Then-Lieutenant Colonel “Chesty” Puller (center) on Guadalcanal in 1942. His career would span four decades and two world wars and earn him a place as one of the great historical figures in the Marine Corps. (Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections)
Through the years, many of those who served with and admired legendary Marine Lieutenant General Lewis Burwell “Chesty” Puller have reminisced in their Naval Institute oral histories. At Guadalcanal, Navy Vice Admiral Roland N. Smoot was a commander, skipper of the destroyer USS Monssen (DD-436) escorting the USS Alhena (AKA-9), which was bringing supplies to the Marines in fierce fighting ashore and taking on board the wounded. Smoot also was answering calls for gunfire support from the units ashore.
My men were looking at the beach and saw a man wigwagging at them, way up high in the hills. We were all pretty leery of the Japanese. I asked my signalman, “Isn’t there some kind of recognition system that we have?” On a hunch, he wigwagged the question, “Who won the World Series in 19--?” and it came back correct.
We sent a boat in and out came Chesty Puller, his aide, and a couple of Marines. He came up to the bridge and said, “I’ve got to get some men out of trouble. They are trapped up there. I doggone near lost my life getting down to the beach. Let me tell you where to shoot.”
So he went up into control with my gunnery officer, and we just turned loose on this island. We ploughed it with bullets, straight up and down the middle. Then we spread the fire power up two sides, and the Marines came down to the beach between. We sent for landing boats, and they arrived in good time. Of course, Chesty was duly thankful and we became great and close friends.
After it was all over, and while I was steaming slowly back to the landing area to let Chesty off, he went below and had a shower. We washed and dried his clothes. He ate a great dinner. As he went over the side, he said, “Thank you very much. God, I wouldn’t have your job for anything in the world.” I said, “You’ve seen the kind of life I lead out here and you prefer yours?” He said, “I sure do. When you get hit where are you? When I get hit, I know where I am.”
At that time, Navy Vice Admiral Robert B. Pirie was on the staff of Commander, Air Force, Pacific Fleet, Vice Admiral John Towers. Navy aircraft and parts were growing increasingly short in supply, and equipment from the United States had not yet built to a replacement flow. Towers sent Pirie to the Solomons, “not only to get firsthand information on the situation as it existed down there, but to try to use every method we could to get the forces in the field to salvage as many aircraft by cannibalizing one aircraft and building another.” The mission took Pirie to Guadalcanal.
One of those big night actions took place the night before we got there, and they had sunken ships and damaged ships and it was a hell of a mess in there. I went up to the front lines with Colonel Cooley and Colonel Snedeker, a classmate of mine. We visited Lewis Puller. He’d just had that big action . . . the night before. It was quite an exciting time for us, you know getting to see this close to the action.
Puller was out in the sun. He had only a sergeant with him in this dugout in the side of the hill, and he had on a pair of fatigue pants and was barefooted. That’s all he had on, and he had four or five bullet holes that I could count in his torso. And he had some more in his legs. He wouldn’t even go back to a dressing station. They were these little things that the Japs were firing, about the size of a BB or a .22—I’ve forgotten what caliber it was.
He didn’t pay a damned bit of attention to them at all. He just put some iodine on them, I think. I don’t know, but he was a character, a great man.