During the afternoon of 23 September 1944, the hollow-eyed, scraggly, exhausted, numb survivors of the 1st Marines began to disengage from contact with the Japanese defenders on Peleliu, as the Army's 321 st Infantry relieved them. Since the 15 September assault, the Ist Marines had lost 311 killed and 1,438 wounded out of a strength of 3,251. That casualty rate of 54% exceeded the eventual losses suffered by the 5th Marines (43%) and the 7th Marines (46%) in the same campaign.
Years later, some accounts of the battle mistakenly cited the casualties of the 1st Marines as the highest of any Marine regiment in the war. A few angry veterans and some authors called the regimental commander a "butcher" for his supposedly poor tactical leadership and callous disregard for the lives of his subordinates. Peleliu became a black mark on the otherwise enviable record of then-- Colonel Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller. The contradiction seems stunning, yet history has been revised to lay more and more culpability for the debacle on the stocky shoulders of Puller. The truth about Peleliu does not leave him entirely blameless, but in fact, Chesty has gotten a bum rap.
The Battle
Marine Major General Roy S. Geiger's III Amphibious Corps drew the mission of seizing Peleliu to prevent its airfield from threatening General Douglas MacArthur's pending campaign in the Philippines. Geiger assigned the 1st Marine Division under Major General William H. Rupertus to assault the main objective, while the Army's 81 st Infantry Division attacked nearby Angaur. Peleliu was six miles long and two miles across at its widest point (near the center of the island). The airstrip occupied the southern flatlands. In the north was a twisted series of coral ridges known as Umurbrogol Mountain.
The scheme of maneuver called for a landing on the southwestern shore. The 1 st Marines, on the left flank, had by far the toughest mission. Once ashore, the regiment would have to wheel to the left while under the guns of the enemy in the high ground, attack north into a widening zone that would require immediate use of its reserve, then storm the Umurbrogol (which proved to be the heart of the Japanese defense). The plan called for the 5th Marines, in the center, to drive across the island and take the airfield and for the 7th Marines, on the right, to turn south and clean out the peninsula at that end of the island. The landing beaches of the Ist Marines presented a special problem: small bluffs flanking either end would allow the enemy to fire down the length of the shore.
Three days of naval preparatory fire inflicted little damage. On D-Day, Japanese artillery and mortars showered the Marines, while the enfilade fire of machine guns and antitank cannon swept over the sand. The division took heavy casualties and held only a tenuous perimeter the first night, but thereafter the issue was never in doubt. The cost, however, would not be determined until U.S. forces rooted out the last of the defenders.
On D+1 the 5th Marines reached the opposite shore. Over the next few days they occupied the lightly held eastern flatlands. The 7th Marines and two of its battalions completed the seizure of the southern promontory on D+3. Puller and his 1st Marines reached the Umurbrogol on D+2 and battered themselves against it for the next seven days. This particular area of the coral ridges turned out to be the enemy's main bastion and would be the very last ground conquered in the battle.
Elements of 2d Battalion, 7th Marines, the division's reserve, began to reinforce the 1st Marines on the night of D+2. Three days later, the remainder of the 7th Marines moved up and assumed responsibility for much of the Umurbrogol front. On the 23rd, against the wishes of Rupertus, Geiger ordered the 321st Infantry to join the fight on Peleliu and replace the depleted 1st Marines. Eventually the entire 81st Division came ashore and finished the campaign weeks after the last of the 1st Marine Division had returned to Pavuvu. Losses in the 1st Marine Division totaled 7,096 men, while the 81st Division's dead and wounded amounted to 3,089.
The Debate
The scale of casualties in the 1st Marine Division, but especially those in the 1st Marines, shocked everyone involved, because no one had anticipated the operation would be so difficult. (The following year, Iwo Jima and Okinawa would dwarf those numbers, with losses in 13 of the 15 Marine infantry regiments engaged exceeding those in the 1st Marines at Peleliu.) Puller was no exception. He himself had suffered through the battle with a severe infection in his thigh from a piece of shrapnel still lodged there from Guadalcanal. At a memorial service to dedicate the division cemetery on Peleliu in late September, the marks of his old wound and the recent battle were evident. He appeared thinner than usual, his face craggier, his eyes sunken and dark, his demeanor sullen. Major John S. Day, a division staff officer, observed that the colonel "looked like hell" and was limping badly. Years later, Puller called Peleliu "his toughest operation" of the war.
Major Day also had been struck by "how depressed [Puller] seemed at the casualties the 1st Marines had taken." In letters to friends and family written at the time, Chesty admitted "the fight was costly" and sympathized with those who had paid the high price: "May God rest the souls of our dead and make life less bitter for our maimed and crippled." But he said no more, giving his feelings for these men no greater space than he had accorded the loss of his own brother a few weeks earlier. He preferred instead to dwell with pride on what his outfit had done: "The performance of my officers and men was grand. They never failed to move forward when ordered to, and gained ground continually regardless of the enemy. If there is such a thing as glory in war, they have won it."
Condemnation of the decision to attack Peleliu and of Puller's part in the battle has increased over the years. While the former is probably justified, a thorough look at the records of the campaign shows that Chesty's performance does not rate the censure it has received. Most critiques are based on memories, often influenced by Puller mythology, that do not stand up against the facts.
Firepower
One of the most serious criticisms concerned Puller's use of firepower. Lieutenant Colonel Harold 0. Deakin, the division plans officer, believed himself to be "charitable" in saying that the commanding officer of the Ist Marines "didn't have a total grasp of the use of naval gunfire, artillery, and supporting arms in general." Lieutenant Colonel F. G. Henderson, a member of the corps operations staff, agreed: "Puller refused to let you help him with fire support. He insisted that he was going to do it with Marine infantry, ram it in there." Major Gordon Gayle, a battalion commander in the 5th Marines, while not criticizing Puller, felt that his own regiment performed better and suffered lower casualties because it employed the lion's share of all the supporting fires requested during the campaign.
Later attacks against the Umurbrogol did benefit from much greater firepower, but the 1st Marines made as much use of supporting arms as the situation allowed. On DDay, the Navy tallied 26 calls for naval gunfire. Observers in the 1st Marines initiated 15 of them, with one-third coming from the regimental headquarters. On D+1, it was 13 of 24, with 7 coming from Puller's command post. The share of recorded missions for the 1st Marines did not change appreciably until the end of its stay in the lines, when only one battalion was engaged. The war diaries and staff journals also show frequent use of air and artillery.
This activity may have been driven by the battalions and the regimental staff rather than Puller himself, but one item proves he was thinking about supporting arms. On D+1, the division received a message commending the ships for the naval gunfire provided that day. It began: "CO, 1st Marines very much pleased ...." An aversion to using firepower was not consistent with his prior record, either. In Nicaragua Puller had employed rifle grenades rather than an infantry assault "to save the men." On Guadalcanal he had called in fires repeatedly to support his infantrymen. In describing enemy casualties inflicted by his battalion, he had observed: "In the operations where supporting artillery, planes, and destroyer fire was furnished ... the figures are much higher." Possibly, Puller was not the most skilled employer of supporting arms, but he was certainly aware of their value and used them when they were available.
It is true the 1st Marines was less creative in using firepower in this difficult situation. Later in the battle, other units came up with some unique ways to attack the Japanese defensive system. They used 155-mm guns for direct fire against caves in the face of ridges, hauled 75mm pack howitzers onto the heights to hit more inaccessible targets, and rigged long hoses to spray fuel where flamethrower-equipped tracked landing vehicles (LVTs) could not reach. While Puller and his subordinates were not as innovative as others, they also had little time to react. They first encountered the unexpectedly tough terrain and defenses of the ridge on D+2 and were relieved from the main Umurbrogol front barely 72 hours later. The ability of others to develop better ideas likely stemmed from their opportunity to understand the enemy's defenses before they confronted them.
The perception that Puller did not make full use of supporting arms also may have resulted from the fact that he had much less available than other regiments had when they fought in the ridges. At the start of the battle, the 1st and 5th Marines each had only a 75-mm howitzer battalion in direct support, whereas the 7th Marines had a 105-mm howitzer unit. The division had three battalions in general support, one each of 105-mm and 155-mm howitzers and 155-mm guns. The 155-mm howitzers were not in place until D+2, however, and then directed half their attention to the south in support of the 7th Marines until D+4. The 155-mm guns did not go into action for the division until D+4. Thus the 1st Marines did not have a full complement of artillery available until 19 September, at which point it was on the verge of being combat ineffective because of all the casualties. An Army observer thought the division's slow deployment of the heavy guns was inexcusable. In the meantime, Puller's regiment had requested additional artillery support. On D+I, for instance, the 1st Marines called in missions from the artillery battalion of the 5th Marines.
By the same token, the regiment conducted its entire fight with only Navy air support, whereas other units in the later stages of the battle would benefit from the presence of Marine aviators more skilled in attacking ground targets. The Marine fliers also made much greater use of napalm and 1,000-pound bombs, which had more effect than the ordnance generally used by the Navy. In addition, during the landing the 1st Marines' air liaison parties lost their jeep-mounted radios. These were not replaced until D+3 or later, which hampered the control of close-air support. The regiment also suffered from the limited availability of assets such as tanks and flamethrower LVTs, which were not concentrated against the ridges early in the battle. Moreover, other outfits would benefit from efforts to build roads into the Umurbrogol to give these weapons better access. Major General Julian Smith, a firsthand observer, recognized that Puller's men "had a terrifically hard job because the infantry had to fight its way forward without customary air and artillery support."
Before the battle was even joined, the 1st Marines had been victimized by the poor preparatory fires. The enfilading bunkers on the White beaches could have been knocked out if they had received attention. The 1st Marine Division had asked for fires "against areas which a study of the terrain and a knowledge of Japanese tactics would indicate were fortified," and Puller had identified the points as a major concern. But one battalion after-action report noted: "More NGF [naval gunfire] and some napom [sic] on the point just north of White One would have been a big help. This point was undamaged by preparatory fires." Thus, the 1st Marines suffered large initial losses that hampered it through the rest of the battle.
Tactics
Puller has been condemned more frequently for the tactics he employed. George McMillan, a Marine correspondent on Peleliu, summarized the "stereotype," saying Chesty "was a tragic caricature of Marine aggressiveness. Puller overdid it. In the minds of many Marine officers—I think the impression was widespread throughout the Corps—Puller crossed the line that separates courage and wasteful expenditure of lives." Captain Everett P. Pope (a company commander in the 1st Marines) knew Chesty was brave, but also thought that his commanding officer understood only one method of attack—"straight ahead." The young officer could never understand the orders to make repeated assaults against the Umurbrogol: "Why he wanted me and my men dead on top of that hill, I don't know. Don't know what purpose it would have served." Captain Nikolai Stevenson agreed there was no question of Fuller's "bravery," but he "never cared about flanks, just straight ahead." He recalled Fuller often answered the battalions' requests for assistance with: "Just keep pushing."
On one level, the operation required a speedy conquest of Peleliu, not only to provide support for the upcoming Philippines campaign, but also to allow the fleet to withdraw to safer waters. The former reason had evaporated by D-Day, but nothing indicates Geiger or Rupertus knew that until it was too late. The latter requirement had been driven home in the late-1943 Gilberts campaign.
While it might have been in Puller's nature to drive straight ahead in all situations (and that is open to debate), Marine Corps doctrine and Navy command decisions would have pushed him to that style of warfare at Peleliu in any case. General O. P. Smith (the assistant division commander) later gave an estimation of Chesty's tactical views that would have described most of the senior Marine commanders in World War II: "He believed in momentum; he believed in coming ashore and hitting and just keep on hitting and trying to keep up the momentum until he'd overrun the whole thing." General Lemuel C. Shepherd, one of the most respected Marine division commanders of the war, pressed the offensive on Okinawa with a similar outlook: "We will attack and attack vigorously, and we will continue to attack until the enemy is annihilated." Army General George Patton, a premier practitioner of the amphibious art in the European theater, expressed the same philosophy: "We must attack ... a commander, once ashore, must conquer or die." One need only look at Buna-Gona, Tarawa, Biak, Saipan, Guam, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa to realize both the Marine Corps and the Army often employed straight-ahead, attrition-style tactics against strong Japanese bastions.
On Peleliu, Puller faced a situation that gave him no opportunity to adopt elaborate schemes of maneuver. Within the Umurbrogol, the nature of the interlocking defenses meant that any assault deteriorated quickly into a frontal attack. There were attempts to get at the coral redoubt from the flanks, but in each case the Marines ran into supporting Japanese positions. There simply were no weak areas to exploit. As the commanding officer of 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, put it years later: "We did not discover the defenses until we were in the middle of them being fired at from three sides." The only real option for maneuver was that employed after the 1st Marines was relieved, a move along the lightly defended west coast. There is no indication that Chesty seriously considered that idea, but it was beyond his capability to execute it in any case. The vital beaches and rear areas had to be protected, and that required the 1st Marines to maintain an unbroken line throughout its zone. By the time the nature of the Umurbrogol defenses became apparent, the regiment already had exhausted its own reserve and that of the division, as well as a good portion of its front-line combat power. The forces available to Puller were too weak to exploit the coastal flank and guard all the uncovered portion of the ridges. It became possible only after the 5th and 7th Marines had completed their missions and the 321st Infantry had reinforced the division. Thus it was a decision for Rupertus, not Chesty, to make.
The only practical alternative Puller had was one advanced by Julian Smith, who felt that the division should have cleaned up the rest of the island and then attacked the Umurbrogol with all its resources, instead of letting a weakened regiment go it alone. Of course, that choice also was not Puller's to make, as Smith pointed out: "I wouldn't have assaulted as soon as the 1st Division did with Puller's regiment. . . . I would have put him on the defensive, and he would have been in fine shape." That undoubtedly was the best solution, but Rupertus was in a hurry to take Peleliu, and all his subordinates knew it. Years later Puller complained privately that the general gave him no options: "Orders were to attack dead ahead, and that was the only thing we could do, to take ground regardless of losses.... It was more or less of a massacre. There was no way to cut down losses and follow orders."
Other senior officers at Peleliu felt the same way. Colonel Harold D. "Bucky" Harris of the 5th Marines reported later that there was "plenty [of] pressure from above to speed up the attack." He felt "roughly used" when Rupertus pushed him too hard and believed that only Geiger's intervention had prevented his relief by the division commander. The operations officer of the 5th Marines agreed his outfit was "under the greatest of pressure from headquarters" and that Harris launched some attacks with "great reluctance." He remarked sarcastically: "You can imagine the fine impression we had at that time of division." The Army's senior observer was equally astonished by Rupertus's orchestration of the operation:
There was not much effort on the part of the Division Commander to coordinate the action of the regiments or assist them by means at his disposal. . . . There were instances when it is believed that coordinated artillery fire and assistance from the 5th Marines would have aided the 1st Marines. . . . It was not until D+4 that the Division Commander visited any of the regimental command posts.... The regimental commanders appeared to know their jobs and had superior records as leaders in previous combat.
Lieutenant Colonel Arthur M. Parker, Jr., the executive officer of the 3d Armored Amphibian Battalion, placed the blame entirely on the general: "The cold fact is that Rupertus ordered Puller to assault impossible enemy positions at 0800 daily till the 1st [Marines] was decimated." Major Day agreed: "To blame Puller for the day-to-day attacks on the ridge line is really unfair. He was carrying out Rupertus' orders."
If Puller is to be faulted for heavy casualties in his regiment, it can only be in two areas. One was his failure to raise whatever concerns he might have had with his commander. Had he lodged a protest with Rupertus, he could have been relieved of command, which was not just theoretical in view of Harris's concern. Perhaps most important, Chesty would have been extremely reluctant to do anything that might call into question his own aggressiveness and courage. His bulldog character likely never allowed the thought of protesting orders to rise very close to the surface. As O. P. Smith observed: "As long as there was fighting going on, he wanted to be in it." None of Puller's fellow commanders bucked Rupertus, either.
One might also question the zeal with which Puller executed his orders after D+3, though the evidence is mixed regarding how much pressure he did apply to his subordinates. Major Raymond G. Davis, a battalion commander, did not detect any: "I never felt driven or forced, I felt supported." But some others believed they were compelled by Puller to go beyond the call of duty. One snippet of a radio conversation overheard by a reporter on 19 September lends support to that view; Chesty's "Go ahead and smash them" sounded like a call for an all-out assault, not a slow, probing attack. That, of course, may have been pure media hype, but the regiment did send companies into the attack again and again, long after they had lost their effectiveness. If Puller did not create or pass along the pressure, neither did he take action to damp it down. Like Confederate Lieutenant General Stonewall Jackson at the Civil War Battle of Chancellorsville, Chesty was a leader "whose resolution was invincible," who would push forward until the mission was accomplished or he and his men "had been annihilated." The 1st Marines had the reputation of being "the most aggressive of the regiments," and it lived up to that billing. While that aggressiveness probably increased casualties in the latter part of the battle, it was crucial to securing the vulnerable left flank of the division during the first two days of the operation, when a lack of determination in the face of enemy fire might have resulted in defeat.
The unknown factor in any evaluation of Puller on Peleliu is how much his inflamed leg affected his ability to command. It is conceivable that pain and fever may have had a significant impact on his judgment, while his lack of mobility prevented him from developing a true picture of what was happening. He certainly was aware of his high losses, but he may not have realized just how little he was achieving in return for those lives. It is significant that Geiger's action to relieve the 1st Marines appeared to be motivated as much by his assessment of Chesty's condition as it was by casualty figures.
If some Marines felt Puller was a butcher, many others respected and admired him. A rifleman in the 2d Battalion, 1st Marines, revered Chesty for his leadership from the front: "He was one of you. He would go to hell and back with you. He wouldn't ask you to do anything that he wasn't doing with you." Another Marine voiced almost exactly the same sentiment: "He was one of us! He led by example—not by sitting 500 yards behind the lines, issuing orders. . . He earned all his honors and accolades and perhaps some he never received." O. P. Smith praised Chesty's leadership: "I went over the ground he captured and I don't see how a human being had captured it, but he did.... There was no finesse about it, but there was gallantry and there was determination."
Colonel Hoffman is Deputy Director of the Marine Corps History and Museums Division and is the award-winning author of Chesty: The Story of Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller (New York: Random House, 2001) and Once a Legend: "Red Mike" Edson of the Marine Raiders (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1994).