Chesty Puller: the Marine of five Navy Crosses

Puller's battles in World War II and Korea included the Guadalcanal campaign of 1942, the Battle of Peleliu in 1944, the Inchon landing of September 1950 and the Chosin Reservoir campaign that followed. Before that he spent most of the 1920s and early 1930s fighting insurgents in Haiti and Nicaragua with local forces led by Marine officers.²

What was Chesty Puller famous for?

Puller is famous for his five Navy Crosses, the most awarded to any Marine, won over twenty years: two in Nicaragua in 1930 and 1932, one at Guadalcanal in 1942, one at Cape Gloucester in 1943 and 1944, and one near Koto-ri during the Chosin Reservoir campaign in December 1950.³

His other awards included the Army Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star and two awards of the Legion of Merit. Military Times' Hall of Valor calls his record of five Navy Crosses unmatched in Marine Corps history, and US Army reports describe him as the most decorated Marine in the Corps's history.⁴

From Virginia to the Banana Wars

Puller was born in West Point, Virginia, on 26 June 1898. He attended the Virginia Military Institute for a short time and enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1918. Appointed a second lieutenant in the reserve in 1919, he was put on inactive duty as the Corps shrank after World War I, so he reenlisted and served almost five years in Haiti as an officer of the Gendarmerie d'Haiti, a local force led by Marine officers.⁵

In Nicaragua, Puller led patrols of the Nicaraguan National Guard against rebel bands. His first Navy Cross citation lists five engagements between February and August 1930. The second covers a ten-day patrol, from 20 September to 1 October 1932, that fought rebel forces in the mountains north of Jinotega. He later commanded the "Horse Marines" in China.⁶

What did Chesty Puller do at Guadalcanal?

At Guadalcanal, Puller commanded the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. On the night of 24 to 25 October 1942, in heavy rain, his battalion held a front of about a mile in the jungle south of Henderson Field against a larger Japanese force, until Army reinforcements arrived about three hours after the attack began. This defense earned his third Navy Cross.⁷

At Cape Gloucester on New Britain, Puller was executive officer of the 7th Marines. His fourth Navy Cross covers 26 December 1943 to 19 January 1944, when he also took temporary command of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, and for a time of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, after its commanding officer and executive officer were wounded. He then took command of the 1st Marines, the regiment he would lead at Peleliu and in Korea.⁸

What happened to Puller's regiment at Peleliu?

Puller's 1st Marines landed on Peleliu on 15 September 1944 and attacked into the coral ridges of the Umurbrogol. By 21 September the regiment had lost roughly 1,500 to 1,750 men, more than half its strength, and the corps commander, Major General Roy Geiger, ordered the division to take it out of the line and off the island.⁹

Brigadier General Gordon D. Gayle's Marine Corps history Bloody Beaches puts the regiment's losses at 1,500 by the fourth day, when it was "a regiment in name only," and records 1,749 casualties reported on 21 September, the figure also given in Frank O. Hough's 1950 monograph. The division commander, Major General William Rupertus, was reluctant to call in Army troops. On 21 September Geiger, after seeing Puller and his exhausted men at their forward command post, overruled him and attached the Army's 321st Regimental Combat Team to the division.¹⁰

What did Puller do at the Chosin Reservoir?

Puller led the 1st Marines ashore at Inchon on 15 September 1950 and through the Inchon-Seoul operation. In the Chosin Reservoir campaign his regiment held Koto-ri, and from 5 to 10 December he defended it against repeated Chinese attacks while the rest of the 1st Marine Division fought its way south to join him, earning his fifth Navy Cross.¹¹

Puller brought the rest of his regiment out of Koto-ri on the afternoon of 10 December. The 1st Marine Division reached the Hungnam area by 11 December and had left by sea by the middle of the month; the evacuation of the port ended on 24 December. The wider war is covered in our guide to the battles of Korea.¹²

Later career and family

Puller was promoted to brigadier general in 1951 and later rose to major general. Ill health forced him to retire in 1955, when he was advanced to lieutenant general on the retired list. His son, Lewis B. Puller Jr., served in Vietnam as a Marine officer and lost both legs and parts of his hands there in 1968; his autobiography Fortunate Son won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for biography or autobiography.¹³ › Audie Murphy

How did Chesty Puller die?

Puller died after a long illness on 11 October 1971, at the age of 73, while on the Marine Corps retired list. He had spent his retirement in Saluda, in Middlesex County, Virginia, and he is buried there. His 37-year career as an enlisted Marine and officer had ended in 1955, when failing health forced him to retire.¹⁴