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During the Korean War, the Chinese communists
had overrun the Yalu River and the Marines battling them were in a running
fight to reach the coast. Ten Chinese divisions surrounded Col. Lewis Berwell
Puller’s 1st Marines. The indomitable “Chesty” Puller saw the
situation with his own brand of logic: “Those poor bastards,” he
said. “They’ve got us right where we want them. We can fire in any
direction now!”
Puller’s logic might have confounded those
outside of the combat arena, but it never failed his men. From the halls of
the Virginia Military Institute to the shores of the Yalu, Puller remained a
“Marine’s Marine” and an officer who never forgot his noncom days,
insisting always that his enlisted men eat first. Puller trained for battle
as an infantryman, a cavalryman, an artilleryman, an aviator, and a shipboard
officer. He spent all but ten of his 37 active-duty years at sea or overseas,
earning five Navy crosses, and retiring at the rank of lieutenant general.
“Chesty” Puller dropped out of the
venerable Virginia Military Institute at the end of his freshman year to enlist
in the Marines, saying “I want to go where the guns are!” While he
never saw World War I combat, he re-enlisted for service in Haiti and cut his
“battle teeth” against the Caco rebels there. Commissioned as a
second lieutenant, in 1930 he saw action in Nicaragua, earning the nickname
“El Tigre” for his ferocious assaults on Sandino’s rebels, and his
first Navy Cross.
After a stint with the “Horse
Marines” in China, Lt. Col. Puller commanded 1st Battalion, 7th Marines
during the battle for Guadalcanal in Oct. 1942, where he seemed to be
constantly at the front, encouraging and aiding his men. In the bloody battle
of Peleliu, Puller’s Marines sustained such a high casualty rate that they
had to be removed from the fight.
With four Navy Crosses on his prominent chest,
Puller once again saw action, landing with his 1st Marines at Inchon in Sept.
1950. With his weathered face and piercing gaze, Gen. Puller was every inch a
Marine until the end, even volunteering for duty in Vietnam when he was 73
(he was turned down due to age). Puller died in 1971 after a long illness.
When once asked what his one wish would be, “Chesty” Puller
responded, “I would like to see the face of every Marine I served with
one last time.”
EXCLUSIVE: They’ve Got Us Surrounded!
: As I write a column that won’t make it to
newsstands and
: mailboxes for months, it’s the first day of the federal
: government shutdown, brought to a head by House Republicans
: refusing to fund a budget that includes ObamaCare, itself
: just open for enrollment as of midnight. How long the
: impasse will last—hours, days or longer—is something you
: holding a printed page will know but I cannot.
: Nor can I tell what our most imminent threat
will be—perhaps a
: current drive that’s moved the ball further down the field,
: or perhaps something not altogether unforeseen, such as
: another “gun free zone” exploitation with the attendant
: demand to disarm you and me. Only one thing is certain: the
: attacks will continue to come from all directions.
: Take the aforementioned “Affordable Health
Care Act.” Henny
: Youngman would add “Please!”
: “The consequences for gun owners—once
ObamaCare is
: implemented—will be immense,” Gun Owners of America warned
: in a member alert. “Once the government starts using
: medical maladies (such as PTSD, ADHD, etc.) as reasons to
: put our names in the NICS system, will those names ever be
: removed? Just ask the more than 150,000 military veterans
: how it’s going for them!”
: And then there’s the UN Arms Trade Treaty,
recently signed on
: our “behalf” by Secretary of State John Kerry. True, an
: advise and consent resolution with concurrence by “two
: thirds of the Senators present” has not passed, nor does it
: look likely that one will, and true, Obama has been warned
: in a letter by Ranking Foreign Relations Committee member
: Bob Corker of Tennessee that he shouldn’t take any
: executive actions to implement the treaty before it’s
: ratified.
Hey, this is Obama we’re talking about. Just
what will the
: Republican leadership have the nerve to do if he acts
: unilaterally anyway, relying on worm-tongued spokesmen and
: media cheerleaders to paint any fragmented opposition as
: the bad guys?
: Speaking of executive actions, the White
House has not been
: inactive. They’ve got a rulemaking change they’re pushing
: through the public comment cycle on gun trusts for NFA
: weapons, an import ban on military surplus weapons to save
: us all from gangbangers deploying with Garands, and a
: resurrected push on a rule change first proposed in 2005 to
: clarify the definition of the term “pistol,” among other
: plans in the works.
: And it’s not just the White House. Various
efforts at the
: state and local levels are keeping gun activists busy, as
: are legal challenges wending their way through the courts.
: Then there are distracting “private” assaults, such as
: those massively funded by Mike Bloomberg. There are
: manipulative, foundation-funded anti-gun “studies” that
: need countering and a media happy to misrepresent things
: every chance they get.
: The antis are coming at us from all angles.
There’s too much
: for one person to even keep up with, let alone effectively
: respond to, and we haven’t even addressed the effort
: necessary to start making our own advances.
: I trust everyone reading this is an active and contributing
: member of at least one gun rights group?
: By David Codrea
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=291160
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