Gen. Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller earned more awards than any Marine in history: five Navy Crosses, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, two Legions of Merit with "V" device, the Bronze Star with "V" device, the Bronze Star, the Air Medal and the Purple Heart.
Chesty Puller requested to return to active duty to serve in Vietnam, but was turned down because of his age. He died 11 October 1971 in Hampton, Virginia, after a long illness. He was 73.
Quotes of Chesty Puller:
"Our Country won't go on forever, if we stay soft as we are now. There won't be any AMERICA because some foreign soldier will invade us and take our women and breed a hardier race!"
"They are in front of us, behind us, and we are flanked on both sides by an enemy that outnumbers us 29:1. They can't get away from us now!" When the Marines were cut off behind enemy lines in Korea and the Army had written the 1st Marine Division off as being lost because they were surrounded by 22 enemy divisions. The Marines made it out inflicting the highest casualty ratio on an enemy in history and destroying 7 entire enemy divisions in the process. An enemy division is 16500+ men while a Marine division is 12500 men.
"there are not enough chinamen in the world to stop a fully armed Marine regiment from going where ever they wont to go"
"We've been looking for the enemy for some time now. We've finally found him. We're surrounded. That simplifies things.
Semper Fi
“Good night Chesty....”
that was our evening prayer in boot camp.
Semper Fi