him 100 times for missing a salute, Puller told the lieutenant, ‘you know that an officer must return every salute he receives. Now return them all and I will keep count.’” He didn’t let himself off the hook either. He once fined himself for accidentally discharging a pistol indoors. (Wikipedia, from Burke Davis 1991)
Fortunate Son
Although he survived five wars, he also knew its devastation. His paternal grandfather, Major John William Puller of the Confederate Army, was killed in 1863 at the Battle of Kelly’s Ford in Culpeper County, Virginia. When he was young, Lewis loved hearing the war stories told by friends of his grandfather. But he also saw Robert E Lee Jr, son of the Confederate General, go by the Puller house every day selling eggs to make a bit of money. His brother and fellow Marine, Lt Col Samuel Duncan Puller, was killed in 1944 by sniper fire in the Battle of Guam. His grandfather and his brother – then his son.
Lewis Puller Jr. went to Vietnam as a Marine Lieutenant in 1968. Three months later, an explosion cost him both legs, parts of his hands and severe internal injuries. He survived, came home and became a lawyer and anti-Vietnam War activist. In 1987 he told a reporter “I didn’t see any of the sons of corporate leaders in Vietnam.” He wrote Fortunate Son, a Pulitzer prize-winning autobiography in 1991. The title, indeed, was borrowed from the 1969 Creedence Clearwater Revival song. In 1994 Lewis Puller Jr. took his own life.
11th cousin, once removed
If the Burwell families of Virginia and Ontario are related as I think they may be, then Lewis Burwell Puller is my 11th cousin, once removed. His mother was Martha Richardson Leigh, known as Pattie, of King William County in Virginia. Her maternal great grandmother was Alice Grymes Burwell, wife of William Clayton Williams and daughter of Lewis Burwell V and Judith Page.
He married Virginia Montague Evans, also from Virginia, in 1937. They had two daughters and one son, Lewis Jr. Their eldest daughter Virginia (1940-2018) married Col. William Howard Dabney. According to Virginia Dabney’s obituary, he was, “in order of importance, a Marine; southern and tall.” He grew up in Virginia, but he was born in Saint John, New Brunswick in 1934, to Victor William Wagner and Mary Hennessey. After his mother remarried in 1945, he took the surname of his stepfather Hugh Keane Dabney.
Good night, Chesty
Lewis Puller came from, and built, a family with very deep roots in Virginia and the American military. Whether or not we are related, I’d like, if I may, to borrow a Marine valediction – Goodnight, Chesty, wherever you are.
For more on the Virginia and Ontario Burwell families and a kinship chart that includes Gen. Puller’s ancestry, see my Burwells in US and Canada. Two excellent articles I read are American Sacrifice: The Pullers for more about Lewis Puller father and son as well as “Chesty” Puller and the Southern Military Tradition for discussion of how the American south shaped him. For a quick, funny summary, see 5 Reasons Why Chesty Puller is a Marine Corps Legend.
