Lt. General Lewis "Chesty" Puller (USMC)

Lewis "Chesty" Puller, named for his barrel chest and known for a bulldog face and gruff voice, became the most decorated United States Marine in American history and was called "the Marine's Marine." He received five Navy Crosses for valor and became a hero in campaigns in the Pacific theater during World War II and in the Korean War. Born in West Point in 1898, he lived there and graduated from West Point High School in 1917. When the U.S. entered World War I against Germany, he chose not to enlist and instead accepted an appointment to Virginia Military Institute, influenced by a family history of military service that included distant cousin General George Patton. He remained at VMI until age 20, when he became old enough to qualify for a Marine commission, since the Army required a higher minimum age. His father, Matthew Puller, a salesman for a wholesale grocer, had lived in Gloucester County, where the family had been established for several generations, before settling in West Point, then a transportation hub. The family prospered there in a two-story white house with a stable, carriage, two horses, and three servants, but after his father died of cancer in 1908, his mother, Martha "Pattie" Richardson Leigh, sold the horse and carriage and dismissed the servants so the family could remain in the home. Puller resembled his strong and determined mother in character, and her disciplined rule without physical punishment shaped an approach he later followed throughout his life. As a boy he hunted, fished, and crabbed, selling crabs to tourists when West Point was a popular recreation destination, and he loved football, baseball, and boxing. During high school he worked summers as a laborer in the new pulp mill.

West Point, Virginia · United States