Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller, U. S. Marine Corps
(Smith Hempstone in The Evening Star, Washington, D.C.., 20 October 1971)
They buried Chesty Puller at high noon on an apple-sweet October day, the notes of taps thin and sad on the crisp Tidewater air. The most decorated Marine in the history of the Corps did not hit his last beachhead alone.
They were all there: Chapman, Walt, Shoup, Greene, Silverthorne, Thomas, more than two dozen generals from a service in which stars come neither quickly nor easily. Pink-cheeked recruits down from Quantico and turkey-necked old timers, crackers who could remember how Chesty won his first Navy Cross against Sandino in Nicaragua 40 years ago. More than 1,500 Marines and ex-Marines found their way to that remote churchyard in Virginia to pay final homage to a superlative fighting man who in his own lifetime had become a legend.
