Chesty Puller
I'm at work doing retention reports and listening to a cassette tape I bought God knows when on Marine Corps bootcamp. I'm putting everything from time immemorial to CD's with this machine that converts digitally.
Yes, it does bring back memories. More than any name mentioned through all this is that of Chesty Puller. He was a cousin of Patton. Both from Virginia, both from VMI, though Patton later transferred to West Point.
I do have the movie Patton and I very much appreciate what he said about my alma mater. Though he was from VMI and West Point he came across a lot of Aggies in his Army career. There were more Aggies in World War II than any other institution or group by far, including the academies. Anyway, Patton said, give me a company of West Pointers and I'll win this damn battle. But give me a handful of Texas Aggies and I'll win this whole damn war.
I had never heard the name Chesty Puller until I was twenty-one and enlisted in the Marine Corps. He was all they talked about. He embodied everything you think about Marine. So, on this tape they talk about him a lot too. Not stories, just about, like you're supposed to know already.
The closests thing they told a story was one sentence about Chosen Reservoir. That's where he really made a name for himself. Two Marines, one enlisted, Dan Daily, one officer, Smedley Butler won the Congressional Medal of Honor twice. Chesty Puller not even once. But he's the one that epitomizes.
At Chosen Resevoir in North Korea in 1950 he was the commanding General. It was so cold there that the rifles froze. Men had to urinate on them to get them warm enough to fire a shot. The Chinese had dreadfully just entered the war and did swarm warfare, like Mongul hordes, with bayonets just coming at you in massive horrifying waves. He and his Marines were so outnumbered and completely surrounded. Chesty Puller called his men together and said, 'finally we have them where we want them. They can't escape now. No matter which way we turned they're there when we charge them. And they charged, and won.
At first the Chinese inflicted heavy casualties on the Americans, but guys like Chesty Puller inflicted such casualties back with such fewer men, that the Chinese soon were depleted and were not an effective force to be reckoned with much longer. That's when a truce was formed.
I still get goose bumps over stuff like this. I was during the Vietnam era and saw how everything was done by the enemy to deflate moral, but nothing did it like the enemy at home. The war was soon not openly debated, it was just condemned, and the troops with it. There was a huge difference in the result as a product. Not military results, though with the fact that we pulled out, then that too.
I remember the day we graduated from boot camp and they handed us our new dogtags, our names, blood type, our social, except in those days the Marines still had service numbers. And a big USMC. I just kept staring at that USMC. I was a Marine. We marched for the last time from our quonset huts to the buses to take us to Camp Pendleton for Infantry Training and sang the Marine Corps Hymn along the way. Everybody's favorite verse was the one they keep singing on this tape.
If the Army and the Navy
Ever look on Heaven's scene
They will find the streets are guarded
By United States Marines.
The spirit and pride is so strong. To see how liberals still think this is Vietnam and expect the same show is more than antiquated. Even Vietnam wasn't Vietnam until we made it such. We are fighting more the enemy within than the enemy abroad. It is such a disservice to not grasp what being a Marine is. The pure undiluted sickness of this mentality to see a Marine as a goon or baby killer. It wasn't true even then, much less now. If a war or mission is wrong or inappropriate, in a democracy you can debate it and cut to the chase of it. But it is like a Moslem determining everybody is an infidel, even a moderate Moslem mentality. There is an idealogue mentality that keeps an honest debate from occuring. Preordained and immovable concepts. Like religious fanaticism.
Yes, it does bring back memories. More than any name mentioned through all this is that of Chesty Puller. He was a cousin of Patton. Both from Virginia, both from VMI, though Patton later transferred to West Point.
I do have the movie Patton and I very much appreciate what he said about my alma mater. Though he was from VMI and West Point he came across a lot of Aggies in his Army career. There were more Aggies in World War II than any other institution or group by far, including the academies. Anyway, Patton said, give me a company of West Pointers and I'll win this damn battle. But give me a handful of Texas Aggies and I'll win this whole damn war.
I had never heard the name Chesty Puller until I was twenty-one and enlisted in the Marine Corps. He was all they talked about. He embodied everything you think about Marine. So, on this tape they talk about him a lot too. Not stories, just about, like you're supposed to know already.
The closests thing they told a story was one sentence about Chosen Reservoir. That's where he really made a name for himself. Two Marines, one enlisted, Dan Daily, one officer, Smedley Butler won the Congressional Medal of Honor twice. Chesty Puller not even once. But he's the one that epitomizes.
At Chosen Resevoir in North Korea in 1950 he was the commanding General. It was so cold there that the rifles froze. Men had to urinate on them to get them warm enough to fire a shot. The Chinese had dreadfully just entered the war and did swarm warfare, like Mongul hordes, with bayonets just coming at you in massive horrifying waves. He and his Marines were so outnumbered and completely surrounded. Chesty Puller called his men together and said, 'finally we have them where we want them. They can't escape now. No matter which way we turned they're there when we charge them. And they charged, and won.
At first the Chinese inflicted heavy casualties on the Americans, but guys like Chesty Puller inflicted such casualties back with such fewer men, that the Chinese soon were depleted and were not an effective force to be reckoned with much longer. That's when a truce was formed.
I still get goose bumps over stuff like this. I was during the Vietnam era and saw how everything was done by the enemy to deflate moral, but nothing did it like the enemy at home. The war was soon not openly debated, it was just condemned, and the troops with it. There was a huge difference in the result as a product. Not military results, though with the fact that we pulled out, then that too.
I remember the day we graduated from boot camp and they handed us our new dogtags, our names, blood type, our social, except in those days the Marines still had service numbers. And a big USMC. I just kept staring at that USMC. I was a Marine. We marched for the last time from our quonset huts to the buses to take us to Camp Pendleton for Infantry Training and sang the Marine Corps Hymn along the way. Everybody's favorite verse was the one they keep singing on this tape.
If the Army and the Navy
Ever look on Heaven's scene
They will find the streets are guarded
By United States Marines.
The spirit and pride is so strong. To see how liberals still think this is Vietnam and expect the same show is more than antiquated. Even Vietnam wasn't Vietnam until we made it such. We are fighting more the enemy within than the enemy abroad. It is such a disservice to not grasp what being a Marine is. The pure undiluted sickness of this mentality to see a Marine as a goon or baby killer. It wasn't true even then, much less now. If a war or mission is wrong or inappropriate, in a democracy you can debate it and cut to the chase of it. But it is like a Moslem determining everybody is an infidel, even a moderate Moslem mentality. There is an idealogue mentality that keeps an honest debate from occuring. Preordained and immovable concepts. Like religious fanaticism.
posted by CottonSr @ 12:36 PM
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