Word: puller
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...name was Lewis Burwell Puller, and leathernecks around the world have a special patent of excellence for him. "Chesty" Puller, one of the Corps' most famed field officers, is more than a good marine-he is known as a great marine...
...Puller. Chesty is Virginia-born. (In Saluda, Va., his wife and four-year-old daughter are waiting out the war.) He was a youngster of 19 when he shipped as a private in 1917. During World War I he chafed aboard ship, a bored, seagoing marine. He saw more action after the war. In Haiti he won the Haitian Military Medal. In Nicaragua he twice won the Navy Cross. He served with the Horse Marines at Pekin, with the famed Fourth at Shanghai...
Leathery, compact, of medium height, with a belligerent jaw and a mouth like a trap, Chesty Puller became the model of a professional fighting...
...battalion commander when the ist Division landed on Guadalcanal. Marines will always remember the day when Puller and his outfit, standing one man to every five yards, held a line 2,500 yards long in the jungles of Lunga sector, mowing down charging Japs for four frenzied hours. Puller was everywhere. All through the rain-drenched night Puller coolly kept his thin line intact. A machine gunner said afterward: "I gave thanks to God and Puller...
Fourth Cross. A month later he got in the way of a bursting shell. Seven fragments landed in the indignant Puller's body. The surgeon wanted to tag him as a casualty and evacuate him. "Take that tag and label a bottle with it," Puller roared, "I'll stay here." Later, he ruefully noted in his combat journal: "I found myself unable to keep up with my battalion," and he had to go back to the hospital compound. But he did not stay long...