Jocko Podcast - 121: "Marine! The Life Of Chesty Puller", by Burke Davis.

Episode Date: April 18, 2018

0:00:00 - Opening 0:05:33 - "Marine!  The Life Of Chesty Puller", by Burke Davis. 2:50:56 - Closing Thoughts and Take-aways. 2:52:15 - Support:  JockoStore stuff, Super Krill Oil and Joint Warfare and Discipline Pre-Mission, THE MUSTER 005 in DC. Origin Brand Apparel and Jocko Gi, with Jocko White Tea,  Onnit Fitness stuff, and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes). Extreme Ownership (book), Way of The Warrior Kid 2: Marc's Mission, The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, and Jocko Soap.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 121 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. I'm going to tell you a story. And this is a story of war and pain and love and death. and this story this is a heroic story quite possibly one of the most heroic stories and at the same time this story is also a tragedy and it is quite possibly one of the most tragic stories this is a story of a father and a son this is a story that spans six wars each one more difficult than the next

this is a story of life and like all stories of life this story ends the way that all lives end this story ends in death there is no story book ending there is no walking off into the sunset there is no mercy no quarter and no remorse from death and as I prepared to tell this story there were times when I started to decide against it where I began to think it would be too much but there was another part of me that spoke louder and spoke stronger and that other part of me that knows that to hide from the darkness is only to allow darkness to grow and I will not do that. I will tell this story and the story that I am going to tell is not just a story it is not made up

the story is the real story of the real lives of two men, two Marines, a father and a son who fought many battles, both literally, and metaphorically and who did their best to fight and win and who we can both learn a lot from but we can only learn if we listen we can only learn if we study and we can only learn if we remember what these men went through what they did how they lived and how they died I will begin the story with the father. He is the most famous Marine in the history of the Marine Corps. He is one of the most highly decorated men in American military history.

He's the only man ever awarded five Navy crosses. His name is Lewis Puller, better known as Chesterley Puller. and he is to most Marines the ultimate Marine the godfather of the Marine Corps to this day the mascot of the Marine Corps which is a bulldog that bulldog is named Chesty after Chesty Puller they're currently on Bulldog number 15 named Chesty the 15th in boot camp in Marine Corps boot camp recruits sing goodnight Chesty at the end of a long day he is embedded in the fiber of the Marine Corps then you might wonder who was this man and how did he become an icon to a group that is one of the most elite fighting forces in the history of mankind

the United States Marine Corps in order to find out who this man is we are going to to explore a book called Marine, The Life of Chesty Puller, written by Burke Davis. And I will go to the book. Lewis Burwell Puller was born June 26th, 1898, into a small boys paradise, the village of West Point, Virginia, with a Pamunkey and Patomone, Rivers form the broad York.

The waters were full of fish, crab, and oysters, and the woodlands teamed with game. Sounds like a good place to grow up. He often talked of his dream of going to the Virginia Military Institute and becoming a soldier. From his reading, his family traditions, his love of hunting, fishing, and horseback riding, He was drawn to a military life and VMI. Fifty years later at the end of a fighting career, he would look back to those days and say, I learned more in the woods hunting and stalking

about the actual art of war than I ever learned in any school of any kind. Those days in the woods as a kid saved my life many a time in combat. So he wanted to go in the military from a very young age. And of course I always have to mention that I'm going to go very rapidly through this book. It may take a while, but I'm skipping huge parts and trying to hit the highlights. But to get the full information, obviously, you need to get the book and read it yourself. It's a fantastic book. Back to the book. His efforts at translating Caesar made him impatient for the true message of the soldier author. He was so far. fascinated by the narrative of war that he devoured it in one night it opened a world a new world for him and began a lifelong career of serious military reading It's a common theme we see with great military leaders they read all the time and it started for him in a young age when he was Translating Caesar he was captain of a track team It's champion high drumper and ran well in the one hundred

two 20 and four hundred and forty yard dashes so he was fairly athletic, although he's not a big guy. He was not a big guy. And when you see pictures of him, he was pretty, he was relatively small in stature. And he was also relatively, you know, he wasn't like a bulked up guy. And there's stories on why they called him chesty. The predominant story is even though he was small, when he would march in on the parade ground, he would stick his chest out.

So they called him Chesty Puller. Back to the book. In the last week of high school in 1917, the senior class played hooky one day. day on the theory which proved to be correct that the principal would not dare expel them all Lewis was the leader of this prank and when they returned from a swim and a six-mile hike to the river he helped to bring back a dozen or more bullfrogs in paper bags. Lewis and Dave Field tossed the frogs into a schoolroom window and were rewarded by screams and other sounds of pandemonium. So he's you know I had to tell at least one of those stories that he was

A mischievous kid, you know, a little bit of a rebel He enrolled he did graduate Involved in the military military military And back to the book Lewis was promoted to cadet corporal at the end of the year Academically he stood a hundred and seventy seventh out of 233 cadets So well not like the front runner in the class his subject standings in his class mathematics two hundredth English 149th German 138th history a hundred and

hundred and second and most significantly military science 89th he had no demerits for the year and almost unheard of record so academically not exactly crushing it but military bearing and whatnot no demerits he was doing well now this is where things start to get a little bit interesting obviously is 1917 so we got World War I is going on and here we go back to the book his chief disappointment was that they were soldiers without arms for the rifles were taken by the army as the war in Europe war on and ammunition had been too scarce for target practice. With that, he said, I'm going to enlist in the Marines.

He said, I don't want the war to end without me. I'm going with the rifles. If they need them, they need me too. On June 27th, the day after his 20th birthday, Lewis took the train to Richmond and enlisted in the Marine Corps. Bound for boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina So wasn't going to sit around and let that war run out on him Shows up for his boot camp. There's a drill instructor. One of the great things about this book is the guy that wrote the book, Burke Davis.

He not only sat down and interviewed Chesty Puller for hundreds of hours, he also went and interviewed all kinds of people that interacted with Chestery Puller during his career which he interacted with a lot of people because he was in the Marine Corps for a really long time for decades and so the book has all kinds of Research and all kinds of interviews and one of the people that got interviewed was the drill instructor one of the drill instructors that put Chesty Puller through boot camp Drill instructor I think it was a gunry sergeant Desparais and he said by God he's a Marine he looks as if he must sleep at attention You always know I have to tell him to look mean and nasty out there marching, but I never had to tell him He's a natural he never makes the same mistake twice and he talked about he talked about Polar's military history knowledge

He said hell he gives me an inferiority complex I've read some but that kid knows von Klauswitz backwards and guys guys I never heard of by the dozen He's some kid this stuff is like a religion with him So he that's that's real stuff Right there. You know, we hear General Mattis talk about that too. General Mattis never gets surprised because he's read it before Not gonna surprise me because I already know I already seen this situation before maybe not exact, but I at least have an idea of it The non-coms admired pullers work on the bayonet field where big signs read Advanced to Kill for two months the class went through intensive drills in the bayonet rifle boxing judo and infantry drill

So back in the day they're still getting after it and boxing and judo by the way is a good combination Very good combination you get your takedowns you get your grappling and you get some striking One day the men were told that their orders had come And they were packed to leave for Hoboken New Jersey to ship out for France Meaning they were going to war The move was postponed for several days until armistice day Canceled the orders so the end of the war came He was detached and sent to the third officer's training school.

So they took him and said, you know what, you did so good in boot camp. The war's over. We don't have orders. We're going to send you to be an officer. Back to the book. He became a second lieutenant on June 4th. Two weeks later when he had finished machine gun school, the end of the war brought a huge cut in the Marine Corps. On June 16th, Polar was discharged with hundreds of others of his rank, and he was at loose ends.

He'd been a Marine officer for two weeks. Now, as he's kind of processing out, he met a guy named Captain Rupertus at the Marine Corps headquarters. And this is what the advice he gave him. He sees this young, hard charge, and says, if I were you, I'd go down to Haiti. You'll get commissions in the constabulary down there, and they need good men. And there's plenty of fighting. You'd see action and have some fun.

So at this point, in Haiti, they had been. basically built this This It's It's a gendarmery as well Jean d'Amerie is what they call it But it's a military force That also

Does police work kind of So and there was a there was a revolution in Haiti There was issues in Haiti and so America actually invaded Haiti in 1915 and now they had established this force to keep things under control And the way they did it is It was run, they took the locals and they put basically hired former Marines to be in charge of them. And then the goal was as the locals, the native Haitians, started to understand military operations. They would get promoted and the American Marines and soldiers could go home. That was the plan.

So let's see. I kind of just covered this, but Haiti was strife, was the strife, was the strife, Torn Western tip of the island shared with the Dominican Republic revolutions had been shaking the government since 1914 After almost a century of freedom from France since 1916 at the request of the Haitian government Marines had police the country amid violence which had taken nearly 2,000 lives almost all Haitian General Smedley smedley Butler who will get to sometime on this podcast Had created the Gendarmerie de Haiti with a shrewd disregard for precedent and

The senior officers were U.S. Marine officers whose brief tours of two years created a supply of field-trained commanders. But he chose the Marine enlisted men to act as junior officers and allowed them to stay as long as they wish on the theory that they became more valuable as they learned the language and customs of the people. In practice, it was these Marine enlisted men who operated the force. Under them were many native soldiers, most of them veterans of the old Haitian army. And from this pool they were drawn second lieutenants and sergeants and corporals. So that's what you have that's the situation So he deploys down there. He's not really in the Marine Corps He's a hired hand basically So now he's there not for very long and

Back to the book about 4 p.m. without warning Lewis stumbled into the first fight of his career Improved his instinct for combat the pack train this is a group he was moving a group of people through the woods the pack train was ambling around a wooded bend between hills which were littered with stones and cactus when it met an oncoming Kako band this is the the revolutionaries I guess you call him the Kako band of about a hundred equally surprised and at this end in the same formation polar sport is spurred his horse and yelled charge attack the column charged horses pack mules and all and in the thunder and dust fierce yells of the Kakos broke for the hills firing a few stray rounds so that was kind of his first combat experience you got to bring that up but he was default aggressive even in a

logistics movement you know they got a bunch of pack horses and he's like oh charge and it worked back to the book another situation that he gets into from the opposite shore a native and Dominican dress rode out on a magnificent horse a big buckskin with white mane and tail who splashed through the shallows under perfect control though without a bridle or saddle a wonderful horse puller said I'd surely like to have him Bruno who's one of the guys one of the natives that that was working under him muttered in Creole and a rifle cracked Puller saw one of his men pull his rifle bolt back and eject a cartridge the beautiful horse stood in the river looking nervously about his rider floated down the stream in a stain of blood

The stunned puller turned to Bruno. Did you order that man shot? Hell, sir. You said you wanted the horse. Anything the captain says is our command. We have discipline here, sir. The man seemed unmoved by the cold-blooded killing. My God, catch the horse, get the men over the river, and see if you can find that man's family.

And the reason I pulled this out is this line right here. Lewis never again expressed himself idly before these. soldiers so that's that's a crazy story right he says all that's a beautiful horse I'd love to have that horse and they kill the horse riders just a civilian but he realized the power that you have in command and there's sometimes when people don't realize that so people don't realize how I run in that with business leaders they'll walk around oh this is this is crap and everyone thinks it's crap then yeah or you know you've got to realize that your words have meaning yeah and when you're in a senior position your words have power and so that was the way how

he learned that listen in a very horrible way back to the book company a it waited the stream without opposition but as they mounted the ridge beyond rifle fired and there was a terrifying shriek of a bullet overhead puller ducked lieutenant leoidy was at his side and said captain polar officers do not flinch under fire they stand the men take note of this thing it is of first importance So he's gonna get plenty of exercise in that and you'll see he becomes well known for never flinching again under fire Here's something about the people they were fighting these caco bandits they carry off everybody and every wounded man And when they catch our wounded well captain if you see one you'll never forget the cacos believe every man who dies must go before the gods and they use their knives to see that when our men go they are beyond recognition they slash the

face to ribbons and tear the body apart you will see captain it's a matter of life or death for the officers and non-commissioned officers here to respect to have respect of the from the men and something more adulation they must obey orders to the letter without question though they die for it is the only way to handle men in combat if you lose control you lose lives it is as simple as that so there you see this super strict discipline that they're into And this is something that you're going to see this theme throughout the book that Chesty has this this Reputation which is earned of being super hard core But also in the book you're gonna see over and over again that there's a huge dichotomy that he's super hardcore

But at the same time he knows when he needs to give people slack He knows when he needs to be a positive reinforcement instead of a negative one and his rep his reputation doesn't have that but that line right there like hey they just need to do whatever you say he doesn't even believe that but it's it's pointed out and so I brought it up because the contradiction becomes pretty clear or not the contradiction but the dichotomy is very clear throughout this book so yeah back to the book general John a lejeune commandant of the Corps had come to Haiti on inspection and lewis was anxious to see the hero of the fighting in France and camp lejeune isn't called camp lejeune for nothing and at this point uh Marine Patrol filed pass and this is

good another another good lesson they were unshaven and ill-kempt I'm afraid the men are a little ragged and out of uniform sir and the the company commander Clinton said I'm trying to improve them colonel I'm a field soldier Lajune said I don't give a damn what men look like in the field only one thing interests me and that's ending this war don't waste your time shining them up for jungle work our only objective is success and I demand that. So there's a contradiction right there. Well, not a contradiction, but there's the dichotomy.

And he's hearing it from now. The other side is hearing this from General Lejeune who's saying, look, I don't care what these guys look like in the field. You don't need to polish them up. They need to win. They need to be fighting. And Chesty Puller becomes very famous for the way he appears sometimes in the field. Meaning he's not exactly spit and polish out there.

He was awarded the medal. military of the Republic of Haiti and he did not go unnoticed by his superiors and early in 1921 he was recommended for a permanent commission in the Marine Corps whereas rank was now that of sergeant he served as a adjutant to Colonel Vandigriff this is another famous Marine he again became a second lieutenant US Marine Corps but this time is a regular I may not have much else to go on he told a friend but I have some perseverance he had fought in 40 actions in Haiti he developed his instinct he developed his instinctive talent for using terrain in battle

and learned the lessons of jungle fighting he'd become strongly prejudiced against barracks and headquarters soldiers despite his youth he was one of the most combat season combat officers in the Corps so he got noticed because he did well in combat he eventually gets gets hired on into the Marine Corps as a sergeant and then very quickly thereafter goes back to the officer ranks after he's working for Colonel Vandergriff. So there you go. And you can see he develops this prejudice against barracks and headquarters soldiers. Rear echelon is what we call him. Now after he came back to the States, he gets chosen to run the Marine Corps drill team who is

apparently competing and they hadn't been winning against the Navy and the army and the Coast Guard teams they've they've been beating them and so he takes over so here we go private bob Norrish a company clerk drafted for the detachment shared the astonishment of his mates the lieutenant told us the first day that we would bring home the cup or die trying and from the cold eye he gave us we believed it we found out we found we weren't mistaken he took he took out the silent drill manual and started us from scratch he drove us day after day until we figured we'd never lived to see Boston when he was through with us we literally thought as if we had one head instead of 80 yet somehow though he was hard as nails he could be as friendly he could be friendly with us

like no other officer we'd ever seen we gave him all we had so there you go driving people hard but they love him and they love him because he treats him with respect and he's nice to him and that's the dichotomy and he he knows instinctively how to walk that line and that dichotomy leadership Back to the book. A few weeks afterwards, Polar was whisked off to his next duty station, assigned as a flying cadet in Pensacola, Florida, a chance which he had been pleading since his first flights

and he improvised Jenny bomber and haters. So I didn't cover this part in the book, but when he was in Haiti, he did, like, flights and dropped grenades on enemy locations, and he was into it. And he gets down to Pensacola and fails his two solo tests. And he left,

Pensacola disappointed and Interestingly three years after he After this happened He tried to reapply And this is an interesting comment the medical board in Washington in answer to his plea for one more chance Found him physically fit to fly But not temperamentally adapted for aviation training

So that's interesting you know that this guy who's obviously great combat leaders didn't have whatever the whatever they were were looking for for flying he didn't have it and he made multiple attempts when he went back home for a little while he went to a dance and there's some sort of interesting fact that that's the way they did it back in the day you know hey we're going to go to a dance and he met a woman named Virginia Evans he danced with her three times with fumbling attempts at conversation During the next dance he made up his mind his manner became assured will you marry me She laughed heavens know how can I do that when I haven't even finished the school You will he spent the night in the stag line watching and dancing with her

She noticed that he danced with no other girl after that meeting he did not see her again for almost 11 years But he never lifted the long range siege He gets his mind committed to something Virginia Evans was what he was committed to. He gets shipped off to Hawaii in July of 1926. When he shows up there, another interesting story. Lewis held firm discipline in its company, and some men were probably resentful until they learned

that he spared himself less than he did others. He was ruthless with violators of safety precautions where firearms were involved. And every time a man shot a weapon on the base without good reason, the fine was automatically $20. One day on inspection, Puller saw a 45 in the guardhouse, picked it up, released the clip, and pulled the slide and the trigger. The gun fired unexpectedly and a bullet furrowed into the ceiling. Chesty Puller had an AD, an accidental discharge.

Though he had taken all the precautions except to look in the firing chamber, Puller fined himself $100, which he gave to the guards to buy beer for a Liberty Party. He bombarded headquarters with pleas to send him to Nicaragua where war had broken out, and Marines were trying to put down a native bandit uprising. So war's going on in Nicaragua, and he says, hey, send me down there. Back to the book, Nicaragua was even more rugged than Haiti, a green rolling country of jungle and plains, dominated by towering highlands upon which were tumbled mountain masses. For many years, revolutions had torn the land, despite the presence of U.S. Marines, And now a bitter new war had called them back after a year's absence.

In the north lay an unconquered Indian Empire whose people did not recognize the central government. And there, where he moved back and forth across the border of Honduras was the rebel chief. Augusto, Caesar, Sandino. So that's what's going on in Nicaragua. Chesty Puller shows up, reported to General ER Beatle. And he says, I'll give you a company up in the... Sego Vius in the north. I understand you like to mix it up.

Big mix up. Big mix it up. So this is, again, you know, this, there's so many things that he does that just build this incredible reputation that he ends up with. And here's one of them. The native boss was a fire-eating brigand who had been appointed as the local hefe, hefe politico. Polar invaded his office accompanied by a sergeant and in brief words told the terrorists that he would that he had come to restore order and that trouble troublemakers would be would fare badly he ended quietly you will be held responsible for any further disorder with your life as he talked he saw a partially open drawer in the desk before the chief and the butt of a revolver the boss looked as if he wanted to snatch the pistol go ahead polar said use it if you can't We'll settle this once and for all. You'd better be fast. Like, who does that? I'll tell you who does that chesty puller does that

Puller's career as a guerrilla fighter now opened in earnest in February 1930. He was ordered to clear bandits from the area of San Antonio Bill Lee, who had earlier served three years in Nicaragua had been pleading for a chance to return. Lee was a tall muscular athlete from Massachusetts who had been 16 years and the corn was conditioned by years of playing fullback on the team of a coal-burning coal-burning battleship and by boxing and pulling an ore on a crew Puller unhesitatingly chose him to help direct company M and Lee and Lewis found and Lee found Lewis an ideal commander This is this is classic he this is what Lee says about his commander which is chesty puller He never really gave me orders he just told me what headquarters wanted at

Asked me if I knew the country and to get up the men we needed. He was a common sense officer and you always knew where you stood with him when he was displeased about something I'd done He never chewed me out as so many inexperienced officers would have done He would say if I'd been doing that I'd have done it this way And that would be the end of it we got on like brothers most important of all he was not green when he first came to Nicaragua Haiti had taught him jungle fighting and he took the to the new country like a native that paragraph right there It is just it's so important especially again when people get the image of a Marine and of chesty polar that he's just gonna Whip everyone in the shape like no that's not a good leader

That is not a good leader back to the book general McDougal recommended polar for a Navy cross Siding five fights against so this is after he's been there for the while citing five fights against superior and numbers without loss to himself the nine known enemy dead and numerous but uncounted wounded and the impressive loot of munitions and animals food and captured military dispatches the recommendation ended ended thus by his intelligent and forceful leadership without thought of his own personal safety by great physical exertion and by suffering many hardships he surmounted all obstacles and dealt five successive and severe blows against organized banditry

in the Republic of Nicaragua. So there you go. That's what he's getting after down in Nicaragua. Here's another Captain E.E. Linsert, who is the intelligence officer in the Marine Brigade. He saw that some of the people were jealous. So he started getting a little bit famous. People started writing about him.

There was an article in the New York Times about him, and people started having some professional jealousy. back to the book and this is lynn set talking now and then from new york times now and then the new york times got some of these stories from nicaraguan papers and puller's name became widely known a few officers around headquarters who thought of themselves as clouds of its types muttered criticisms of poller and said he was a publicity hound i knew that the opposite was true and that louis spent virtually his whole life in this period on the trail deep in enemy country while our staff officer friends sat on their duffs in the cities far removed from the warfare but you get that

professional jealousy there's a classic example of it here's a general julian smith talking about lewis polar he was probably the bravest man i ever knew his was a cruel courage not one of desperation about the only way to contact the enemy there was to let them ambush him he would go anywhere without support knowing that if he got in a gym he had to get himself out he never hesitated He invited that kind of work He's getting after it He went home for a little while he visited his younger brother Sam who is also a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps And then polar landed in one of the army infantry schools

The army army's infantry school he went to that school while he was there sometimes had some disagreements with the staff here's one one lecturer told the students that volume of fire in the field was more important

than accuracy that brought polar to his feet you must have forgotten what happened in the American Revolution he said we won that war with accurate fire when the enemy had all the volume it won at King's Mountain and Saratoga and every other battle we won and real

shooting almost whip the mass firing federal army in the civil war it's still like that anywhere I've seen men shooting it out you don't hurt them if you don't hit him great point even though suppressive fire is awesome and massive volume of fire definitely will keep the enemy down heads down you got to hit them that's you know I've talked about this before but that's like why in Ramadi our machine gunners were putting put putting scopes on their machine guns which is I mean they're part of partially doing it for to be able to identify who they were looking at positively identify enemy looking for weapons because you got a little magnification on your scope but still they also wanted to like hit what they

were shooting at obviously our snipers and riflemen were doing that too but yeah you got to hit what you got to hit some got to hit the bad guys back to the book and this he was at Ben he was at that school at Fort Benning Lewis left Benning with many new friends in all services but most important carried away a distrust of over schooling military men here Puller talking the trouble with this school business is that we've taken it too far we sit around in classrooms and will the conditions of battle of course in actual battle you can't will anything not a damn thing because the enemy will do what you don't want him to do

or expect him to do almost every time then the results of actual warfare studied back in the schools the staff officers and planners most in most of whom have never seen real battles wonder what went wrong with their neat plans. You just simply cannot learn warfare in a schoolroom or anywhere else except in combat. And you'll never know whether you're a fighting man until you're under fire. Yeah.

He goes back to Nicaragua after that. Back to the book. Throughout the latter half of 1932, company M was on unceasing patrol, averaging 18 to 20 miles daily on the mountain trails, stretching it some days to as much as 40 miles. Polar and Lee and their troops marched more than 10,000 miles in the Nicaragua fighting, always on foot, for they early discovered that horsemen drew fire in every skirmish,

and so they walked without the mark of officer on their uniforms. 10,000 miles. On schedule on January 22nd, 1933, the Marines began leaving Nicaragua. in February 1933 Lewis was introduced to military society in Peking at the U.S. legation. His commander pinned on his chest the star for the Navy Cross he'd won in Nicaragua.

So he won another Navy Cross. Less than a month later, he took over the horse Marines. Lewis discovered that the 600-man U.S. Marine Battalion held only one field exercise each week. And this was called off in extreme heat or cold or a dust storm, but that the Japanese did not cancel their training marches for any reason. He put his horse marines through their paces daily, excluding Saturdays and Sundays, leading them on long cross-country rides with small dust storms boiling in their wake.

He rode into areas where Japanese were training in an effort to observe their details and their tactical work. So he came on and take over and we're just going to tighten things up a little bit. One training exercise a month. No, daily. We're switching to daily Back to the book, Lewis never forgot Virginia Evans. That was the girl from the dance and faithfully wrote her of his experiences in China in one letter he wrote so emphatically that she could almost see him blurting out the words he wanted to hear He wanted to say to her but dear even if you do marry me and make me a happy man even then if I hear the be the be able to be of the drum I must leave you I want you to know that get some he's she's not even married to him yet she's not even married to him yet and he's like hey you know

that's great if you marry me and make me happy man that's awesome but if I hear that beat of the drum I'm out gonna do what I got to do here's another he he got in trouble he got in trouble a lot because he didn't hold his tongue yeah and You're supposed to hold your tongue, right? And he did. That's why so many people loved him. It's also why he got professional jealousy, and it's also why he got in trouble sometimes.

Here's one example. Polar was aware of some American military errors on board the Augusta, and he never failed to expose them and talks with his intimates. Here we have a 10,000-ton heavy cruiser with about 800 men aboard. just one on the Asiatic station. The British have three cruisers on duty here. You ever notice that we have 37 typewriters on this ship? The British have just one machine on each of their cruisers.

Why do you suppose that is? You know damn well they don't read all those reports back in Washington when they get there. Paperwork will ruin any military force. They should have learned that from Smedley Butler. They'll shed this monstrosity. when war comes, though, and the fighting people will take over. So he doesn't like the paperwork. He doesn't like any, you can see he does the people that haven't fought.

That's who he's talking about. People that don't fight. They're the people that create paperwork. Because they don't understand how negative it affects everyone. So they create this stupid paperwork. And he ends up going to the basic school, which is like the officer, where the officers sort of get trained in all the fundamental principles of combat for the Marine Corps and he ended up being an instructor there here we go back to the book this is coming from a guy named Lou Walt Polar was my company commander and to me was the epitome of what the Marine of what Marine Corps training should do

not only in weapons or classroom or field training he gave us everything hard at every break in the field though he drove us until our tongues were hanging out men still gathers around him he told us tales about fighting in Haiti and Nicaragua of his patrols living off the land and fighting natives all his experiences not just guff every tale had some point being under puller in basic school did more for me than anything i experienced until i got to guadal canal he taught us use of terrain like a master how to use the tiniest bit of cover to our advantage ground form really met something when he explained it He taught us to use the bayonet with all the tricks of close-in fighting. You couldn't mistake it. He knew his stuff cold.

So again, the classic example of when people think, oh, if I'm nicer and I take it easy on the troops, they'll like me more. Yeah. Like, wrong answer. Wrong answer. Back to the book, on a freezing rain swept day just before Poller's marriage, the class of 1937, had an uncomfortable experience with him on the drill field. They wore no overcoats as they marched. Teeth chattered, but the ranks moved with precision. Lewis saw stray glances at the barracks detachment,

which came out for a brief drill wrapped in heavy overcoats and then disappeared. Those are barracks Marines, he said with an edge in his voice. You're fighting Marines. They completed the full schedule for the day, chilled to the bone, and soaking wet. So legit. Mm-hmm. That's, it's so legit. And he got married, and here we go.

The Pollers left the pleasant life of the Philadelphia Navy Yard in the spring of 1939, bound for the Orient. They had a few days in Hawaii and went to Waikiki, Key one morning to ride surfboards with another young friend, Lieutenant Gordon Warner, a champion swimmer who had studied

under Lewis at the basic school. The two men went out to see in a canoe into Virginia's astonishment. Lewis rode in with Wagner, balancing with his balancing with skill as rollers hurled them towards the shore Lewis then returned and rode in on a surfboard alone and turned to Virginia Come on you're going to try it to you never had so much fun Chestery puller getting some of that stoke

Awesome I just had to bring that out right even chesty puller like There's a little bit of stoke back to the book with a little further delay Lewis got when he sought for himself he would report to the new marine base in North Carolina swamp lands at New River where he would command the first battalion seventh Marines and prepare them for war so obviously Pearl Harbor takes place and he heads back to the States to take over the one seven Marines when the battalion returned from the field late afternoon Polter called a conference of his company officers gentlemen my name's Polar your new commander we have a good deal work to do together I'll be

slow to make changes but one of them begins tomorrow at the first rest period after we leave camp camouflage every man and every piece of equipment we've got no camouflage material major well do it anyways the best is in the field find a mud hole smear mud on your faces and hands twigs on helmets and blouses anywhere you can stick them pine foliage is good you'll learn the battalion began with marches of 12 miles daily This was pushed to 15 and then 20 miles. Puller punctuated drills with fight talks to his men.

They were very young, many of them beardless boys under 16 who must have lied about their ages. They were the most obscenely profane men Puller had ever encountered. Edward L. Smith, a young battalion doctor, educated at Yale and Harvard, confessed that the constant flow of filthy language actually sickened him. Now we had some guys that were marching and some people. of them fall out from the heat and he roared it and the major puller comes by when you were marching this morning I heard a marine on the roadside say there goes the goddamn seventh regiment I was amazed one of you didn't step out of ranks and knock him out cold one of his privates Gerald White a Yale man from Eastport Maine also a diarist began to

take note of puller he is never obscene remarkably for the vigor with which he handles Us he is tough and demands the utmost but there is always a kindly approach even when he is chewing you out that displays a touching sympathy Again, this is what this is what we're trying to do as leaders balance that dichotomy Here's polar talking to his troops one more thing whenever we are at chow the privates will be fed first Then the non-coms and officers last of all typical taking care of the troops when they were tough into that oh this is it when they're they're doing calisthenics and all their marches and he here we go back to the book when they were tough into that pull or put them through a series of night marches beginning after midnight the doctors like others learned to read maps

and compasses and to handle weapons including mortars the practice of identifying ships and planes a joke in most units became a serious business in one seven some medics learned morris code and manila John Bazelone, an army trained veteran machine gunner, traded semaphore lessons for instruction and first aid. Had to bring up that we had Manila John. It's like unbelievable, man, that these stories are just unbelievable. Here's another very cool situation. This young lieutenant was practicing some kind of an assault, and he gets a little complicated.

And Puller's what Puller calls everyone is old man Whether they're older than him or younger He calls everyone old man which is pretty funny So here we go, Polar's talking to this young lieutenant old man There's mighty little room for fancy tactics below division level The enemy are on the hill you go get him In the end you'll save men There are times when you'll have to flank but don't forget that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line

Get some I always talk about flanking And I'm a big believer Jesse Puller says hey sometimes you got a flank but sometimes got to go get some straight line Here's another important thing There's a there's a colonel that's running artillery training and he goes and talks to him Colonel you'll be starting artillery training next week I want you to let me know when when you'll fire I want to get my troops under it as often as I can and the colonel said there may be accidents

And Puller says we can chance those what I won't chance is taking a bunch of green kids to war before they know the sound of big guns. I know shells aren't the same going in and coming out, but this will help. So he wanted to get them right there under the sound of the guns. Lieutenant Cox, now the executive of a company, was impressed by Puller's thoroughness. Major Puller never stood aside and said carry on sergeant and most other officers did. He was in there with us, pack and all. He could walk down the best of us even the kids other commanders rode cars in the woods

But not polar here's another journal entry private Gerald white wrote for his diary polar must have marched twice the distance we did for all day long he kept marching up and down the column jaunty as a bantam rooster pipe clenched in his teeth ever alert to see that who to see that men who were succumbing to the heat exhaustion or blisters were taken care of by Corman Many times today I saw him take a bar which is a Browning automatic rifle. It's a big machine gun a bar machine gun or mortar off the shoulder of some Marine whose fanny was dragging and carry it to give the poor guy some respite Here's another situation again good dichotomy here somebody He finds somebody asleep on watch which by the way is like an incredibly horrible thing which you can get severely punished for Back to the book puller shook the boy awake old man it's dangerous to pull a tree Like this suppose Captain Rogers had caught you he'd have made a big fuss and then I'd have to court marshal you and slap you into the brig Maybe that's what I should do but I'll give you another chance pretty soon now we'll be fighting for keeps And you'll still stay awake or risk the lives of every one of us you understand me

So I mean talk about a way to endear yourself to the troops That's so awesome. Hey if the captain would have caught you And would have been a big Fuss. Luckily, I caught you. Puller was, so they deploy overseas. Puller was promoted to lieutenant colonel on Samoa. He wrote to his wife, Life is so short.

And when I was a child, I thought it would last forever and ever. My love for you, Will, Virginia, even into the next life and then on. The hardest thing that I've ever done was tell you goodbye. That was a black Tuesday, and I pray there will never be another separation. Yeah.

You're not right. You know, they're heading into Guadalcanal. So that's going to make everyone think life can get pretty short. Back to the book. Fire came from the sea where Japanese ships stood close in, unchallenged, and battered the area. Much of the grove was combed by flying fragments and men screamed in agony. Trees were torn and broken and many tumbled to the ground. People reported hearing General Puller or at this time Colonel Puller.

It's all right, men. Stay down and they can't hurt you. This won't last forever. Tomorrow will be our turn. So they had landed on the beach and they're just getting hammered with Jap from Japanese ships big artillery from the big naval guns The battalion left that left the perimeter that afternoon a file of more than 800 men The tail of the battalion had hardly cleared the perimeter when there was firing ahead

Captain Hayes was near the colonel at the moment every man hit the deck except polar We dived for the growth beside the trail, but he walked up and down the line talking as if he were on parade He told us it was all right and this was nothing to worry about just small stuff We began to get up again then and there he commanded that battalion as it never imagined it could be commanded The men saw what kind of man they had and the word went down the column as fast as light We lost our fear or some of it on a grassy knoll above the tank where the night's bivouac was planned the column met an ambush two of Bob Haggurty's platoon were killed two of Bob Haggurty's platoon were killed and the

unit broke into tiny groups leaving Haggurty without a command he lay in cover and watched polar it was the greatest exhibition of utter disregard for personal safety I ever saw definitely like I said whatever that officer was in Haiti that told him don't show fear under fire he took that one to the bank Back to the book. A runner just be, and again, I'm jumping around just from different combat scenarios. A runner just behind Puller was hit in the throat

and died quickly. Everyone else hit the ground except for Colonel Puller. First Sergeant William Pennington retained a vivid memory of the moment. The colonel stood there in that grazing fire with that little old stump of a pipe in his face yelling, B Company second platoon in line here. Machine gun fire kicked up dust all around me

and I stayed down in that knee-high, Kunei grass like everyone else in the ranks. He was the only Marine You could see standing on that hillside. Get this. Here we go. A grenade fell near the old man. No more than eight yards away.

Captain Zach Cox estimated. But Puller turned when he saw A company scatter and yelled, oh, that damn thing ain't going off. It helped to steady the men. The grenade was a dud. Yeah. So they get done. They're kind of like a situation. First few days of fighting back to the book Pullers battalion had 24 dead and 23 wounded the next day

Back in the main defense line of the perimeter He called together the battalion officers his voice was hard and his face on smiling Gentlemen at least we've all been blooded now I don't want you to be mooning over our losses and feeling sorry for yourselves or taking all the blame on your shoulders We've all got to leave this world someday We're all in the same pickle There are worse things than dying for your country. Some things about our action in the last four days I want you to remember forever.

There are some we'd all like to forget, but they'll be in your mind's eye as long as you live. I hope we've all learned something now take care of your men and make yourselves ready. We haven't seen anything yet One other thing back there on the hillside at Mount Austin I had trouble getting company officers up I hope you saw that cost us casualties never do I want to see that again in my command I want to see officers leading I want you to know that you're leaders and not simply commanders you cannot operate a military force in the field under these conditions with commanders alone civilians wouldn't know what I was talking about but you found out now that it's true there aren't many qualities in a man but one that is absolutely

necessary in an infantry leader is stark current Give that idea to your men in your own way. Don't worry over the things that are done that we can no longer help. Concentrate on building a better combat unit because that's the best hope of all of us surviving. None of us could help the fact that I was the only combat trained man in our outfit when we began. I was lucky enough to get the jolt when I was young. You'll come along fast and there'll be work for us. Let's be ready when our time comes.

That's that's that's that's I haven't really heard that point but you know you hear people talk about leaders and managers Yeah, and I've worked with companies and it and it's a good a good Sentiment right. Hey RP our leaders aren't our leaders are leaders they're not managers Yeah, well this is an interesting one of saying look it's not not not commanders Yeah, and if you think about the difference between commanders mean I'm gonna command you what to do Lead is I'm gonna lead yeah a very very cool Distinction between those two words back to the book he still missed nothing involving the morale of his men

Reagan fuller who began to feel the stark drama of the situation after the first severe fight grew a beard and swaggered around the perimeter like a desperado polar took him aside oh man you're carried away with this war business you're feeling too self-important about it that's dangerous this is just a matter of kill or be killed I got to read that again this is just a matter of kill or be killed And we've got to stay on our toes to have a chance Clean yourself up here's some shaving gear And when you're through you can take a drink from that bottle if you like

Again Connecting with your troops and recognizing that a guy's starting to go sideways a little bit and pull them aside and talking to him All right now again they're just engaged in a fierce battle at this point back to the book at the peak of this Puller had a telephone call from the regimental commander in the rear. Polar, we've got a change in orders. Execute a reconnaissance in force with your battalion along the coast road. Do not become involved in a large action. Be prepared to withdraw to maintain communications.

Reagan Fuller was within earshot up polar. As Puller shouted, in rage, how the hell can I make a reconnaissance when we're engaged down to the last man? We're fighting tooth and nail, man. If you'd get off your duff and come up here where the fighting is, you could see the situation. Again, this is why he wasn't always super popular up the chain of command because he spoke the truth Sometimes in the most not the most tactful way now Polar's battalion actually ends up getting the upper hand there and

He gets them kind of pinned down in Crushes him back to the book when it was over the regimental headquarters called back relieving polar of any necessity of a reconnaissance patrol and and permitting him to return to the perimeter. There was also a call from Hanakin, a request to bring back his wounded. Puller's men carried in all casualties from the two battalion. Two battalions. Puller's battalion had five dead and 21 wounded. Total losses were 65 dead and 125 wounded for the operation.

Puller estimated that the enemy losses to be at least five times that. But it was later revealed that the Japanese fourth infantry had lost almost an entire battalion with 690 dead the result of polar strike in the crater. Now, like I said, he speaks his mind. And remember I mentioned Colonel Vandigriff, who he worked for when he was a young lieutenant. Well, now Colonel Vandergriff is a general. And General Vandigriff, they're having a little conversation. Back to the book, the whole process was asinine.

They mixed up outfits as badly as they possibly could. There was no overall commander Division gave orders to Hanakin, whaling, and me Whaling was senior, but orders did not come through him My regimental commander was behind the river and not on scene Thus, when they found two battalions stopped cold in the fight Communications were so bad they pulled these two outfits and left me to face all the enemy We were blind lucky to come out as we did

Imagine them ordering me to go on some damn reconnaissance when I was fighting with every man I had proper designation of authority would have made everything clear. Boom. There you go. Proper designation of authority. People need to know who's in charge. And you need to put someone in charge. That's the way it's got to work.

When you don't have that, you get confusion. You get issues. Now there's a, there's like a field doctor there. Dr. Smith noted in his diary that Puller seemed more concerned over losses. He has become almost fanatical in his desire to see that men are properly cared for. If a man's body is lost, he is greatly disturbed and frets about the time lost before he can recover the body and give it a decent burial. There you go. There was one unpleasant matter.

A young Philadelphia who had earlier been a disciplinary problem on Samoa had failed the colonel on the crater march. Puller called Jim Hayes, the legal officer. I want you to have Hirsch tried for dereliction of duty in the face of the enemy. He threw away his load of mortar shells because it was. too heavy and he cost me the lives of several men damn his time I'll draw recommendation I'm going to have him shot and I don't think I cover it it's it the reason I pointed that out or I covered that is because that guy redeems himself in the future and it's one of the times where if polar says okay you're good he does some

incredibly brave and crazy things all right so here we go back to the book the major Japanese attack was expected along the Matin cow and most of the division strength was placed there. The Japanese moved to attack these positions on October 15th with the second division, with the Japanese second division assigned to swing far inland and hit the Marines from the south in an area where Polars men awaited. Nine infantry battalions set out on this march a total of 5,600 men, excluding artillery and other support troops. The soldiers carried or dragged everything, even guns over the rough trails.

They were laid in making their attack and abandoned many guns on the trail. So the Japanese are coming and they're coming aggressively. A company was weaker by one platoon than the other companies. For despite protests of Conner-Puller, there was an outpost of 46 of its men, some 3,000 yards to their front commanded by Sergeant Ralph Briggs Jr. of Fort Edwards, Wisconsin. These men had been out for several days to warn of an enemy approach. Colonel Polar was on the field phone during the day of digging in trying to persuade his regimental commander to have headquarters

Withdraw Briggs and his patrol They're gonna sacrifice those men That's all we don't need any bait on the hook as you say if they're coming they're coming This is foolishness to throw away that platoon and and they do a great job in the the mini series the Pacific of Kind of showing this and if you haven't watched the Pacific I mean just watch it watch it about 10 times I've probably watched it 20 times And he tries to keep them as safe as he can back to the book all right. He said let's get this straight Hold your hold fire until you get an order for me that the outpost must get clear before we open up if the bastards break through use the bayonet and keep someone at every phone wait Puller looked at his watch it was 10 o'clock yells rolled yells rolled from the right Japanese voices shouting in English blood for the emperor

Marine you die a Marine bellowed back to hell with you your god damn emperor sergeant manila john basalone's nest of guns is about the center of sea company in the middle of the line with a slight decline in his front the enemy drove toward him so persistently that he covered the hill with their bodies and when the first fury of attack faded he sent men to push down the wall of enemy bodies to clear the fire lane of course that's john basilone who has awarded the Medal of honor for those actions that night now there's a artillery commander, a little bit to the

rear named Deval and Puller is asking Deval for massive artillery support because they're like going to be overrun. Puller called Deval again. Give us all you've got. We're holding on by our toenails. I'll give you all you call for a puller

but God knows what'll happen when this ammo we have is gone. If we don't need it now, we'll never need it. If they get through here tonight, there won't be a tomorrow. That's the situation that they were in Reagan Fuller called from the CP from the flank Colonel I'm just about running out of ammo I've used almost three and a half units of fire

You got bayonets haven't you Fuller Sure yes sir All right then hang on And the heaviest of the firing when Puller Had left the CP Regimental headquarters called for him Not here sir the wireman said Colonel Puller's up front

Find him get him on the phone After the crew had made several calls to the line position puller returned and talked to the regimental commander if you remaining in the pit heard Polar's explosive reply what do you mean what's going on we're neck neck deep in a firefight and I have no time standing here bull flinging if you want to find out what's going on come up and see you know he was that good like he was that good that he was able to do that you know it's kind of like when remember when I was talking about Steve jobs a couple podcasts going I was like hey look he was a he was not a good leader he was abusive and he was but he was so good at his other skills

well he puller's such a great leader down the chain of command and he's such a great tactician and he's so brave and so do dominant on the battlefield that he does this stuff and like basically gets away with it yeah back to the book there was one enemy prisoner a little sullen warrant officer who refused to talk when he was brought to polar the colonel was so stung by the insolence of the prisoner that he slapped him with the flat end of an entrenching tool teeth spilled from the jabs mouth but they were false teeth he gave no information even then a later prisoner talked freely with puller and puller asked him why didn't you change your tactics when you saw you weren't breaking our line why don't you shift to a weaker spot that is not the japanese way the plan had been made no one would have dared to change it it must go as it is written that's why we have Decentralized command. That's the opposite of decentralized command.

That's called centralized command. Here's the plan. This is what you will execute. Don't do anything different. Back to the book. And this is kind of after this thing settled down. That's why they have prisoners. That's why he's doing interrogation.

That's why he's asking, why didn't you break, you know, why don't you change your tax when you broke the line? Back to the book, Pullers men found 250 Japanese dead inside their lines during the day. About 25 of them officers, who won a major who had committed suicide,

leaving a final entry in his diary on the loss of his colors and troops. I do not know what excuse to give. I apologize for what I have done. I am going to return my borrowed life today with short interest. Yeah, I thought that that was worth bringing up because you always hear about the fanaticism of the Japanese, but there you go.

That's it. I apologize, and I'm going to kill myself because I didn't succeed in my mission. Puller's casualty for the battle were 19 dead, 30 wounded, and 12 missing. Two or three days later when the stench of bloated bodies in his front made his men wretch Pulter persuaded division to make count of the enemy casualties and bury the corpses. This burial detail counted 1,462 bodies and spent two days in the grizzly work.

Bulldozers gouged holes and covered the enemy dead in great pits. So that's incredible. Incredible. That kill ratio. The colonel washed in the river with the troops and Reagan Fuller noticed that even when he washed his uniforms He stripped with the enlisted men in the river a common touch the men liked Fuller said Though a few of the Klaus wits type officers in the rear rank snickered behind his back the men knew he was real that he never put on an act and they loved him And again here's the dichotomy of it like we know what a hard ass he is

Back to the book puller shield is shielded his men from unnecessary necessary work a young officer who insisted that they police up the battalion area removing Jap beer cans and the debris of the battle was stopped by by the colonel Forget it old man let the boys get in their sacks and leave them the hell alone They're half dead from fever and fighting and they'll have to hop to it again any day now So there you go that's that that's like he just nails that he's perfect Another situation polar was 300 to 400 yards behind the point of his column the first salvo of Japanese fire burst just in front of him for the first time in his

combat career spanning 23 years his luck ran out under enemy fire he was blown from his feet by a spray of flying metal shell fragments has torn his legs and lower body and he was bleeding freely the field telephone was carried by a marine just in his rear call headquarters old man puller said I can't sir the wire's been cut the colonel struggled unsteadily to his feet and tried to help the communications man repair the wire as he stood an enemy sniper shot an enemy sniper shot him twice through the flesh of his arm with a small caliber bullets he sank back to the ground Sergeant Pennington had come up by now and he helped Shepherd lift puller into a poncho and get him off and get him off the ground to avoid tetanus infection Shepherd bent over puller are you able to stay in command sir? Yes of course I am I'll be okay I can't leave these men

May I call for artillery fire if I can get ready or phone working? Yes, if you know how. Men shoveled out a foxhole for puller and lowered him into the poncho. The telephone was placed in the hole with him, and when the line was repaired, he cradled the phone in one arm and talked with headquarters. Pennington listened as he discussed a mortar barrage across the river the next morning and the launching of a dawn attack. He's all shot up and blown up, and he's planning an attack for the morning.

Shepherd called in the artillery fire. Shell soon burst in the thickets across the stream and the enemy was quiet for the rest of that evening. Late in the night, Puller realized that he could no longer walk and called division headquarters. I find myself unable to proceed by leading my troops, he said.

After a delay word came back, Major John C. Weber will assume command of your battalion within a few hours. He is leaving the perimeter immediately. So that was you know he gets pulled out going back to the book lieutenant colonel puller is being recommended by general van de griff for the Medal of Honor for leading his battalion with seven holes in him continually for 24 hours three got recommended for the metal of honor

this did not develop but the division commander in addition to commending puller's battalion for its perimeter defense and putting in for a third Navy cross for its commander also wrote I have known Lewis Puller since 1919 he was one of the best combat patrol officers I knew just as he is an outstanding officer today He did a wonderful job with his battalion on Guadalcanal in every phase of the operation I am as proud to have him as a friend as I was glad to have him as a Marine Marine January 1st 1943 was warm and sunny and the loading went smoothly the gear was all stowed in the last of the first Marine division troops were going aboard

It was only then that their condition became apparent men who had fought for four months in the foulest climate in the Pacific and had been shelled, bombed, or shot at by snipers, almost constantly between battles, seemed to collapse at the same moment. Scores were unable to climb the nets into the ships and had to be carried aboard. They had shocked expressions with glazed, sunken eyes. For weeks, most of them would be patients with malaria, dysentery, assorted fevers and fungus infections. Virtually every man in the division had malaria by now. Poller said, It isn't so much that they're sick or even worn out. It's the reaction from the discovery that they're finally leaving this damn place and yet a lot of them grew into men here The divisions dead were 1,242 and 2,65

had been wounded Sickness was near total No one could yet grasp the importance of the island fighting on the day of loading out the longest of the Pacific Island campaigns had been fought and the pattern of future victories had been set the Japanese had paid a higher price here than they would pay again and had thrown all their disposal ships planes men and machines more than 50,000 men had been lost on the island or on the ships trying to reach it in Japan it was already known as the island of death for more than a year Radio Tokyo was to call the first marine division the guadal canal butchers So that's Guadalcanal. He actually heads home.

And here we go, back to the book. An aide in the office in Washington, General Thomas Holcomb jolted in with the news. The general is given you to the army, Puller. I mean on loan for three or four months. General Marshall wants you to explain the Guadalcanal fighting to his troops all over the country. You needn't fret about leaving your men. The division will be in Australia for the next six months before it can get back into action.

I expect you'll rejoin it in time for another big show. So there's time between these big island campaigns and he goes home to America to take over or spread the word about what the fighting was like. Back to the book. He often spoke three times daily. He was on and off planes until he all but lost track of his route. He told the story of his fight for the perimeter, of Bazelone pushing the wall of enemy bodies down the hill, of burial. by bulldozer and of weapons they used he told of patrols and thick growth but never of his wounds I can't tell you the japs are no damn good he said because they are good but we're better one

american properly trained can handle two of the yellow bastards they have discipline and they use the jungle cover better than we do but they can't think on their own i'll say that again they have Discipline and they use the jungle cover better than we do but they can't think on their own That's a critical dichotomy the the discipline which obviously obviously is something that I am Passionate about but if you put so much discipline in if you put too much discipline in place people don't think for themselves anymore They just wait they never change battle plans once they're made regardless of cost They think they'd lose face they have no artillery to compare with ours and our guns chew them to pieces they get the jungle rot just as much as we do they're not

Superman will whip the hell out of them and you'll be helping to do it soon I suppose if you take your training seriously then there's nothing to worry about but you'll have to be hard and you can be hard when you write with your families to try to convince them that we're in a war to the finish and that all these strikes and softness and confusion will have to go I can tell you one more thing. There are worse things than dying for your country. When he spoke to the war production board officials in Washington

here's what he said, I want to ask you why American troops shouldn't have the best, the world's best fighting equipment. On Guadalcanal, we saw our trenching shovels break at first use. All of our men now have Jap shovels because they're better and more dependable. Jap field glasses are better too. I have good

ones myself, German glasses that I've carried for 20 years. Why should American glasses be so poor? Not worth the dam in the tropics. They fog up and they are improperly sealed once they get damp they're done for I've seen hundreds of pairs tossed away in the jungle or sea because men know they can see as well with the naked eye what kind of American ingenuity or patriotism produce those he doesn't play this is a little part about humility we'll have to get over the idea

that we're the greatest people on earth in every respect that we're infallible and that no one else has ideas worth considering one of the reasons we had to fight against the odds on Grata Canal Guadalcanal was this Insufferable American notion of superiority and our carelessness in the face of danger. It goes back to Pearl Harbor and far beyond. He's saying you've got to stay humble. He can't be arrogant. He was summoned before the high command of the Marine Corps and gave some gave and gave the same forthright picture of the fighting he had seen Gentlemen, we have some of the same old troubles staff officers who've never seen combat issue unrealistic orders that cost lives time money and and ruin morale. For example, we were out there on that island trying to defend a perimeter when they waited, when they wanted to send a patrol outside, the command never used a single regiment, but sent out three mixed battalions. The logical thing would have been a regular regiment with one battalion leading the other and the other two covering.

Officers and men would be familiar with each other and there would never be questions about who is in command. But when we did go out, it was almost always with mixed battalions. It may look good in the staff officers chart here at headquarters, but it didn't work. It brought us only stumbling and confusing in casualties. More than once when we were out in the jungle, nobody really knew who is in command. I could cite you the names of many a man I lost because of that. It was inexcusable. This is something that it absolutely is very important to understand, especially for guys that are, I guess, anybody.

You work and you train in a certain way. As much as you can stay in the groups that you work and train with, right? And for them to just randomly, and who knows why they did this, but I'll tell you what I've seen. I've seen this, where let's say there's some operation that's a high visibility operation that everyone thinks, wow, that'd be a cool operation to do. Well, instead of just taking, let's say, one company, They go, okay, well, we want to get multiple different people to get to be able to be involved in this operation.

So we'll take one platoon from this company and one platoon from this other company and one platoon from this other company and we'll just send them all out there. That's exactly what he's talking about. It's like, no, no, hey, sorry, you guys aren't going to go on this operation. We're sending an alpha company or a bravo company or whatever. That's the way you do it. Play around. Here's a little comment because I love machine guns. a little comment on the art of machine gunnery

these guns are the most important firepower to infantry just I'm just making that statement chesty puller statement machine guns go be a machine gunner you know what I'm saying

I was so fired up one day we were at the gym and I walked in there was some some kid was signing up and he was no I call him a kid he was probably Old man 24 years old yeah And so I said hey old man No I and you know I think

I said you know I could tell You had like a high and tight I was like oh are you in the military He goes yeah I'm in the Marine Corps I said what are you doing the Marine Corps He said machine gunner I dig it Yes

Awesome All right Here's another Another comment We just don't know All we ought to know about warfare On land or sea Just off Guadal

Canal not long ago we lost three cruisers blasted down by Jap guns as they sat there Sitting ducks that's all I'll tell you exactly why we lost him the admiral in charge got a plain report that the Jap force was approaching at 14 knots by daylight so we figured at this speed the enemy couldn't arrive in his waters before the next dawn after dark of course the Japs stepped up their speed to 28 knots and got there got to the scene at 3 a.m. When our men were not even at battle stations Instead of keeping It happened like that I'm positive

And instead of keeping such thing secret We ought to have them emblazoned on the gate At every naval station We must not be too proud Or too stupid To profit by our mistakes And God knows that we make them Have you ever heard the term profit

From our mistakes before? No, but I really like it Yeah, I think I really like it too Why not? Profit from your mistakes It's brilliant Yeah, kind of puts it more into You know, they say learn from your mistakes, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But when you say profit, it sounds so much more valuable, you know. Yeah. Talks a little bit about, well, the psychological impact of combat. I know something about the strain of combat. For five years in Nicaragua, marched at least 20 days a month under constant threat of enemy ambushed.

But I never saw those, but I never saw in those Indian troops any sign of battle fatigue or anything resembling it. In the Pacific, I saw a lot of our people break down. My reaction is this. What does it matter how you're killed if you're killed in battle? Why does the louder noise in a fight with heavy artillery and bombs make such a difference? I think the difference is entirely in the mind in the preparation of men for combat.

In Haiti, actions when I fought, the men were all picked volunteers, professionals who were paid to fight and realize they might die in the trade. I'm sure from my own experience that it's the mental attitude I went through the worst days they had on Guadalcanal and I didn't suffer a bit I lost some weight but that was because we didn't get the proper food If we make our men tough in the mind before they go to war and give them an honest idea of what war is like We won't have so much of this trouble Why do we have to baby them with all this crap about careers and opportunity and foreign travel? Oh, yeah. You know what I mean?

Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. You know, they say, I forget where I read this, but people who come back from war, they kind of differentiated, like, where people who were in it, like, you know how, like, JP and you and I just always wanted to do this, to be a combat leader, to be a Navy SEAL, to be a commando, you know, like typically people with that kind of attitude, they, you know. don't get affected by it because it's kind of like this thing where they get affected less yeah generally you are correct yeah generally guys that like special operations guys that that's what they wanted to do and there's a whole bunch of other things that play into that as well the

training because he's talking about hard training well guess what in special operations you do get harder training yeah you have a tighter uh or you have you have you have a real close relationship with all your guys and you stay together with your guys that is helpful to you I mean it's not any tighter relationship that you have in an infantry platoon trust me I've seen those in Marine Corps and in army infantry and military units get tight doesn't matter whether your special operations or not but the training they step up the training they make it really hard that plays a role but I think you're right is that guys that think that's what they want to do then that helps

as well so there's a bunch of little factors but I think what his point is like there's two just two points Number one, make the training hard as, I guess there's three points. Number one, make the training hard as hell. Number two, make sure people know what to expect and don't talk to them about, like, the career opportunities.

I just answered this question on the way of the Warrior Kid podcast, right? Well, I answered the question. The question was, is it fun to be a Navy SEAL? And I answered the question, hey, is it fun? Yes, absolutely, it's fun. That's part of it. But the other part of it is you are going to go to war and you could die.

And that's a harsh thing to tell a nine-year-old or a 10-year-old. But that's exactly what you should tell a nine-year-old or a 10-year-old. Because that's what you're signing up for. I was doing another interview recently, and I told this story. And I've told it before, but, you know, it was like the first time some woman that I had been working with a company and some woman that was, you know, had her husband or something. Anyways, the woman said, you know, can you meet myself? son he really wants to be a Navy SEAL you know and I was you know I said oh yeah sure you know the kid was whatever 17 or 18 years old he was a junior senior senior in

high school and he was this you know strapping kid who is you know look like a great athlete and she wanted to bring me to lunch with him so we went to lunch and it was you know the details of the story I don't recall exactly but it was basically you know my son he wants to be Navy SEAL he he's on the swim team and he's on the track team and he played football and he just loves working out and he just I think he'd be great and he just he can do 28 pull-ups and the kids like yeah I love working out and I plus I surf too and I love the ocean I love the water and it was like cool and you know for a while

you know I was listening and then you know of course I was like yeah you know that's that sounds like sounds like you'd be well prepared for the physical aspects of it but what you have to remember is that the reason you become a seal is so you can go and fight in wars and you're You're going to kill people and you're going to be at the risk of dying and you're going to be at the risk of being wounded and that's what's going to happen to your friends if not you You and the when I got done saying like that sentence the mom's face completely changed yeah because it's what he's talking about right here which is Hey, you know it's travel and adventure and career opportunities like no what it is is is is war and savagery and the worst things that you could possibly experience is what you're going to experience. That's what you need to tell people.

Yeah. Those special operations and the conclusion for what I was reading there was people when they go in, knowing and kind of, how'd they put it, like forward leaning into the realities of a military situation tends to be special operations

or guys who want to do it for that reason. Not the guy who got sold on world travel, playing for college. guy's definitely gonna have a rougher time with it and you gotta remember too there's hundreds there's a massive percentage of army infantry marine corps infantry guess what they want to be marine core infantry they want to be that's what they want to do they're just as passionate about that as some guy that like because that job it's a little bit different but a lot of that parts of that job are

you know when we had brian stan on we talked about this you know like brian stan was you get to be in charge of more people You get it's it's a it's a different dynamic But the combat leadership opportunities and and just the combat opportunities I mean when we're in Ramadi you know the guys the infantry in Ramadi those guys were freaking getting after it They were just it was insane to watch those guys Yeah So yeah and you know

There's plenty I mean there's the vast majority or there's plenty of guys in the in the regular conventional forces they don't they they they do just as good after combat as the as the special operations guys do yeah so it's more and you know we talked about this Peter Attia it's like if a guy's fractured going in doesn't matter be special operations or conventional forces or general purpose units he's if he's fractured going in the war's gonna mess him up yeah yeah if he's solid going in he's gonna do well right so that's the determining factor the training definitely helps the telling people the truth up front definitely helps but you don't know what you're gonna get yeah and there's

also plenty of guys in special operations that do have serious issues. Yeah, yeah, and the article wasn't about like special operations. That's not what it was about. It was more about the state of mind. I think special where I know that special operations was just like an example of some point that they're making. Well, we talked, again, I'm referencing all these different podcasts, but when Jordan Peterson was on, we talked about like the offensive mindset. Right, right. And the more offensive you can be, generally, the more psychologically comforting that is. It's psychologically uncomfortable to be. the defensive yeah it's psychologically more comfortable to be on the offensive right did I just get that right yes cycle okay yeah psychologically uncomfortable to be on the defensive psychologically more comfortable it's not necessarily comfortable because you still have bad things that can happen when you're on offense but it's definitely psychologically more comfortable yeah so those things play a role yeah more like you happen like to your experience are you consider an experience it's like I'm gonna happen to this experience rather than this

He's going to be offensive. Offensive instead of defensive. Absolutely. Kind of like when people say, hey, how is life treating you versus how are you treating life? You know that old saying. Yeah. You see what I'm saying. I'll go with it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just go with it. Just go with it. Here's another thing that he calls out. And this is very interesting. And everyone that's in the military will hear this and kind of shake their head. The practice of having command post exercises, Polar said, though he realized that he was treading on prominent toes in his audience we take skeleton forces of headquarters troops and the like just a handful and go through

exercises so often that we forget we aren't simulating that we aren't simulating actual warfare it has become so bad that even platoons are carrying out command post exercises in battle of course once you set up a CP which is a command post you stop for all you stop all forward motion because the commanders sit on their duffs in relative security and when you halt forward motion You get in trouble immediately. I have to admit we have to learn I admit we have to learn how to handle commands But we've carried it to a ridiculous extreme They do a lot of that command exercises. The most unrealistic thing about it is like he's saying that you'll have not a real platoon but like a small Representation of a platoon so the commander can move that platoon around real easily because it's this little thing

But then when you have a real platoon that takes a real platoon that takes a small? I mean, you have a real platoon that takes a small? I mean, you know, you can move that's a little bit of a platoon, you know, but then, you can't real vehicles and real you know it's like moving pieces on a board as opposed to like when you move this this battalion from here to there it all you do is just move this move their move their piece on a board that was real easy yeah you look at what actually happens in the field when you move that piece of a battalion it's massive it's it's it's this incredible project to make happen yeah to move a battalion you know four miles or two miles or or whatever. It's like, oh, this is what it's going to take. Fuel and food and ammunition and wounded and planning or all this stuff. But the person up top just goes,

oh yeah, we'll just move that battalion over there. Yeah. One morning as he approached a company of his men lounging among their tents, a newly arrived lieutenant barked in order and the Marines scrambled to their feet standing in attention.

What the hell's wrong with you? Puller roared. Don't you think I've got more sense than demand that you put on a show every time I come within pistol range? Get back down on your duffs. You ought to know me well enough that I'm no damned bandbox soldier Take it easy. There's enough for you to do when we get to our next assignment again

Dicotomy. It's like hey, you don't need to snap to attention every time I come around There's an army quartermaster and the general showed up and they had asked for a bunch of shotgun shells here we go back to the book He's asked for 10,000 brass buckshot shells. What the devil it is he want with those? To kill Japs with, sir, doesn't Colonel Polar know that Buckshot is prohibited by the Geneva Convention? Sir, Colonel Polar doesn't give a damn about the Geneva Convention any more than the Japs did at Pearl Harbor. Now, as they're getting ready to go and assault, Gloucester, the enemy had word of the coming assault. Radio Tokyo blared one afternoon in late December, the first American Marine Division, assorted cutthroats, degenerates, and jailbirds has been chased out of Melbourne is now in camp in New Guinea and will try to

invade Cape Gloucester. I'm pleased to add that our soldiers are fully prepared to repulse this insolid attempt. The jungles will run red with the blood of the Guadalcanal Butchers. So that's that's that's that's the propaganda. Cut throats degenerates and jailbirds. So now they're going to Gloucester, Cape Gloucester. On the early morning of December 26th, they stood off Cape Gloucester. Big guns on the fleet rolled for a half for an hour and a half beginning before dawn and the Marines and their traditional D day breakfast ate their traditional D day breakfast of steak and eggs

While salvos shook the holes beneath them Third battalion seventh Marines landed first quickly followed by puller's old battalion which floundered through a morass behind of the beach and pushed up the tall knoll already known to aviators and ship gunners as target hill an hour after the seventh was ashore the first Marines came turned toward the airfield and walked into a well-laid Japanese ambush. Tanks came in to clear the enemy from their hidden bunkers, and by nightfall, the first was well on its way to the airfield. A falling tree in the soggy forest injured one Marine, and otherwise there were only 20 killed and 22 wounded on D-Day. Enemy casualties were estimated at 50.

On December 30th, the 1st and 5th secured the field after hand-to-hand fighting, in which they had to call on tanks for help. One sergeant remembered a moment from a mortar attack by the enemy. A kid sitting there in his foxhole, he didn't have any head. He just had a neck with dog tags on it. A gray-faced youngster nearby was muttering as he fled. As he fired his rifle, it don't do any good. I got three of them, but it don't do any good.

Japanese snipers had infiltrated the line and killed Marines at short range. And one unit tried to wade the stream was broken. It's survivors driven to hide in the weeds on the edge. From midstream, a boy who failed to make it over, hung over a log, his body riddled by a score of bullets. For a half an hour or more, he called to his mates before he died. I'm here. Here I am.

The attack had stalled. The line had now become U-shaped with a pocket of the enemy holding back the center. General Rupertus from division relieved the commander of the third battalion. commander of the 3rd battalion 7th Marines and sent Puller into action once more with orders to reorganize and drive forward the unit So they weren't making any progress and the commander said you know what I'm putting Polar back in action Sending the wolf the trouble was the same here's here's Puller talking to his guys as he showed up the puller was the same old thing the the trouble was the same old thing staff officers don't know the meaning of terrain and how it can slow down troops and cost lives.

I went up to the front about two in the afternoon. I called the company commanders and told them as briefly as I could what I had in mind. I've been sent to take over. Your commander has been relieved. I don't intend to be relieved. Be relieved. You can bet on that. We're going to attack here in the morning.

There were protests that the Jap bunkers could not be seen and that they were cutting up our line. I told them I had the medicine for that. I ordered up some of Joe Buckley's half-tracks because I knew their guns could deal with the bunkers. the resistance was fairly light But the staff orders were so foolish That we were just sitting targets

That we were making sitting targets of our people Buckley did a great job there as he always did They had orders in these battalions to guide both right and left An order that can't be followed well even on a parade ground Any beginner knows that you can guide left Or you can guide right or even center But you can't follow two leaders on either side at the same time The line will buckle and cause gaps

We were frustrating the troops with delays to reform the line. I just said now we will go forward and forget about all this guiding business Just forget there's anybody on the flanks. We have enough power here to drive and we're going to drive Blow your way through think of nothing else So important part there once again you can't follow multiple leaders at the same time And he's talking about a physical example Like you can guiding in the military is when you're marching you look to your left and you you you you you you fall you line up with a person to your left usually these people were saying no line up with the person to your left and the person to your right how the hell are you going to do that yeah you'd

not that's the answer before the gun stopped a staff officer from division uh i and and and a staff officer from division went up on the line and here he says i went up there in the heaviest of the action when fire was flying all around us polar walked around outside the wire at hill 660 and stopped Every dugout to talk to some kid. He'd say how's things going there old man just as if he'd come from next door to borrow a cup of sugar Those kids thought it was the greatest thing that ever happened you'd think you've been handing out thousand dollar bills down the line and there was some place to spend them Puller had found one demoralized boy sitting stonely in his hole looking out with a telltale thousand yard stare he muttered over and over Colonel we got to get the hell out of here That's no way to talk old man

Puller led the boy a few paces to the rear and sat with him for 10 minutes or so Look old man I want to go home too I'm not getting any younger hell I'm 45 years old You know that I got a family at home I know this dump is no good But neither of us is going home until we lick these bastards We've got to make we've got to help make our folks at home safe too I'll try and get you some hot chow up here old man So again you just got to go

guy that's totally gets it lots of heavy fighting uh they get gloucester secured in february nineteen forty four polar had a physical examination the cape and the camp at cape gloucester and aside from a notation of a recent attack of malaria was found in perfect condition on the same day upon hearing rumor that one third of the veterans the guadalcanal was to be rotated back to the states puller wrote general holcomb the commandant in terms which would have been appreciated by a caesar or napoleon It is respectfully requested that my present assignment to a combat unit be extended until the downfall of the Japanese Empire. Freaking get some.

The division recouped and drew replacements. The first of the new weapons began to appear in quantities. The Springfield had almost disappeared now to polar sorrow. He was interested in the first of a new style flamethrower when an officer brought one by. The youngster proudly explained the work of the deadly torch and looked to puller for approval Where's the bayonet fit on it? It's another like famous quote from Chesty Puller Here's a flame thrower, but you need to put a bayonet

Fitting on it just in case He's counseling his officers about about Showing being brave and stepping up and at the same time here's the here's the dichotomy he says I don't want you to go up under the guns just for show it's only the idiots and green kids who think they're bulletproof but if you don't show some courage your officers won't show it either and the kids will hang back it's that it's that kind of an outfit that always has trouble next

we go pull a return to Pavu to find a new stir in the camps the allied landings in France were expanding the new B-29 had begun to bomb Tokyo Saipan had fallen Whole fleets of cargo ships Had brought the first division New equipment to Pavuvu And there was word of an independent role

For the Marines in a new operation General MacArthur would follow his own southern course On an island hopping But the Corps would stab into the Central Pacific Pulitzer could hardly conceive the scope of the new Marine Corps Which he had known to as a force of a mere 19,000 It's pre-war days There were now five divisions and a brigade in the Pacific

and another division in training in California well over a hundred thousand men in late July on that same day Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman were nominated for the coming elections back home Marines landed on Guam a few days after Lewis got the news Lieutenant Colonel Sam Puller had been killed shot through the heart by a machine gunner's bullet his intimates notice a new reserve in the colonel in these days but it was not long before still another false report was added to the growing polar legend Marines whispered that when he got word of Sam's death he had said grimly those who lived by the sword must die by the sword the loss of Sam had in fact touched

Lewis deeply he covered it with silence and a hurry turning to other topics when officers spoke of his brother's death on Pavuvu the division in tens of It's testified its work and sweated at war games on the beaches and in the palm groves there was a new watchword Pelulu the next target So yep his brother lieutenant colonel Sam polar was killed and he got word of that hundred only a hundred thousand marines That might seem like a lot, but that's that that's that's not a lot When you consider what the tasks that they had before them so now they're heading they're heading to pelaloo the next target But when the big fleet left for the Palau's to follow the bombardment ships, there was but a single somber note.

Abord one of the vessels were stacks of many hundreds of white wooden crosses, far more than a two days supply. Two days from Palo, there was a report from the underwater demolition teams whose men had boldly swum into shore and inspected Jap defenses. Nothing serious, they said the way would be cleared. Puller's mind was not relieved He had never before felt pessimism at the opening of a battle Now we're starting the invasion There was no moon the sky was filled with stars and there was not a trace of cloud Toward the dawn of September 15th the transports had come into position

On the horizon the guns of the fleet spurred and fire for hours the thunder was unbroken But as gray edge sky As gray edge of the sky pace slowed and the fire became to sultry the island was invisible occasional flares erupted above it in the darkness and drifted from sight the troops had breakfast before daylight steak and eggs again and when the first of them came to the decks the chain of the Palau's lay in a black silhouette across the sea there was a moderate swell a breeze sprang up coming from the island of Pelaloo the guns broke into a full cry once more and the final shelling struck target the two assault battalions of the the first Marines went aboard the big landing vehicles on the decks the malls of the ships clanked open and the amphibious tractors were spewed forth milling as they formed lines ready to move forward toward the breach the beach they were 4,000 yards out vast flights of planes came over wheeling in from all directions they dived bombed and climbed over pellulieu for an hour

or more and soon after the first of the bombs fell a slow hesitant curtain gathered over the land it seemed impossible that anything living could have endured but at last as the assault began a puff of anti-aircraft smoke flowered in the sky and a plane dropped in flames just before 830 the first wave started shoreward puller watched for the signal flag to dip from the yard arm of a control boat in his front the Amtrak's foamed away on the broad wakes at almost 830 precisely the vehicle ground on the sand puller never forgot the scene I went up over the side as fast as I could scramble and ran like hell at least 25 yards before I hit the beach flat down when I looked back to the Amtrak I saw four or five shells hit it all at once a few men were killed getting out too slow but most of them were saved because they got out before we stopped moving we lost our communications officer his leg was blown off and he couldn't be saved I looked down the beach and saw a mess every damn damn track in our wave had been destroyed in the water by the enemy or shot to pieces the minute it landed I tried to get a line set up for defense

The wiremen were there fast as soon as I was doing their job without further orders and we lost several of them in the hot fire Every platoon leader was trying to form a line of his own just as I was Runners were going up and down the beach as we tried to get organized that big promontory on my left hadn't been touched by all the ships guns and planes and we got a whirlwind of machine gun and anti-tank fire Puller's second battalion drove through a heavy growth of woods now torn by the shelling and and by 930 had driven 350 yards ahead to the edge of the airfield. They tied on the line of the 5th Marines. Casualties were reported as heavy, but the trial of the second had only begun. The new position was faced by an obstacle marked on none of the invasion maps,

a sheer coral ridge whose sides were honeycombed with Japanese positions, from foxholes to gigantic dugouts of reinforced steel and concrete, some of them with four levels, each of which could be closed off, with steel doors. For eight hours, the regiment endured the most savage fighting of the Pacific War. General Smith had come ashore at 1130 a.m. When the phone line was spliced late in the afternoon and he talked with Puller, he had only one, he had only a calm report.

We're dug in solid and we've got the 01 phase line all right. Pollard made no mention of especially heavy casualties or of need for help. It was estimated that the first Marines had lost 500 men during the day The first water that had come ashore in oil drums and was foul Polar shouted his rage to the officers on the ships Bellowing for new supplies Here's here's here's puller's report Enemy well dug in opposition strong little damage done by our preliminary fire hard fight ahead

Casualties over 20% I've ordered no man to be evacuated unless from bullet or shell wounds. Request further supply fresh water. Ours still undrinkable, men retching. Puller called division and talked with Colonel Selden the chief of staff. He remembered the conversation years later. Johnny, half my regiment is gone.

I've got to have replacements if I'm to carry out division orders tomorrow morning. You know we have no replacements, Louis. I told you before we came ashore that we should have at least one regiment in reserve. We're not fighting a third of the men we brought in all these damn specialists you brought Anything wrong with your orders Louis? No, I'm ready to go ahead, but you know my casualties are 50% What do you want me to do? Get me some of those 17,000 men on the beach You can't have them. They're not trained in for infantry Give them to me and by nightfall tomorrow. They'll be trained infantry

Polar went out with a runner stumbling through the night to find posts of his battalion commander's and pass on the order we press a top attack at eight o'clock in the morning no change full speed use every man He full fell more than once and cut himself on the coral Shepherd and others had left and others left at headquarters Notice that the colonel was beginning to limp and that his left leg had swollen Selden called back Polden you got my orders okay? Yes, you need and explain further I just came back from my battalions. We're going to take ground tomorrow without replacements we're willing to try, but don't forget we're just going to add 10 or 15% to our casualties. When the sun rose on September 18th, 200 of the 473 men in Poller's third battalion were

headquarters personnel. Many frontline units had been decimated. Long before noon, there were cases of heat prostration. The blazing sun was hotter than ever. Faces and lips were cracked and bleeding. Salt pills became scarce again. Polar was optimistic, for they started the attack from high ground but the crucial days still lay ahead Hank Adams came by Polar's command post and found him half-clad in filthy sweat-soaked trousers with a heavy beard on his face I'm coming back this afternoon colonel do you want me to bring you a fresh uniform hell Hank I've got no time for that every man in the outfit will get clean before I do lieutenant colonel Lou Walt now the executive officer of the fifth Marine saw puller

at a command conference during the day he was absolutely sick over the loss of his men the enemy fought hand-to-hand until daylight beating off charges that no survivor could count as first light spilled over the ridge the shrunken company beat back the last Japanese attack with stones ammunition boxes bear fists and bayonets several of the enemy were flung bodily off the cliff and fell shrieking in onto the splinter entered coral below but they did it at the end of the day the regiment reported a total of 1,878 men lost since D-Day the fighting went on without a break until September 23rd when the first Marines rested in lines without advancing they beat off several counterattacks

and patrols pushed out a thousand yards down the west coast without serious opposition the regiment was relieved at 2 p.m. of this day by the 321st Regiment of the 81st Army Division. The new commander took one look at the forward command post. Puller had occupied and ordered it moved more than 1,000 yards to the rear. In nine days on the line, Puller's regiment had eliminated one major blockhouse and 144 defended caves and lesser pill boxes. Division reported that 3,942 Japanese had been killed in the regiment's zone.

No enemy had been captured. Puller's total casual casualty of men were 56%, the highest regimental losses in the history of the Corps. The first battalion had lost 71%. The second 56%, the third 55%. Headquarters and weapons companies 32%. General Smith, who walked the terrain after it was finally captured, Said it seemed impossible that men could have moved forward against the intricate and mutually supporting defenses the Japanese had been had set up

It can only be explained as a reflection of the determination and aggressive leadership of Colonel Polar Now Polar that's the last major combat for Polar was it Pelulu He ends up going back to the states for a bit and while he's back on the states back in the states America drops the atomic bombs on Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the war is over. And shortly thereafter, they order General Puller to, or Colonel Puller at this time, to the reserves. Now, like I said, he didn't get along with some people, especially up the chain of command.

And he didn't want to be sent to the resorts. reserves because that's that's not what a career Marine wants to do so here we go back to the book colonel you've been ordered to reserve duty in New Orleans it's a big district you know and very important to the Corps polar was not misled he realized what it meant to be shunned to reserve duty into a side pocket many a marine career had ended that way one of the inevitable problems with the Marine Corps and this is polar talking one of the inevitable problems with the Marine Corps or any other military services that staff officers take over the minute a war is ended the combat

people run things when the chips are down and the country's life is at stake but when the gun stop nobody's got use for a combat man the staff officers are like rats they stream out of hiding and take over it's true just watch what happens to paperwork God in peacetime they'll put out enough to sink a small-sized nation into the sea and when the war breaks out most of it just naturally stops that's the way they do everything there must be a staff of people of course or we never get everything done but if we don't stop this empire building of staff somebody's going to come along and lick us one of these days we'll be so nodded in red tape that we

can't move well we you ever seen that seal team thing you know put it on a t-shirt or something but it's Freddie the frog the little symbol of the frog man the Freddy the frog and he's like in a glass jar or a glass casing and it says in case of war break glass yeah because like you don't want the guy around when peacetime is going on right right that's what that's what chest that's another chesty puller right they don't want him during peace time because he's causes he speaks up well peace didn't last that long on June 25th 1950 North Korean troops poured across the 38th parallel in strength, and war had returned. Polar recognized all the signs.

He immediately asked for a modification of his orders and said urgently to headquarters. Attention is invited to the fact that I served as an officer in Haiti and Nicaragua and in the Pacific Theater for eight years prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. This experience will prove a value in an assignment to combat duty in Korea. And well, the senior senior. your personnel know that and he gets what he asked for polar arrived in southern California in the heat of late July and found San Diego an area of bedlam marine reserve is thronged in every in from every corner of the nation's thousands of

vehicles stored since World War II were being overhauled and driven to port trains bore regulars from the East Coast unattached officers came from everywhere without a call volunteers for war the first marine division was being created almost from scratch so they'd They had dismantled so much of the service after World War II, and now they got to rebuild it all very quick. They do. They talk about it in the book. I skip over that, but we know what that consists of hardcore training, getting people ready for war.

Finally, they get, he gets to Japan, and they're waiting now to go in Korea, into Korea. Puller hailed a passing medical corpsman and went to a nearby army hospital. I want to talk with some of the casualties. I've got to find out what's happening in Korea. He went up in an elevator with an army doctor who seemed on point on the point of tears go into the wards and see those kids and you'll soon know more about more than you want about Korea Take a look at all the self-inflicted wounds we've got and those kids are so green they don't even realize how obvious it is just from the powder burns Puller walked down many rows of beds talking with the men many of them frightened and broken and heard their tales of Korea Polar was sobered but not despair

He told some younger officers that night There's nothing wrong with American kids Their leadership has just all gone to hell There's a whole hospital full of babies you might say They were never given a chance to grow into men It won't be that way with our Marines, I'll tell you that They're preparing for D-Day in Inshan Which is one of the biggest amphibious operations

And they're getting ready for that and he has a little chat with his officers. We're the most fortunate of men. Most times professional soldiers have to wait 25 years or more for a war. But here we are with only five years wait for this one. During that time, we've sat on our fat duffs drawing our pay. Now we're getting a chance to earn it to show the taxpayers we're worth it. We're going to work at our trade for a little while.

We live by the sword, and if necessary, we'll be ready to die by the sword. Good luck. I'll see you ashore and listen up old men When you have something to say to your officers or men make it snappy the fewer words the better They won't believe it if you shoot bull when you face ranks of men and try that You can hear him sigh in despair when you open your mouth if they sense you're a phony They can usually look at you and tell maybe it doesn't sound like it, but it's important thing in a Marines career Don't try and

Don't try and what does he call it shoot bull don't try and shoot bull tell the boys what's going on for real They see right through you wrote his wife a letter before he leaves sweet I will be unable to write you again for a few days but you Virginia Virginia Mac Martha Lee and Lewis those are his kids Will be constantly in my thoughts may God bless you always and provide for you giving you much happiness and useful lives. You, my children, must take advantage of all opportunities and develop into good Christians. Much love to all of you.

I love you, Virginia. I always have. And I always will. Here we go into Inchon. By 5.30 in the afternoon, when the first waves of the Marines reached the shore, the men of the fleet could no longer see Enshan. Hundreds of boats milled in the outer harbor in their turn, crossing the Embarterm. location line and moving toward land where they disappeared into a bank of smoke and dust Polar went into his objective at Blue Beach with a third wave in a twilight hastened by

smoke Paul and climbed a 15-foot sea wall on one of the scaling ladders improvised on a ship en route they meet some fairly light resistance here's what polar says it won't amount to much tonight we took them by surprise puller's casualties have been light and the divisions total for the day was only 20 killed and 170 wounded polar was awake at 3 30 a m calling the battalion commander making plans for an attack at dawn polar swift drive hurried to hurry to joining forces in an effort to keep pace captain ray styles of ridges battalion saw that the secret was not only in puller's incisive orders he gave us pride in some way i can't describe all those of us had heard hundreds of stories about him and today

though we couldn't actually see him doing great things he kept building up our morale higher and higher just by being there when we were moving up two companies from the adjoining battalions marched abreast and got a little mixed one of the kid yelled one of the kids yelled what what outfit are you with Mac fifth Marines how about you I got it better I'm in pullers the troops in the first thought of the old man before they thought of their regimental number. By September 17th, D-Day plus two, General MacArthur was impatient to go ashore

from the command ship, Mount McKinley. He saw that his blow to Korea cut it in two and had taken the enemy by surprise and that chances of ending the war were good. He radioed Vice Admiral Arthur D. Struble, the task force commander after the first good news from shore, the Navy of Marines have never shown more brightly than this morning, MacArthur.

On one of the fiery days of the drive towards Seoul, a popular chaplain father Keating captured five North Korean soldiers and herded them along as prisoners He hailed a passing Marine Jeep driven by private wolf Son take these prisoners off my hands and get them to the rear before they're hurt I can't father I'm running ammo into the edge of town and they're getting low. I can't stop to do it Private that's an order take them over Wolf looked rearward at the burning city. You mean their mind now under my responsibility?

Yes. Wolf pulled up a light machine gun and sprayed the troops, sprayed the group killing all five prisoners. The outraged Keating went to Puller and demanded action. Colonel listened carefully, ordered Wolf arrested, and the priest went away, content that he had done his duty. Ten minutes later, Puller Astinade, What outfit was it that lost all those boys last night?

Barrow's company, sir All right Give that boy Wolf a bar and send him up there Jones took the story to his cronies as an example of the military justice at its best It spread through the outfit to become part of the polar legend Yeah Yeah That seems like

A pretty squared away thing to do There's like a political That's getting completely destroyed and they've taken a bunch of casualties and you got this kid that did something wrong and we could arrest him and put him in prison or whatever or we could send him up to fight Puller sends him up to fight in the seven days since D-Day there had been a 1,148 Marine casualties 145 of these killed 20 more died of wounds and five were missing the North Koreans Puller said in his deep drawing voice are defending the city in such a way as to force us to destroy it. There's a billion dollars worth of publicity in this.

So this is when they're trying to get into Seoul. And the North Koreans are defending Seoul very hard. And polar basically has to get ultra-aggressive in trying to take Seoul. Back to the book, the fire of artillery and mortars had set the record for the Korean War. The four battalions of artillery had fired all shells at hand and had depleted a nearby Army dump the 4.2 mortars had fired 326 rounds and the big 81 650 rounds the 50 caliber machine guns had used 120 boxes or 30,000 rounds The night's Lieutenant Joe Fisher

Lieutenant Joe Fisher's item company to the test Fisher dug in for the night on an isolated hill in the city's factory district Overlooking the roadblock which was on his left flank from midnight to dawn he beat off waves of attack Fisher called for artillery At the same time, other frontline commanders asked for help, but between barrages from the North Korean swept up Fisher's Hill in a bonsai charges urged by shrill force commanders in their rear. Item companies' weapons, including machine guns, fired at top speed and bodies piled up below them. Toward the end when the attacks weekend, the fight turned into a turkey shoot and Fisher's men slaughtered the enemy. They were glad to see the sunrise.

Fisher never forgot that daybreak I looked down the hill behind me and saw a man hurrying up towards our position I could see that he wasn't lugging any ammunition and thought it must be an important message too hot for the radio Then I saw that it was Colonel Puller's runner and he had brought us a bottle of black and white scotch My God were we glad to see that it was passed down to the platoon with the most casualties and they rationed it out to those who needed it most We knew then that the old man was thinking of us and in fact never forgot us Puller came upon Marines dug in around a barricade taking cover from fire down the street He walked among them with the pipe stub in his mouth get up boys get up and go that's the quickest way to get it over If you're going to get it you can get it in holes too

The line moved Joe Fisher saw puller in the street he was going along where the fire was heaviest just like he was in Pendleton as if he didn't know there was a fight within miles I couldn't express how much good it did me and my troops to see him steady like that just puffing that pipe it made us feel like we could do no less than he did if there has ever been another one like him in the Marine Corps I never saw him in my day Bill Ferringo the veteran who is the field sergeant major had a glimpse of the colonel it was like going through hell passing down that sole street and who should we pass in the middle of it but Chesty. It was so hot that I thought the grenades and ammunition we carried would explode. The flames almost met over our heads from the burning houses, but the colonel didn't seem in the least concerned. It gave us an extra push. One of the most, they wrap up this inch on invasion. One of the most demanding operations in marine history had ended. The division had sustained 2,430 casualties, 414 of them dead of this total. 164 had been in the last five days in the streets of

soul in its outskirts Murray's fifth Marines had the worst of it with 1,038 casualties 177 dead Polar had a total of 787 with 92 dead Litsenburg 368 72 dead Polar wrote another letter to his wife everything is quiet now I and have little to do except get my reports prepared and submitted I wish I had a flare for writing as I as then I am certain this regiment would get the credit due them when the history of this operation is finally written. Now everyone knows, but in a few years what is written will govern. Rest assured that I will do a better job of getting the facts in my reports than I did in

the past war. I will also claim everything due the regiment. Many times I have regretted that my English education was cut short during the first war. Please do your best to impress upon our children the necessity of taking advantage of the of every opportunity in this hard old world of ours. So he recognized, you know, it's a sad thing. It's a reality, though. If you're in a leadership position in the military,

you've got to be able to write well. And he regrets that he wasn't a little better at it. So pay attention in the English class, folks. Polar Win ashore, they were back at sea. Puller went ashore in one of major Treadwell's landing craft to be met broadly by a grinninger. Oliver Smith. Congratulations, Louis. You made it. Your board has selected you for brigadier. Puller wagged his head. By God, if it hadn't been for this war, I'd have never gotten that star.

There was a mild celebration ashore that night for the new general to be. So he picked up, picked up his first star as a general. And like he said, if it wasn't for the, you know, he had been put down in some reserve unit in New Orleans. He wasn't going to make general there. but case of war break glass now he makes general polar wrote home daily he sent virginia a five dollar check for her good school and mark a good school marks adding some parental advice i'm very proud of my family and expect you to do well plus in everything you undertake the difference between success and failure in this life of ours is mostly hard work so you must constantly work to try and improve yourself

I think we could just frame that statement On November 10th The Marine Corps's birthday Puller used a captured North Korean sword To slice a hundred pound cake He shouted to his troops After he got done delivering the Article from Emmanuel

He shouted out Now that that's complied with I want to tell you something straight Just do one thing for me Write your people back home And tell them there's one hell of a damn war going on out here and that the raggedy-tailed North Koreans have been whipping a lot of so-called good American troops and may do it again.

Tell them there's no secret weapon for our country, but to get hard to get in there and fight. I want you to make them understand. Our country won't go on forever if we stay as 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. Yeah, there you go. He's not playing around. Isn't it interesting that we hear the same things now? Like America's getting soft.

That's what Polar was general Polaro was saying. After the Marines had taken Seoul, the 8th Army of the United Nations forces had driven through the capital, moving rapidly northward along the Korean coast. To meet them, Chinese Communist armies had marched 1,800 miles northward since mid-August.

The Chinese strategist at first concentrated against the 8th Army position in the northwestern hills, But when the Marines landed, they hurriedly switched much of the power to meet and overwhelm them in the chosen reservoir. The Chinese drove between the Marines and the 8th Army and maneuvered into a position from which they could attack each force at will. So podcast number 53, colder than hell is about the chosen reservoir. And there's another one, I forget the number. but we've done two podcasts about the Chosen Reservoir listen to those we're going to touch on it here as well

from the hills on every side of the perimeter chinese fire was heavy during the day the enemy blew a tunnel and a bridge on the railroad below kota reposition cutting the line to ham hung hung and the marine basin on the sea for two days polar called called in heavy airstrikes upon concentrations of chinese in the surrounding hills Things were even worse in the two positions to the north of Polar. At least six Chinese divisions had been identified in the area where Murray and Litsenburg fought. On November 26th, these two posts lost 95 dead and 543 wounded in night-long attacks. Hagaroo was preparing to fight for its life.

An offensive launched by the 5th Marines was called off after the day's grim news from the west. the 8th Army had collapsed. One wing of it was torn to pieces and the Chinese were slashing deep into the lines. Marines must now defend themselves in an enemy free, against an enemy free to approach from any direction through the frozen mountains.

The night of November 27th tested the men at Udomni when the three Chinese divisions fell upon two marine regiments. The enemy cut the road to Hagaroo and sent their assault battalions in quilted uniforms and sneakers into the marine lines with disregard for casualties. The first waves were driven off with great losses, but the others were thrown in through the night and the next. To the dismay of the Chinese commanders, not even the envelopment of Marine Command Post slowed the tempo of fighting and the American stage vicious counterattacks, even when many platoons had been reduced to the size of squads.

There were not enough tent for Marine wounded and the less seriously hurt were piled outside close together for warmth covered with straw as doctors worked over the more than 500 casualties. It now became clear that the three Marine positions in the chosen area were surrounded. Poller's reaction to the dread news was given to newspaper men who flew into Coterie. Here's what Polar said. We've been looking for the enemy for several days now. We finally found them. We're surrounded. That simplifies our problem of getting these people and killing them.

Yeah. You wonder. There's no wonder why this guy's a legend. Polar prepared to open the road to Hagaru with Task Force Drysdale, a British commando unit of Royal Marines under Lieutenant Douglas Drysdale, accompanied by Captain Carl Sitter's Company of Ridge's Battalion and accompanied from the 31st Army Regiment, which had come in. The road had been blocked in several places two bridges were out and the Chinese swarmed on heights overlooking the route The party met bitter opposition and within a few minutes had 14 casualties in three hours and half three hours and a half they moved only two miles with eight more to go

Polar sent tanks as support and men came down from the hills to walk with them they fought through road blocks and around a blown bridge but at dusk in narrow defile and The met an ambush and took serious casualties by radio Polar Oliver Smith and Drysdale agreed that the unit must push on to Hagaroo whatever the cost the Royal Marines finally reached Hoggeroo perimeter at 1.30 a.m. with 90 of its 255 men casualties. Sitter had 63 only 70 of the 210 army men made it. A truck column sent behind this ill-fated party was virtually destroyed. After a long fight and parlay with the Chinese who captured all the trucks and most of the men The survivors of this party were crucial to the to the defense of Hagaroo their added firepower helped turn back another massive Chinese attack The companies of Cidder and Joe Fisher killed the enemy in droves and by the next dawn their lines though bent Had held on the night of December 7th the bulk of the division was in puller's perimeter after the 38 hour battle

from Hagaroo the cost a hundred and three dead five hundred and six wounded seven missing but now the force of ten thousand and it's one thousand vehicles was that coterie coterie the perimeter could hardly contain them all after supper the colonel disappeared only sergeant Jones and I haven't mentioned much about sergeant Jones he's like he's he's he's polar's right-hand man through this through all kinds of crazy stuff and sergeant Jones only sergeant Jones Jones knew where he was the old man would sneak off with Bodie and go up into the lines climbing right up into those damn straight up hills all the ice and rock going from

hole to hole for half the night he would go to every man he could find in a foxhole and say how you do an old man what's your field of fire who's on your flank you get enough chow on the way back he would check the warming tents to see if there had been casualties and how the men were doing early on December 8 the Marines began clearing the ridges on either side of the road, south, but the going was slow and the trucks bearing the bridge sections made little progress. A funeral for 117 Marines and a common grave brought the day to an end in the perimeter. It was a scene that lived in Polar's memory, the burial of frozen bodies by a tank battalion which crushed them under frozen ground.

A Marine photographer took movies of the burial. Polar said, how I wish our people could have seen the site to see just what happened to us in Korea. He later heard that Army censorship in Washington kept the film from the public. And now they're, again, it's very compressed story, but they're breaking out and they're heading south, heading back to the sea and back to safety out of being surrounded. Back to the book, the 5th and 7th Marines had now passed through Puller's ranks, and the first was the rear guard for the entire division. for covering the withdrawal down the frozen loops of the road

Polar started down and hundreds of men saw him for he thought that his job had only begun He shouted to every passing unit to cheer the men yelling until he was horse don't forget that your first Marines not all the communists and hell can overrun you When he got back reporters Found him and they wanted a statement from him and he said remember whatever you write this This was no retreat. All that happened was we found more Chinese behind us than in front of us, so we about faced and attacked. Smith recommended Puller for a Navy cross for his work in the reservoir campaign,

his fifth and a Marine Corps record. Puller's letter to his wife revealed his unusual concern for his family in the midst of the campaigning. Please tell Lewis, that's his son. Please tell Lewis that I will finally come home and teach him how to shoot, and many other things that boys and men must know. Tell him to be patient, and the swords and the helmet I send him will arrive. Tell him to change his bait in the rabbit trap every few days.

A piece of apple, lettuce, carrot, celery, turn up, and he must not go near the trap or touch it except to change the bait when the door is sprung. Also, he must keep the dog away from it. That's what he's telling his boy. He continues on in a letter to his wife. I haven't minded the hardships here, but the killing and crippling of young men is awful.

Due to the weather our wounded die blood plasma freezes before it can be administered I realized that this war is far harder on you than it has beyond me than it has been on me and I'm sorry to have caused you all the worry and pain And he goes on to say the Pentagon is largely responsible for this mess out here They weren't even given they were they were given the money to provide us and train an army when I entered the service the regulation stated that the object of all military training is success in battle this short sentence has been rewritten on three pages and I defy anyone to read over three or more times and then explain to me what the object of military training is even the Pentagon has not the slightest idea why they're commanding forces of the United States in fact out here we wonder if we are part of the United States

and here he talks about his son again telling his wife I will not influence my son as to choosing a profession. It will be up to him. I will not even recommend the service. I've had to stand with my mouth closed on too many occasions and then carry out orders from too many halfwits. So as much as he loves the Marine Corps and the military in the country, he's saying, look, I'm not going to even recommend that my son joins.

He gets his pinning of his star. Finally, he's actually being officially made a general and he makes a speech. All the credit for this star belongs to the non-concounter. comms, junior officers, and enlisted men. You all know that. I've tried to do my duty, but we'd never get anywhere except for you fellows in the ranks. This is a great regiment, and it's going to hurt me to leave you. I'll never forget you.

To the men of Task Force Puller, he also issued a formal memorandum. In compliance with orders, I am today leaving this command for assignment as division commander, assistant division commander. It is not without misgivings and a certain reluctance that I carry out these orders All of you officers and men alike realize I am sure what the first Marine regiment has meant to me I ask one more thing of you give my successor the same full measure of cooperation and willingness You have always given me and the first Marines will be worthy of the name it is already one I first commanded you on New Britain later on the bloody hills of Pelilu and it is my and is bed my honor to command you in Korea where by your deeds you captured the city of Seoul and

successfully covered the withdrawal of our division from the chosen reservoir area. I shall look to future, to your future movements and shall expect to hear and see still greater deeds and higher reputation won on the field of battle. I talked a little bit about the dichotomy and his reputation. Puller's reputation grew among the men, but Sergeant Jones noted that the old man was regarded as a man-eater. They would ask Bodie and me over and over how the hell we kept our stripes. They thought he chewed on people all the time. And when there was a fight recklessly exposed his people.

And of course, we knew better. It was hard to convince guys who had heard so much about him but didn't really know him. When you got close to him, you found he had a heart as big as all outdoors. He continued to not make friends up the chain of command. We can't help to win. We can't hope to win future wars, and we got the hell beat out of us in Korea, unless we have discipline. And it's going to take some brutality to get it. His last days in Korea were frustrating to Polar, who found things suddenly different.

He wrote his wife, now age has probably changed me. And the core has changed to I suppose To man being what he is today I never thought this change could or would happen Maybe I have been wrong from the beginning Now he gets back to America And of course there's a big bunch of reporters waiting for him

And they kind of know They kind of know he's got a A mouth right So they're fired up to talk to him And And he starts talking to the reporters and here we go. What the American people want to do is fight a war without getting hurt. You can't do any, you can't do that any more than you can go into a bar room brawl without getting hurt.

Unless the American people are willing to send their sons out to fight an aggressor, there's just not going to be any United States. A bunch of foreign soldiers will take over. Air power can't live up to its billing out here. Somebody, not so much the aviators. as the aircraft manufacturers has sold the American people a bill of goods as to what air power can do. From what I've seen, one bomb will hit a section of railroad track and 100 bombs will miss, some of them by miles. The enemy puts coolies on the track with picks and shovels, and in 24 hours, they're rolling again. The answer is infantry.

Our officer corps has had far too much schooling and far too little combat experience. They can't learn war like that. Push button war is as far off as in the days of Julius Caesar. The rifle, hand grenade, and bayonet are still the most important weapons. We are going to lose the next war if we don't get back to them. Why half our infantry out there is still armed with carbines against the enemy with their fine Russian rifles He then turned on the training of Marines which could be which he would soon be conducting at Camp Pendleton We've got to get him tougher to survive for all these girls out of camp get rid of the ice cream and candy get some pride in them

That's what we need most of all pride A reporter piped up what do you think of the protest of the women's Christian temperament Union over sending free beer to the troops. It's news to me, Polar said, but if a few cans of beer or snort of whiskey will make the men fight better, it might not be a bad idea. At least it's better than ice cream and all this soft training. There's too much damn recreation in military training. We should have only one purpose to fight and win. They're not being taught that now.

So, he's an outspoken guy. He was astonished the next day to see the following headlines major general wants beer and whiskey for the troops Ice cream GIs lambasted by polar Marine general blasts the air force The furor reached across the nation There was actually protests against general polar Here's here's they've actually put one of these letters in the book we hereby petition this sent to the to the to the to the government or to the Pentagon we hereby petition to you to use every ounce of influence that you possessed to keep Brigadier General Puller from inaugurating his beer and whiskey campaign in

US military training camps but the the panic did die down and he got to the business of training Marines and in August of 1953 polar took examinations for major general That's two star the board which chose the new group of officers of rank approved him unanimously in July of 1954. He was sent to Camp Lejeune to lead second division his first major peacetime troop command. There was a little an incident health issue and one of the guys called up Virginia polar his wife and said brace yourself we've taken Lewis to the hospital They can't say what's wrong. He looks pretty sick.

And he basically, he gets pretty sick. He kind of recovers from it. But the, like I said, this guy made enemies. So here we go back to the book, and this is polar talking. I could see then what the game was. They were going to retire me despite all the doctors had said back at Lejeune. They pulled me up to Washington to get rid of me. I didn't mind retiring all that much, but the way they did it made me sore.

I had all the service and honors I needed or wanted. I'd come all the way from private to major general, but I was boiling mad about this thing. I saw lots of officers around Washington in poorer condition than I was, but that wasn't going to matter. He remained in the hospital in Bethesda for about two weeks. After many consultations, the doctors found him unfit for duty. He wrote his wife daily from his wife, room on the 16th floor please do not worry we must take things as they come in life there doesn't seem much we can do to change events so yeah just to tell that story a little bit more he had like a

some kind of health this was I don't know what it was and they didn't really seem to know what it was but then he kind of recovered from it and he was back in his job and then they pulled him up to Bethesda and to give him a bunch of screenings and tests and see if he was fit for duty and they found that he was unfit for duty So that's it. That's how it ended. That's how his career ended. A day or so before he went out,

there was a party in the non-commissioned officers club on base. Polar had declined an offer from the officers club, but he could not turn down the enlisted men. It began as an intimate party, but when Polar arrived, he found a crowd of more than 5,000 who had come to say goodbye. 20 pigs were barbecued, and there was feasting and drinking until late in the night.

The general made one of his shirt, Bursk talks when they shouted for him and Sergeant Orville Jones remembered it. He said only men, I'd rather be toting a rifle in a rear rank than going out now as Lieutenant General. Now if you're a Marine, you're all Marine. You'll put the core above your family, your country, even God and all else in some cases. You stick to your core. God bless you.

Puller had broken tradition to the last. It was unwritten regulation that the senior Marine officer on the post would pin Puller's third star on his shoulder as he retired. But Puller had called for Bob Norish, the senior non-commissioned officer and the oldest man available who had served with him. The reporter who followed him got a formal statement. In having Sergeant Major Norrish attached my third star at my retirement, I wanted to show my great admiration and appreciate to the enlisted men and junior officers of the Marine Corps. I fully realize that without the help of the enlisted men,

I'd never have risen from private to lieutenant general. I've commanded everything from a squad to a division, and without the help of men and junior officers, these units would never have gone forward and achieved their objective regardless of almost certain death. My only regret is that things now are, I will not be present for the next. War. I also want to express my regret at the deaths of many hundreds of Marines and the crippling and maiming of other hundreds who followed me blindly into battle. Again, I would like to thank all Marines for their feelings toward me. Lewis Poller went home to Virginia. It was just 37 years, four months and two days since he had boarded the train for South Carolina to exchange the uniform of a VMI cadet.

for that of a Marine Corps. But his career with the Marines wasn't quite over. Back to the book, on a dimly lit night of April 8, 1956, a platoon of Marine recruits at Parris Island, South Carolina, was marched into a title arm of Broad River by 31-year-old veteran drill instructor, Staff Sergeant Matthew C. McKeown.

Six recruits drowned. The commandant, General Randolph McCall Pate immediately relieved the commanding officer of the recruit depot and told Congress that McKeown would be punished to the full extent allowed by our uniform code of military justice. There was a nationwide outcry from the press, pulpit, and scores of civic organizations. A court inquiry descended upon Parris Island. Mekione became a national cause to celebrate a sale. assailed by prohibitionists as a brutal drunkard as a symbol of military tyranny which must be destroyed as a racist bigot near do well there were cries for harsh punishment even execution now he ends up going to trial and for this trial the defense brings in chesty puller who we know believes in hard training and Here we go. This is a court scene.

Berman, who's the lawyer, used the general like a master showman. The defense desires to call to the stand Lieutenant General Puller. Sevier is one of the lawyers. Sir, how do you know the accused? Puller. I don't know him except by his pictures

in the newspapers and what I've read about him. Then Berman took over and questioned the general about his career as a Marine. Berman, how long were you in Korea? Polar, about nine months. Berman, were you in combat? Yeah. Were you decorated?

Yeah. Without going into any of your other decorations, isn't it true that you've received five Navy crosses? Correct. Berman asked his opinion of the Marine Corps's mission. The definition of military training is success in battle. In my opinion, that is the only objective of military training. It wouldn't make any sense to have a military organization on the backs of the American

taxpayers with any other. definition I've believed that ever since I was been a Marine what is the most important element of that training I'll quote Napoleon he stated that the most important thing in military training is discipline without discipline and army becomes a mob now then in that context can you tell us whether you have an opinion based on your experience as to whether or not the training and discipline is for all situations confined to lesson plan or syllabi or training regulations no the training of a basic marine is conducted almost entirely outside in the

field on the drill ground on the rifle range that kind of work the marine gets an idea of how the Marine Corps is run during this training but his training is outside work can you tell us general of the things you learned here as a recruit well the main thing that I've remembered all my life is the definition of a spree to corps Now my definition the definition I was taught that I've always believed in is that a spree to core means love for one's military legion in my case the United States Marine Corps I also learned that this loyalty to one's core travels both ways up and down and he continued through this trial and that night he went to the enlisted man's club and big crowd of course was there and they start shouting and yelling for him to speak and finally he stands up and says I've talked enough for today this will be my last request do your duty and the Marine Corps will be as great as it has always been for another thousand years the applause was deafening and he went back to his hometown of saluda

And he was not forgotten there. He was getting interviewed by a graduate student who was trying to learn about psychology and the general said, I've never studied psychology. I had only one year of college and always thought I would go back but enlisted instead. I think the Marine Corps is the best place to learn the art of war. And then again, this reflects back. You know, people now say that America's getting soft and the uter. So they're saying the same thing. Everything's going bad.

And they have a panel of experts to deal with the decline of the nation. And it's rising tide of juvenile delinquency. The consensus was that the country was going to hell in a handbucket. General Poller, while this big meeting is going on, General Poller stood and his intended mildness of tone, as usual, came forth as a brazen roar. I want you people to know something. As long as we can get some decent leadership

in our country, our youth today will be better men than their fathers or grandfathers. I saw enough in Korea to make sure of that. Our forefathers at Valley Forge have been mentioned here tonight as they often are. Well, I can tell you that Valley Forge was something like a picnic compared to what

your younger Americans went through at the Chosen Reservoir, and they came out of it fine. It was never anything like 25 below zero. at Valley Forge either. I admit we don't seem to have the proper leadership at the top, but there's nothing wrong with the kids today. My wife and I follow the ideas my mother used on her kids, making them study each night

after supper, and when they report that they have mastered their lessons, quizzing them. Our children don't need to be coddled, and they shouldn't be condemned. Above all, for heaven's sakes, let your sons alone and let your sons alone. Let them grow up to be men. It's interesting that I would say that still applies in very many ways. He also had people visiting him all the time and asking him questions. And he was, again, he remained speak, you know, an outspoken guy. I'm afraid we haven't recognized the most important lesson from Korea.

The communists have developed a totally new kind of warfare, a warfare of whole peoples. And under that, no modern nation can be conquered. We saw something like that in China when Japan was nibbling away at the mainland. The Japanese controlled only a square yard where a soldier stood, and nothing beyond that. In Korea, the Reds improved on that. This is total warfare, yet small in scope, and it's designed to neutralize our big nuclear weapons. Look at Vietnam. The French outnumbered the communist two to one, yet they were massacred.

If we don't design some way to meet this, they'll whip us in the end. Don't forget that regular armies have never fared well in irregular warfare. And that lesson was old when Rome fell. It's amazing that he's saying this. It's just a man that we, you know, the Frenchmen beat, we hadn't, I don't think we were even in Vietnam yet. In fact, we weren't Vietnam yet when he's making these statements. We didn't pay attention to it. Finally, he goes to a, and there was some kind of a,

rift between him and the first Marine Division Association and they sorted out that rift and he went to a big reunion of the Marine Corps the first Marine Division Association back to the book general Smith blinked against the spotlight and turned to the blackness at the far end of the table I now give you Chesty and the roar the roar was so loud it drowned out the speaker's voice and shook the walls the spotlight swung to the last place at the table to reveal polar in a linen suit waving his hand and flashing his broad crooked grin as the clamor increased he marched to the microphone and started in a bobbing circle of light general smith shouted to the tempest of the sound i see you all know chesty puller men in the crowd danced among the tables world each other about and

pounded their neighbors on the backs some climbed on their chairs shouting wordlessly tears tears streaming on their cheeks. Others hammered the table with cutlery or embraced women who were staring incredulously at Puller. The men broke into chance. We want Chesty. We want Puller. They called for a speech,

but it was almost five minutes before the howling ceased. Puller faced them with a wry smile that looked as if it had been wrung from his face by force. When quiet returned, He grasped the microphone and called in an astonishingly penetrating voice, Marines. Pandemonium broke out once more as if he had shouted some secret watchword whose implications were known only to these men. Half the crowd was still on its feet a moment later when polar could be heard again.

If you believe the newspapers and radios and television, our country is in a hell of a shape. I don't believe it. So long as we've got the first Marine division will be okay. The crowd shouted him into silence again. He was tired when he got home to Saluda. And that evening, Virginia Puller found him pensive and distracted. Distracted. They sat on the screened porch, looking out into the Virginia dusk lit by fireflies.

Lewis, is there anything? you'd wish for now that it's all over well he said I'd like to do it all over again the whole thing she sighed more than that more than anything I'd like to see the face once again of every Marine I've ever served with and that is where this book ends but that is not where this story ends because as I mentioned and as the book mentioned chesty puller had a son and his son also became a Marine Corps officer but his son's experience in the Marine Corps in combat and in life was very different from his fathers and I will tell that story in the next episode number 122

which is available now so you can listen to it immediately because these stories are linked and so we are linking them in this series of podcasts and in the meantime

before you listen to that echo if somebody wants to support this podcast can you briefly tell us how we can do it yes so briefly we'll talk Talk about the store, Jocco store.

That is where you can get. Discipline equals freedom, shirts, hats, some rash cards on there, hoodies, and beanies are on the way. Promise. If not already, just, you know, check on that. Jocco store.com. There's a lot of good stuff on there for women. And also, kid stuff, worry, kid's stuff.

Also, when you get the book, Marine Life of Chesty Puller I'm going to list it on the website in the book section It's on the top you click there It says books from episodes And I'll have them all listed by episode

Click through there Good way to support Take you to Amazon and you get your book And get whatever else you're shopping for Also Go to origin main.com This is where you can get your ghee If you're doing jiu jihitsu

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Taste good too. What else tastes good is Jocco discipline, which is a neutropic pre-mission supplement. Good, a little bit of caffeine in there, not too much.

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Make it easy. But it's everywhere. Jocko white tea. You can get on jocco store.com. I'm put it on there soon. If not right now. Amazon. Of course. and you can go to jocco t.com. That's kind of the main hub. And then so if you're shopping internationally, it'll direct you to where you can get it.

I think that's why I'm put it on the store. So we can ship it to Canada and stuff. There's a whole thing. Anyway, I'm making it easy. Yeah, so actually go to jocco t.com. That'll direct you to wherever you are and however you want to get it. Also, subscribe to the podcast.

If you haven't already on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, wherever they have podcasts, subscribe. Good way to support. Also, YouTube. Video version of this podcast, also excerpts, little lessons kind of just taken from each episode and enhanced excerpts. If you're really into feeling the message, just doctor them up with some music or something like that. Also, psychological warfare. If you don't know what that is, it's an album with tracks.

Jocko telling you pragmatic advice how to get through moments of weakness. In your campaign against weakness, like workouts, like if you want to skip the workout or you want to slip on the diet just a little bit, just refer to one of the tracks on there. Jock will tell you, you know, hold the line, as they say. Check. And, you know, speaking of subscribe and subscribing, we have a new podcast. out and it's it's actually separate from this podcast the new podcast is called the warrior kid podcast ask uncle jake like i said it's a separate channel so you have to subscribe to it separately

i did that because as you know from listening to this podcast there's some podcasts that are for very mature audiences and you wouldn't want to have your kid listening to that you know a kid podcast then all of a sudden a very Violent podcast comes on so we separated them the warrior kid podcast questions for uncle Jake and I think Uncle Jake has lessons for everyone Regardless of age. Yeah, you know, I think teachers and parents and big time would want to listen to that as well Yeah got some great feedback so far on it. So that's called the warrior kid podcast and on top of that there's a new warrior kid book. It's called Mark's mission If you actually want it

You should order it now through Whatever channel you want to order it from go to your local bookstore Go to Amazon go to Barnes & Noble order it So that you have it when it comes out so that the publisher knows how many to make Because otherwise the publisher thinks oh well we won't make that many of them because there's not that many people that you know are gonna buy this They're wrong because you all are gonna buy this So if they don't know that they don't make enough it takes too long to get it once it comes out So order it now other books you can order extreme ownership combat leadership for business and life

Discipline equals freedom field manual it's about getting after it and actually Laif Babin and I have a new book coming now a follow-up To extreme ownership it's called the dichotomy of leadership it is available for pre-order right now same thing order it now So that you get your copy when it comes out otherwise you'll be waiting I have a leadership and management consultant company it's called echelon front if you want information about that go to eshlanfront dot com we have the muster which is a leadership conference coming up if you want to come to it go to extreme ownership dot com and also if you want to attend the roll call which is for military law enforcement firefighters paramedics other first responders if you want to do that you can also

sign up for the roll call at extreme ownership dot com and with that as i just mentioned these podcasts these three podcasts that we're doing right now are all linked it's one big story with a thread running through it and we are releasing them all at the same time so the next one will be 122 and 123 go ahead and and go listen to them right now until then this is echo and jaco Out.