"Lewis Burwell ' Chesty' Puller, born in the 19th century, fought in the heaviest fighting of the 20th century and is now a legend in this century. The most decorated Marine to ever wear the uniform, and also the most beloved, Puller left a mark on the Marine Corps that would define its culture for years to come."
- Michael Lane Smith
The son of a grocer, Lewis Puller was born June 26, 1898, at West Point, Virginia, to Matthew and Martha Puller. He loved hunting and fishing and was a military history buff who grew up listening to old veterans' tales of the American Civil War and idolizing Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. He was forced to help support his family after his father's death when he was ten. Puller attempted to join the U.S. Army in 1916 to take part in the Punitive Expedition to capture Mexican leader Pancho Villa, but he was too young and his mother refuses to grant parental consent. In 1917, he followed his martial interest to VMI (the Virginia Military Institute).
With the US entry into World War I in April 1917, Puller quickly became restless and tired of his studies. Inspired by the US Marines' performance at the Battle of Belleau Wood (1 - 26 June 1918), which occurred during the German Spring Offensive in World War I, near the Marne River in France, he dropped out of VMI after one year to enlist in the US Marine Corps, saying that he wanted to "go where the guns are!" Completing basic training at Parris Island, SC, Puller received an appointment to officer candidate school. Passing through the course at Quantico, VA, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps Reserves on June 16, 1919, but WWI was winding down and the government was drastically scaling back the military, and he was placed on inactive reserve ten days later with the rank of Corporal.
Puller then re-enlisted in the active-duty Corps, this time as a private. After thirteen weeks of "running eighty miles a day, climbing sheer cliff faces with his bare hands, and crawling under barbed wire while Drill Instructors whacked him over the head with rusty medieval polearms and belted forth a constant stream of multiple profanities," Puller was shipped out to Haiti to fight peasant brigands from the mountains called the Caco rebels, who were determined to carry out a violent overthrow of the U.S.-sponsored Haitian government.
Over the course of five years, Chesty fought in over forty engagements against these rebels, gaining valuable experience in small-unit tactics and jungle warfare. His toughness earned him rapid promotions and a commission to Lieutenant. This guerilla warfare experience served him well when he shipped to Nicaragua in 1930.
The purpose of the Nicaraguan campaign was to protect U.S. civilians and economic interests in the country after fighting broke out between a U.S.-backed government and a guerrilla force under Augusto Cesar Sandino. The Marine Corps was sent to train and lead the new National Guard forces against the insurgents.
In one of his first missions of the campaign, Puller led his platoon in a charge against fortified positions held by a much larger force of heavily-armed rebels. Over the course of one week, Puller's men routed the enemy in five separate engagements, completely annihilating the rebel positions while sustaining minimal casualties. For his bravery in combat, Puller was awarded the Navy Cross - the Marine Corps' second-highest award for bravery just below the Medal of Honor.
Puller's citation states he systematically "led his forces into five successful engagements against superior numbers of armed bandit forces. Hunting the insurgents through the jungles, Puller persecuted the enemy relentlessly."
His actions, which "dealt five successive and severe blows against organized banditry were exceptional" and would begin his legacy as a five-time recipient of the second-highest commendation for valor in combat.
Two years later, during the Second Nicaraguan Campaign in September 1932, Puller and his company of 40 Nicaraguan soldiers were on patrol 100 miles north of the nearest base in Jinotega. After a six-day march, Puller was leading his unit through a treacherous mountain pass when rebels suddenly ambushed them from all sides with machine guns, mortars, and bikes with guns mounted on the sides.
The rebel gunfire killed the Nicaraguan soldier directly behind Puller and seriously wounded his second in command. Responding immediately, Puller directs his men to aggressively attack the insurgents on the high ground and overtake their positions. Two of Puller's 40 men were killed, six were wounded, while the opposing force of 150 rebels was completely decimated and scattered.
Then, on the way home, he was ambushed twice more. For getting his platoon home safely with minimal loss of life, Puller received a second Navy Cross. By the time that he left Nicaragua, Chesty was known as "The Tiger of the Mountains," a nickname he earned presumably by clawing the eyes out of a traitorous rebel, and he was so despised by his enemies that the leaders of the rebel guerrillas had put a 5,000 peso reward on his head.
Puller bounced around for a while after Nicaragua, serving at several different posts both on land and at sea, including a stint as the commander of the elite "Horse Marines" unit in Beijing, China in 1933, where he rode around on horseback all day and practiced the age-old cavalry tactics. His next assignment was overseeing the Marine detachment aboard the cruiser USS Augusta. In 1936, Puller was made an instructor at the Basic School in Philadelphia. In 1940 he served with the 2n Battalion 4th Marines at Shanghai.
He continued to impress his superiors with his tenacity and his take-no-nonsense attitude, and by World War II, it was Lt. Col. " Chesty" Puller, Commander of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. His unit was tasked with making an amphibious assault near the Matanikau River on the sunny Pacific resort island of Guadalcanal and staking out a critical strategic Margarita stand. Two companies of the 1/7 hit the beaches, and almost immediately ran into a force of Japanese regular infantry much larger and more prepared than anything the Marines were expecting to face there. The invasion force was cut-off and surrounded by an enemy counter-attack, and Puller quickly realized that he had to get his men out of there before they were cut to pieces. Another group of Marines tried to break through the Japanese flank and reach the stranded men, but the enemy resistance was too strong and they were too well-fortified to be displaced. The commander of the operation told Puller that it was hopeless and that those Marines were lost.
Puller never resigned defeat for any reason, as he slammed his fist down on the table and immediately stormed out of camp toward the beach, where he flagged down a U.S. destroyer that happened to be sailing off the coast. Despite having absolutely no authority to do so, Puller boarded the vessel and immediately began organizing a second amphibious assault aimed at breaking through the Japanese lines. From the deck of the ship, he directed the destroyer to fire everything they had at the enemy fortifications. The shelling, coupled with the second landing, punched through the enemy blockade and cleared a path for the stranded Marines to escape. U.S. Coast Guard Signalman First Class Douglas Albert Munro - Officer-in-Charge of the group of landing craft, was killed while providing covering fire from his landing craft for the Marines as they evacuated the beach, and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for the action, to date the only Coast Guardsman to receive the decoration. Puller, for his actions, was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V." One week after this action, Puller and his men would return to the mouth of the Matanikau River and obliterate all Japanese opposition in the sector.
During that same campaign, Puller would once again prove his courage by going above and beyond the call of duty. On the night of 24 October, 942, 700 men of the 1/7 were positioned in a thin, mile-long line, defending an American airfield that was critical for the success of the Guadalcanal operation. They suddenly came under an intense onslaught from the seasoned men of the Japanese 17th Army, who came charging full-speed at the U.S. positions. For over three hours in the middle of the night, Puller ran up and down the U.S. lines directing his men and giving orders to his company commanders. When the smoke cleared the next morning, the hard-fighting men of the 1st Marines had killed 1,400 of the enemy and captured seventeen trucks loaded with weapons while sustaining fewer than 70 casualties.
For his bravery, Puller was awarded his third Navy Cross. According to his citation: "While Lieutenant Colonel Puller's battalion was holding a mile-long front in a heavy downpour of rain, a Japanese force, superior in number, launched a vigorous assault against that position of the line which passed through a dense jungle. Courageously withstanding the enemy's desperate and determined attacks, Lieutenant Colonel Puller not only held his battalion to its position until reinforcements arrived three hours later, but also effectively commanded the augmented force until late in the afternoon of the next day."
Before he would leave Guadalcanal, Puller would be shot twice by snipers and hit once with shrapnel from an exploding mortar round, but none of that would slow him down.
Puller continued to fight in the Pacific Campaign, once again earning distinction at the Battle of New Britain Island. This time, three separate Marine battalions had been hit hard by enemy fire and lost their commanding officers, so Puller himself ran up and down the American lines, re-organizing the men under heavy machine gun and mortar fire, and eventually leading an assault that would break the enemy lines - an action that would earn him his fourth Navy Cross. Later in 1944, Puller led the 1st Marine Regiment in the Battle of Peleliu, an engagement that was one of the bloodiest battles in the history of the Corps.
After WWII, Puller returned stateside for a while. He taught strategy and tactics at various military institutions until June 25, 1950, when North Korean troops stormed over the 38th parallel into South Korea. When Puller went to Korea, he was assigned command of the 1st Marines and landed at Inchon in September of 1950. For his courage during the landings, he earned the Silver Star and second Legion of Merit.
At the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, Puller and his men found themselves holed up in the town of Koto-ri, completely surrounded by ten full Divisions of Chinese Infantry determined on killing every American they could find. Heavily outnumbered, and fighting in sub-zero temperatures, Puller's troops broke the enemy lines, smashed through seven enemy divisions, and then stayed behind as a rearguard, bearing the brunt of the Chinese onslaught so that the rest of the Marines could complete their retreat (Puller refused to refer to it as a retreat, however, he preferred to call it, "attacking in a different direction"). The 1st Marines withstood fierce attacks by hordes of Communist soldiers but held their position, inflicted tremendous numbers of casualties on the enemy and managed to provide enough time for the Allies to evacuate all of their wounded men and salvageable equipment. Sheer bravery in the face of intense fire and a seemingly winless situation earned Puller his fifth Navy Cross - an unprecedented accomplishment that has never been equaled.
He was also awarded the U.S. Army's Distinguished Service Cross (the equivalent to the Navy Cross). In part that citation read: "For extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy of the United Nations while serving as Commanding Officer, First Marines, FIRST Marine Division (Reinforced), in action against enemy aggressor forces in the vicinity of the Chosin Reservoir, Korea, during the period 29 November to 4 December 1950. Colonel Puller's actions contributed materially to the breakthrough of the First Marine Regiment in the Chosin Reservoir area and are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service."
Puller was admired by his men and feared by his enemies. He always led from the front, fighting in the trenches with the men, and never flinched under even the most serious fire. One time a grenade landed next to him, and when the rest of the guys around him dove for cover, he glanced at it and nonchalantly said, "Oh, that. It's a dud." He inspired loyalty and courage in his Marines, treated his men well, insisted on the best equipment and discipline for his troops, and had a no fear, win-at-all-costs attitude that won him fourteen medals for combat bravery in addition to countless unit citations and campaign ribbons. He is the most highly-decorated Marine in history and a legendary figure amongst his brethren. His awards include the Navy Cross (5 awards), the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit (two awards, with Valor device), the Bronze Star (with V device), the Purple Heart, the Air Medal, and numerous campaign and foreign awards.
In July 1954, Puller took command of the 2nd Marine Division at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina until February 1955 when he became Deputy Camp Commander. He suffered a stroke and was retired by the Marine Corps on November 1, 1955, with a tombstone promotion to Lieutenant General. Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Lewis " Chesty" Puller died on October 11, 1971, at the age of 73, after giving over 37 faithful years in service to his beloved country and Corps. He was an Episcopalian and parishioner of Christ Church Parish in Saluda, VA, and was buried with full military honors in the historic cemetery next to his wife, Virginia Montague Evans, who died on February 4, 2006.
Some say Chesty Puller got his famous nickname because of his big, thrust-out barrel chest; the myth was that the original had been shot away and the new chest was a steel plate. Others state that "Chesty" was an old Marine expression meaning cocky. Even Puller himself was not sure how he came by the nickname. In a typed letter dated November 22, 1954, written to Maj. Frank C. Sheppard, one of his staff officers at Peleliu, Puller wrote in part that he "had been called a lot of names, but why ' Chesty'? Especially the steel part?" Regardless of how he earned it, that nickname became forever a term of endearment by his beloved Marines.
"They are in front of us, behind us, and we are flanked on both sides by an enemy that outnumbers us! They can't get away from us now!"
- Lewis B. " Chesty" Puller, USMC
Charles Joseph Liteky, a former Army chaplain, Vietnam War Medal of Honor recipient and peace activist, died of a stroke at the San Francisco Veterans Administration Hospital on Jan. 20, 2017. He was 85-years-old.
He was born in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 14, 1931, the son of a crusty career sailor who served 33 years in the Navy, leading to frequent moves as he was growing up. In 1948 when his father was stationed at Jacksonville Naval Air Station, 
the darkly handsome, 6-foot-1, 160-pound senior was the charismatic quarterback on the Robert E. Lee High School's football team and was known to have broken a whole lot of girls' hearts.
Following his graduation from high school, he attended Chipola Junior College and the University of Florida before transferring to an Alabama seminary affiliated with the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity. Now known as Trinity Mission, the group is a Catholic congregation "working among the poor and abandoned" across the United States and Latin America. The significance of the school direction had a major impact on the way his life was lived.
Ordained in 1960, under the Catholic name Angelo, he worked for six years at churches in New York, Virginia and elsewhere in the country. When he heard reports of a shortage of Catholic chaplains in the Army, he jumped at the chance to volunteer, saying later that he believed he "was doing God's work."
He went to Vietnam in 1967 and served as a chaplain in the Headquarters and Headquarters Company of the 199th Infantry Brigade where he frequently accompanied rifle companies in the field. On Dec. 6, 1967, near Phuoc-Lac, Bien Hoa Province he was accompanying A Company, Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment on a search and destroy mission when the company came under heavy fire from a numerically superior enemy force. Seeing two wounded men lying 50 feet from an enemy machine gun, he rushed forward and shielded them with his body. Once the volume of enemy fire decreased, he dragged the two wounded to the safety of the medevac helicopter landing site.
Although wounded in the neck and foot, he continued exposing himself to deadly enemy fire to continue saving additional wounded and administering last rites to the dying. When the medevac helicopter landing zone came under deadly enemy fire, he stood in the open to direct helicopters in the area where the badly wounded were waiting for evacuation and remained until they flow out of the area with their precious cargo. Time after time he returned to the bloody battlefield in spite of shrapnel wounds in his neck and foot. Noticing a seriously wounded man too heavy to carry, he rolled on his back, placed the man on his chest and through sheer determination, crawled back to the landing zone using his elbows and heels to push himself along.
As a Chaplain, he was unarmed but at one point he picked up an M-16 rifle belonging to a fallen soldier. He'd been trained. He was not a pacifist. He knew what to do with it. But after a few seconds, he dropped it, thinking to himself: "Holding a weapon now wouldn't that be a hell of a way for a priest to die?"
After the wounded were evacuated, he returned to the perimeter to encourage the remaining soldiers to hold on until the next morning, it was discovered that despite painful wounds, Liteky carried a total of twenty wounded soldiers to safety during the savage battle. For his heroic actions and disregard for his own safety, he was awarded the Medal of Honor.
One of the survivors of the deadly battle later told a reporter, "When Captain Liteky exposed himself to enemy fire for the first time, we knew we'd never see him again. And by the end of that day, we just knew he could walk on water."
Returning from Vietnam as a national hero, newspaper editorials praised him. A Jacksonville journal couldn't help but note that the rugged and handsome Army hero chaplain had the look of a "movie war hero."
Liteky would soon volunteer for another tour of duty in Vietnam. He was now in his late 30s and he'd seen what the Communists had done to the Vietnamese and American soldiers and knew where his duty and where his God required him to be. "I had really developed sympathy and admiration for the young men. A lot of them were there against their will," he said.
He left the Army in 1971, the year he turned 40. It was a time of change, of questioning his faith. He thought often of advice a professor had given him between his two Vietnam tours: "You need to rise above the assumptions of your subcultures." Troubled by what he'd seen in the war, he took a yearlong leave of absence from the priesthood. He lived for a time in a cabin on a Florida Island, surviving on a pension given Medal of Honor recipients; worked at a halfway house for veterans in Cleveland and made candles.
Struggling with celibacy, he had a couple of affairs and romantic relationships and made the difficult decision to leave the priesthood permanently in 1975, feeling as if he'd let God down. "They used to talk about celibacy being a gift. And after a while, I thought, 'Well, I didn't get the gift.'"
He eventually moved to the West Coast, where no one knew him, and gravitated toward cosmopolitan San Francisco. While working for the Veterans Administration, he met and married a peace activist and ex-nun, Judy Balch in 1983. Through her, he became acquainted with the plight of Central American refugees who told stories of murder and torture in testimonials at San Francisco's St. John of God Catholic Church. Not wanting to believe it at first, Liteky kept going to more of these meetings until it became clear to him that these people weren't making it up. It was for him transformational.
Judy encouraged him to work for social justice and urged him to go with other veterans to several Central American countries where the U.S. government had intervened militarily by providing both advisors and war equipment.
Taking her suggestion, he traveled with others to El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras to witness firsthand right-wing rebels groups murdering and torturing their own citizens. The horror he saw took him back to Vietnam. "I was ashamed of my country. And I was ashamed I'd participated in the same thing in Vietnam."
He was especially struck by a group of women called Mothers of the Disappeared who searched grisly photos of hundreds of massacred people, looking under the blood for missing family members.
After what he saw and experienced in Central America and two decades after President Lyndon B. Johnson placed the Medal of Honor around Liteky's neck, he transformed himself from a reticent war hero into an outspoken peace activist.
He began the public protests that would occupy him for the rest of his life, the peace groups, fasts, vigil, and imprisonment. Along the way, his religious faith - which had been so important for so long - was transforming.
Lobbying against U.S. foreign policies in Central American in the mid-1980s, he walked the halls of Congress trying to convince politicians to oppose the Reagan administration's support for right-wing groups in Nicaragua and El Salvador.
When that failed, on July 29, 1986, after nearly 20 years after his heroic actions in Vietnam, he left the Medal of Honor and a letter to Ronald Reagan at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. in protest of the country's foreign policy in Central America, where U.S.-backed dictators were fighting bloody wars against left-leaning rebels. In doing this, he became the only recipient to have denounced the medal.
Giving it up, he said later, was not hard. He felt as if it was the only thing he could do, given his anger at his country. His chief regret was not acting earlier, during the Vietnam War. "I accepted it, but I wish now that I hadn't," he said. "I wish I could have woken up when I was there and protested the war."
Later than a month later, he and three other veterans engaged in a 47-day hunger strike on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, consuming nothing but water until the near-death of one striker convinced them to break their fast.
In the 1990s and 2000s, he turned his attention to protesting against the U.S. Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, (now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) where the U.S. Army trained anti-communists from Central and South American and the Caribbean, including Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega.
With Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest and founder of the Americas Watch, based outside Fort Benning, he protested and fast with Liteky. Together they participated in annual marches on the Army school and was twice imprisoned for trespassing. In 1999, Mr. Liteky, his brother Patrick Liteky and Bourgeois were arrested for carrying vials of their own blood onto the military base and splashing it on the walls. Liteky served two consecutive six-month sentences for trespassing and spent his last 70 days at Lompoc Prison in solitary confinement, according to a 2001 story in the San Francisco Chronicle, "because he refused to work for what he considers an immoral prison industry."
In 2003, he and other peace activists traveled to Baghdad to witness the U.S. war effort in Iraq and work at an orphanage and at hospitals. They also gave arriving U.S. military personnel copies of anti-war statements. When Liteky felt the ground shake during the bombardments, he said he now knew what it is like to be on the killing end of American bombs.
He had written President George W. Bush a letter two years earlier, encouraging a nonviolent response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "If there is any enemy here, it's violence," he wrote. "We need to protest and boycott violence because we eat, drink and sleep it in our country; we are entertained by it. If we don't stop, we're just going to join in an unending cycle of violence, like an escalator that keeps going up and up and up."
He never heard from the White House.
In August, Liteky's wife Judy died at the age of 74, just five months before her husband's death.
Liteky once explained that he tried to live life as he saw it at the time but that was a very costly thing. "I've lost a lot. I'm an ex-lot of things. But what have I got? My integrity."
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In early 1862, Brig. Gen. Ormsby Mitchel, commanding Union troops in central Tennessee, began planning to advance on Huntsville, Alabama before attacking towards the vital transportation hub of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Though eager to take the latter city, he lacked sufficient forces to block any Confederate counterattacks from Atlanta to the south. Moving north from Atlanta, Confederate forces could quickly arrive in the Chattanooga area by using the Western & Atlantic Railroad. Aware of the General's strategic predicament, civilian scout and part-time spy James J. Andrews, an enigmatic Kentuckian who had made a name for himself by smuggling much-needed quinine sulfate through the Union lines for Confederate Soldiers and citizens, proposed a raid designed to sever the rail connection between the two cities.
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Andrews' plan was to lead a raiding party behind Confederate lines to Atlanta, steal a locomotive, and race northward toward Chattanooga stopping to destroy or damage tracks, telegraph lines, and bridges. The goal of the raid was to knock out the Western & Atlantic Railroad, which supplied Confederate forces at Chattanooga. This destructive siege would be happening at the same time Mitchel's army advanced. It was also meant to deprive the Confederates of the integrated use of the railways to counter a Union advance.
Approving Andrews' scheme, Gen. Mitchel directed him to select volunteers to aid the mission from Col. Joshua W. Sill's brigade. On April 7, 1862, Andrews recruited twenty-two Union Soldier volunteers from the 2nd, 21st, and 33rd Ohio Infantry, plus civilian William Hunter Campbell. He was also joined by experienced engineers William Knight, Wilson Brown, and John Wilson. Andrews instructed his men to arrive in Marietta, Georgia, by midnight of April 10, 1862, for last-minute instruction.
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Over the next three days, the Union men slipped through the Confederate lines in small groups disguised in civilian attire. If questioned, they had been provided with a cover story explaining that they were from Fleming County, Kentucky and were looking for a Confederate unit in which to enlist. Due to heavy rains and rough travel, Andrews was forced to delay the raid by a day. Meeting early the next morning on April 11th, Andrews issued final instructions to his men which called for them to board the train the following morning (April 12, 1862) and sit in the same car. They were to do nothing until the train reached Big Shanty at which point Andrews and the engineer would take the locomotive while the others uncoupled the train's passenger cars.
All but two - Samuel Llewellyn and James Smith - reached the designated rendezvous point at the appointed time. Llewellyn and Smith joined a Confederate artillery unit, as they had been instructed to do in such circumstances. Two others were captured as they tried to slip through the Confederate lines.
As the "Andrews' Raiders" assembled at the Marietta station in the early morning darkness on April 12, the train they planned to steal (The General) had already left Atlanta. In the cars of this combined freight-passenger train, conductor William A. Fuller was checking on his passengers. As he moved through the passenger cars he greeted Anthony Murphy, the mustachioed Irish foreman of Locomotive Power for the Western and Atlantic Railroad. Murphy was on his way to the yard at Allatoona Pass to pick up a part. As the train left the station a cool spring rain pelted the windows. It was 4:15 am.
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Crossing the Chattahoochee River at Bolton, then passing through Vinings, The General arrived at the depot in Marietta about 5:00 am. In small groups, Andrews' men boarded the train and found seats throughout the passenger car.
Departing Marietta, it would be a short time later that the train arrived in Big Shanty, an outpost for travelers between Atlanta and Chattanooga. Though the depot was surrounded by Confederate Camp McDonald, Andrews had selected it as the ideal location for taking over the train since it did not have a telegraph. As a result, the Confederates at Big Shanty would have to ride to Marietta in order to alert the authorities farther north.
As the train slowed for Big Shanty, conductor William Fuller shouted out to the passengers, "20 minutes for breakfast." The General stopped, the crew and some of the passengers headed to the Lacy Hotel less than a block from the depot. A few minutes later Andrews signaled his men to take control of the train.
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The Raiders quickly uncoupled the passenger cars and jumped into three box cars while engineer William Knight jumped into the cab, throwing the throttle wide open, lurching the train forward, slowly gaining speed but almost immediately began losing power. Knight brought the train to a stop while he corrected the problem, then returned to the cab and eased the train out of the yard.
As the train slowly inched north past the Lacy Hotel, it drew William Fuller's attention as he glanced out the dining room window and shouted, "Someone is stealing our train." He and another railroad man stood up and quickly began a foot chase. Anthony Murphy paused briefly to get a man to ride to the depot in Marietta and tell them what happened. He then followed his friends up the track towards a work area known as Moon's Station.
Not far ahead of them, The General stopped twice between Big Shanty and Moon's Station, once for the mechanical problem and once to cut the telegraph wires to prevent the stations further north from receiving word from Marietta that a train had been stolen. Union forces in Bridgeport, Alabama were advancing towards Chattanooga and the Raiders' job was to destroy bridges and tear up track to prevent reinforcements coming from Atlanta. After passing through Acworth and Allatoona, Andrews stopped the train so his men could remove a rail from the tracks. Though time consuming, they were successful and placed it on one of the box cars.
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Chattanooga and the Raiders' job was to destroy bridges and tear up track to prevent reinforcements coming from Atlanta. After passing through Acworth and Allatoona, Andrews stopped the train so his men could remove a rail from the tracks. Though time-consuming, they were successful and placed it on one of the box cars.
Reaching Moon's Station on foot, Fuller, Murphy and the third man were able to obtain a handcar and continued down the line in pursuit of the stolen train. Fuller's men did not slow at Allatoona and did not see the track raised by the Raiders. The hand car flew into the air when it hit the empty space, throwing the pursuers into a ditch. Unharmed, they were able to place the handcar back on the rails and continued heading north toward Etowah River.
Throughout the chase, the Raiders never got far ahead of Fuller. Destroying the railway behind the hijacked train was a slow process, the Raiders were too few in number and were too poorly equipped with the proper railway track tools and demolition equipment, or with suitable igniters and explosives to effectively close the line. Also, the Raiders had stolen a regularly scheduled train on its route and they needed to keep to the train's timetable. If they reached a siding ahead of schedule, they had to wait there until scheduled southbound trains passed them before they could continue north.
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With Fuller hot in pursuit, the Raiders crossed the large, wooden railroad bridge over the Etowah River where they spotted the short-line locomotive 'Yonah,' used by Major Cooper's Iron Foundry. The presence of the engine and men meant that the Raiders could not destroy the bridge they had just crossed - a major target of the raid. Engineer Knight suggested they should destroy the locomotive to prevent men from following them. Andrews said no. He did not want to delay their arriving at Kingston. As it turned out later, that was a big mistake.
Upon reaching Etowah River shortly after The General departed, Fuller and his men seized control of the Yonah locomotive and moved it onto the main line. As Fuller raced north, Andrews and his men paused at Cass Station to refuel. While there, he informed one of the station employees that they were carrying ammunition north for Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard's army. To aid the train's progress, the employee gave Andrews the day's train schedule.
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For the Raiders, Kingston would be a major hurdle. There was a switching station here that coordinated trains from Rome, Chattanooga and Atlanta and even under normal conditions it was difficult. But these were bad times for the Confederacy; Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard had just lost the Battle of Shiloh on April 9th and Gen. Mitchel had just taken Huntsville. Mitchel taking Huntsville was good news for the Raiders as that was part of the plan that sent them south. What Andrews did not consider was that with Huntsville under Union control, supplies and troops heading west would have to travel to Atlanta then west instead of moving west out of Chattanooga. This caused the single line of the Western & Atlantic Railroad to be overburdened with traffic which stalled the progress of the Raiders in Kingston for an hour, giving Fuller all the time he needed to catch up.
To make matters worse, the railroad men in Kingston were very inquisitive and one even refused to switch Andrews to the correct track at one point. Things were going so bad at the stop that the men in the boxcar had been told to be ready to fight. The General was halted while a rail was removed and ties thrown into the boxcar. Then, from the south came the plaintiff cry of a locomotive whistle. No northbound train should be following them which meant their pursuers were not that far behind. As rapidly as they could, Andrews' Raiders pulled out of Kingston and raced north toward Adairsville.
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By the time the pursuers arrived in Kingston, Andrews was long gone. Fuller's veteran eyes quickly sized up the situation. Getting the Yonah through would be impossible but the mail train to Rome, the 'William R. Smith,' was in position and fired up with a full head of steam. Oliver Harbin and his crew, including brakeman Joe Lassiter, a free black, did not hesitate to help Fuller. The William R. Smith then started north to Adairsville in hot pursuit of The General.
Aware of Fuller rapidly closing the gap, Andrews stopped the General and took out more tracks between Kingston and Adairsville in a determined attempt to slow or hopefully stop his pursers.
Knowing Andrews had no doubt taking out more track, Fuller chose to ride in the cab to check for problems ahead. This time he saw the missing rail and had Olly Harbin stop the locomotive in time. Fuller doggedly continued but now Andrews and his Raiders were gaining precious time with every minute that went by, allowing them even more time to take out additional rails.
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The General arrived in Adairsville quickly but now the questions were mounting. Out of touch with Atlanta for hours and now being unable to reach Kingston, the stationmaster and workers were understandably suspicious of the crew of The General. They barraged Andrews with questions, but the Kentuckian convinced them of his mission and he found out that Mitchel indeed was moving on Chattanooga. As the southbound freight train "The Texas" cleared the depot's platform, Andrews and the Raiders headed north, stopping again to quickly rip out tracks.
Once north of Adairsville, Andrews told Knight to open up the throttle on The General. There would be ample opportunity to see any oncoming smoke plumes in the short, rolling hills in the Great Valley of northwest Georgia. Near Calhoun they narrowly avoided colliding with 'The Catoosa,' and after a brief exchange of words the Raiders continued north.
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To the south, Fuller spotted the damaged tracks and succeeded in halting William R. Smith. Leaving the locomotive, his team moved north on foot until meeting "The Texas." Standing in the middle of the tracks with a gun in his hand, Fuller waved the Texas down. Peter Bracken, engineer of the Texas, recognized Fuller and immediately stopped. After a quick explanation, Fuller and his men were loaded up and the Texas was off. There had been no place nor time to turn around, so The Texas returned in reverse to Adairsville where the freight cars were uncoupled.
Once north of Adairsville, Andrews told Knight to open up the throttle on The General. There would be ample opportunity to see any oncoming smoke plumes in the short, rolling hills in the Great Valley of northwest Georgia. Near Calhoun they narrowly avoided colliding with 'The Catoosa,' and after a brief exchange of words, the spies continued north.
After passing The Catoosa on a siding, the Texas was now in hot pursuit of the Raiders with The Catoosa behind it, both chasing The General in reverse! North of Calhoun the Southern pursuers and the Union raider first spotted each other. Andrews and his men set fire to the car at the end of the train and dropped it in the middle of the covered railroad bridge over the Oostanaula River just south of Resaca.
Smoke billowed out of both ends of the bridge but Fuller and his men entered the structure and pushed the car out. The bridge had not been in peril from Andrews actions because of the steady rain. As The General moved north through the town of Resaca, the Raiders tried to block the Texas by dropping railroad ties. Again, this effort failed to slow Fuller and his men.
The diligent pursuit of Fuller was beginning to pay off. Andrews had exhausted his wood supply trying to set the car on fire to burn the Oostanaula Bridge and water was in short supply. A quick attempt to replenish the thirsty locomotive and refill her tender was made at Green's Wood Station for wood and Tilton for water. For the Raiders, Dalton was the next major obstacle.
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When 18-year-old telegrapher Edward Henderson began a southbound journey on foot from Dalton, he was surprised when The General raced by at full steam with a crew he had never seen before. Continuing southward, Henderson saw The Texas just north of Calhoun heading his way. Seeing Henderson, Fuller told Bracken to slow down and pick the boy up, then wrote out a message to Gen. Leadbetter, commanding the troops in Chattanooga. In Dalton, the Texas slowed to drop the young man off. He ran to the telegraph office and sent the following message: "My train was captured this a.m. at Big Shanty, evidently by Federal Soldiers in disguise. They are making rapidly for Chattanooga, possibly with the idea of burning the railroad bridges in their rear. If I do not capture them in the meantime, see that they do not pass Chattanooga."
Before the entire message got through Andrews Raiders, fearful of an attempt to warn the Rebel forces in Chattanooga, cut the wire north of Dalton, but enough of the message was received in Chattanooga that Gen. Danville Leadbetter sent troops south along the Western and Atlantic right-of-way to halt the engine by force if necessary. It was not. With wood and water running out, Knight and Andrews knew the end was near. Then, just after the Ringgold Depot, a small valve blew and the locomotive quickly lost power.
Racing through Tunnel Hill, Andrews was unable to stop to repair the damage due to the close proximity of Texas. With the enemy nearing and General's fuel nearly depleted, Andrews directed his men to abandon the train just short of Ringgold. Jumping to the ground, they scattered into the wilderness.
They fled west for two reasons: it was towards the area under Union control and the rugged mountain south of Chattanooga could cover their movement and help prevent Confederate cavalry patrols from finding them. In spite of their plans, over the next several days, the entire raiding party was captured by Confederate forces. While the civilian members of Andrews' group were considered unlawful combatants and spies, the entire group was charged with acts of unlawful belligerency.
Tried in Chattanooga, Andrews was found guilty and hanged in Atlanta on June 7. Seven others were later tried and quickly hanged on June 18th. Of the remainder, eight, who were concerned about meeting a similar fate, successfully escaped. Those who remained in Confederate custody were exchanged as Prisoners of War on March 17, 1863.
 Through a dramatic series of events, the Great Locomotive Chase proved a failure for Union forces. As a result, Chattanooga did not fall to Union forces until September 1863 when it was taken by Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans. Despite this setback, April 1862 saw notable successes for Union forces as Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant won the Battle of Shiloh and Flag Officer David G. Farragut captured New Orleans.
Gen. Mitchel's forces captured Huntsville on April 11 but did not move on to Chattanooga. The cut telegraph lines and pried rails were quickly repaired. Nevertheless, the train thieves were hailed in the North as heroes and the Soldier-Raiders received the Medal of Honor. Neither Andrews nor the other civilian was eligible.
 The escapade made its way into a film with Buster Keaton's silent comedy The General (1927) and Walt Disney's The Great Locomotive Chase (1956). That a failed historical footnote should kindle such drama fairly attests to the Civil War's emotional spark.
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On February 3, 1945, American forces entered the outskirts of Manila, capital of the Philippines, beginning the Battle of Manila, a ferocious and destructive urban battle against the Japanese that would leave Manila the second-hardest hit Allied capital (following Warsaw) of World War II.
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As part of his campaign to retake the Philippines from the Japanese (who had captured it from the Americans in 1942), General Douglas MacArthur first invaded the island of Leyte and then moved on to the island of Luzon, the largest of the Philippine islands and home to the capital, Manila.
American troops were able to rapidly advance to Manila, leading MacArthur to believe it would be a relatively easy fight. They entered the city limits on February 3, quickly liberating Allied (mostly American) POWs and civilians from their incarceration at the University of Santo Tomas and Bilibid Prison. However, Japanese forces dug in and put up a fierce fight in the city, forcing the Americans and their Filipino allies into a challenging urban battle, in which they fought block by block, building by building, and floor by floor, frequently hand-to-hand.
Eventually, over the course of the month, the Americans and Filipinos were able to capture much of the city as well as the island of Corregidor, in Manila Bay. However, the Japanese remained within a walled portion of Manila, called Intramuros. MacArthur denied the use of air support out of concern for the civilian population, so the Americans used heavy artillery instead, pounding the walls until they were breached and then fighting to clear the area of Japanese.
Finally, by March 3, Manila had fallen and MacArthur had turned the city over to the Filipino government. But the victory was not without great cost. In addition to the 1,000 Americans and 16,000 Japanese estimated to have been killed, it's believed that at least 100,000 Filipino civilians were killed during the battle. Many were brutally murdered by the Japanese, others were killed in fires that swept through portions of the city, and still more were killed as an unintended consequence of the American attack (particularly the artillery fire). In all, 80 percent of the southern residential district, 75 percent of factories, and all of the business district were destroyed, as were numerous governmental, educational, cultural, commercial, financial, and religious buildings.
Despite the horrors of Manila, the battle for Luzon was not yet over. In fact, a portion of MacArthur's forces would remain fighting in Luzon for the remainder of the war.
Thanks to my fellow veterans: I remember the day I found out I got into West Point. My mom actually showed up in the hallway of my high school and waited for me to get out of class. She was bawling her eyes out and apologizing that she had opened up my admission letter. She wasn't crying because it had been her dream for me to go there. She was crying because she knew how hard I'd worked to get in, how much I wanted to attend, and how much I wanted to be an infantry officer. I was going to get that opportunity. That same day two of my teachers took me aside and essentially told me the following: "David, you're a smart guy. You don't have to join the military. You should go to college, instead." I could easily write a theme defending West Point and the military as I did that day, explaining that USMA is an elite institution, that it is actually statistically much harder to enlist in the military than it is to get admitted to college, that serving the nation is a challenge that all able-bodied men should at least consider for a host of reasons, but I won't. What I will say is that when a 16-year-old kid is being told that attending West Point is going to be bad for his future, then there is a dangerous disconnect in America, and entirely too many Americans have no idea what kind of burdens our military is bearing.
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In World War II, 11.2% of the nation served in four (4) years. During the Vietnam era, 4.3% served in twelve (12) years. Since 2001, only 0.45% of our population have served in the Global War on Terror.
These are unbelievable statistics. Over time, fewer and fewer people have shouldered more and more of the burden and it is only getting worse. Our troops were sent to war in Iraq by a Congress consisting of 10% veterans with only one person having a child in the military.
Taxes did not increase to pay for the war. War bonds were not sold. Gas was not regulated. In fact, the average citizen was asked to sacrifice nothing and has sacrificed nothing, unless they have chosen to out of the goodness of their hearts. The only people who have sacrificed are the veterans and their families. The volunteers.
The people who swore an oath to defend this nation. You stand there, deployment after deployment and fight on. You've lost relationships, spent years of your lives in extreme conditions, years apart from kids you'll never get back, and beaten your body in a way that even professional athletes don't understand. Then you come home to a nation that doesn't understand. They don't understand suffering. They don't understand sacrifice. They don't understand why we fight for them. They don't understand that bad people exist. They look at you like you're a machine - like something is wrong with you. You are the misguided one - not them.
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When you get out, you sit in the college classrooms with political science teachers that discount your opinions on Iraq and Afghanistan because YOU WERE THERE and can't understand the macro issues they gathered from books, because of your bias. You watch TV shows where every vet has PTSD and the violent strain at that. Your Congress is debating your benefits, your retirement, and your pay, while they ask you to do more. But the amazing thing about you is that you all know this. You know your country will never pay back what you've given up. You know that the populace at large will never truly understand or appreciate what you have done for them. Hell, you know that in some circles, you will be thought as less than normal for having worn the uniform.
But you do it anyway. You do what the greatest men and women of this country have done since 1775.
YOU SERVED. Just that decision alone makes you part of an elite group. "Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few." ~ Winston Churchill.
Thank you to the 11.2% and 4.3% who have served and thanks to the 0.45% who continue to serve our Nation.
~ General David Petraeus West Point Class 1974
The story of Marine Pfc. Robert "Bobby" Garwood is one of the strangest of the strange war America fought in Vietnam from 1959 to 1975. Captured by the Viet Cong on September 28, 1965, near Da Nang, Quang Nam Province, he spent 14 years in North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camps, and when he was finally released in 1979, he came home not to a grateful nation but to a vengeful U.S. Marine Corps that put him on trial for allegedly collaborating with the enemy.
To begin with, the circumstances surrounding his disappearance are suspicious. Garwood claimed he was ambushed when he got lost at night when driving alone in a jeep to pick up an officer. He says he was stopped by Viet Cong, stripped naked and his jeep torched. Marine Corps records show he was absent at the 11 pm bed check on Sept. 28, 1965. No unauthorized absence (UA) was reported since he was thought to have had a "late run." He was reported UA when he failed to appear at formation at the next morning.
The next day, the Division Provost Marshal was notified of Garwood's absence and an all-points bulletin issued for him and his vehicle. This was repeated for three days with no results. Motor pool personnel searched the areas of Da Nang city that Garwood was known to frequent, but nothing was found. On October 2, the division's Provost Marshal notified the Republic of Vietnam's Military Security Services. Their search efforts also produced no information. Garwood's commanding officer reported to the Commandant, USMC, that in view of Garwood's past record of UA, he believed he had gone UA again and had possibly been taken prisoner of war. However, he recommended there be no change in Garwood's status and that he remain UA until evidence proved otherwise.
Two separate South Vietnamese agents eventually reported that the Viet Cong claimed a U.S. serviceman and his jeep had been picked up in the Cam Hai region, about 11.5 miles from the Da Nang Marine Corps base, when the serviceman had become lost. However, a ground and aerial search for Garwood's jeep produced no results, nor did four platoon search operations on October 1. Two additional infantry platoons swept the area near Marble Mountain the next morning but also found nothing. On October 12, the 704th ITC Det (CI) authorized a 100,000 VND reward for information leading to the recovery of the missing serviceman and additional 2,500 VND for the recovery of the vehicle.
On December 3, 1965, Company I, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment found a document on a gate near Da Nang titled Fellow Soldier's Appeal with Garwood's name on it. The document recommended that U.S. troops stop fighting in Vietnam and return home. The signature (B. Garwood) may well have been made by a rubber stamp and the English usage suggests it was not written by a native English speaker. Based on this, on December 17, 1965, Garwood's status was officially changed from "missing" to "presumed captured."
On July 15, 1968, a Marine Corps reconnaissance team named "Dublin City" operating in the vicinity of Troui Mountain near Phu Bai battled a Viet Cong unit. According to contemporaneous debriefing notes, now declassified, four members of Dublin City reported that one of the VC fighters was a Caucasian, who was shot during the action and yelled to his VC comrades "Help me!!" in English. The "white VC" was described as 20 - 25 years old, with brown hair, 5' 6" tall, "round eyes," and speaking very distinct English. Because they were outnumbered, Dublin City broke off contact with the enemy but were followed. In a subsequent firefight a few minutes later, Pfc. C.G. Brown was killed.
In September 2011, 43 years later, President Obama awarded one Dublin City team-member, James Wilkins, a Silver Star for heroism on that day. Following receipt of the Silver Star, he recalled the white VC incident and stated, "Myself and three other Marines looked at about 200 photos of guys who were missing in action. All of us were positive it was Bob Garwood, who apparently had defected and was helping the VC."
Beginning in the late 1960s, early 70s, Garwood was listed either as having volunteered or been forced onto a workgroup repairing a generator at Lien Trai I, one of the Yen Bai reeducation camps near Hoang Lien San Mountain in northern Vietnam. Other reports describe him as working at an unnamed "island fortress" in Thác Bà Lake, North Vietnam, or having been kept behind in mainland labor camps as a driver and vehicle mechanic. None could be verified and soon the U.S. military in Vietnam gave up the search.
The next time Garwood appeared was in 1979 when he passed a note to a Finnish national, who was a World Bank employee, at a hotel in Hanoi. This set off a chain of events whereby Garwood was returned to the United States and immediately charged with several offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and held for court-marshal proceedings.
Garwood's court-martial began in February 1980 at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where Marine prosecutors accused him of desertion, encouraging other American soldiers to defect, maltreatment of fellow POWs, wearing the enemy's uniform and carrying the enemy's weapons.
Assembled as witnesses for the prosecution, a few American prisoners of war said they had encountered Garwood at the same jungle camp where he was being held. They vividly described the life of pain, torture, hunger and disease in jungle prison camps while Garwood was living with the Vietnamese camp guards and, in the words of Gustave A. Mehrer of the Army, "He was squatting like them, walking like them and giggling like them. In my opinion, he was a white Vietnamese."
"One time he told us he went to a U.S. fire support base and got on a bullhorn, saying that they should come over to the other side," says David Harker, a Virginia probation officer who was in the same prison camp with Garwood. "I always thought he was just an opportunist. He was a confused, mixed-up kid from a broken home. This was one way of getting a little attention. He had no real strong political convictions. It was like he had found a home."
"He interrogated me," says Julius Long of Pulaski, Va. "He asked who my Captain was, that kind of thing. You try to lie as much as you can, but it's hard with an American asking the questions and you didn't realize what was going on at first. While we were locked up, he could walk around. We wore pajamas. He wore a green uniform like the Viet Cong."
Others testified that Garwood wore a Viet Cong uniform, carried an AK-47, guarded them, helped the Vietnamese interrogate and indoctrinate them, and informed on his fellow soldiers.
American POWs were not the only ones to testify. South Vietnam military POWs of the North Vietnamese that had relocated to America after the war, gave substantial evidence that the accused had engaged in various forms of collaboration with the enemy.
Following the fall of South Vietnam in 1975, tens of thousands of former South Vietnamese military officers were incarcerated in concentration camps - dubbed by the North Vietnamese "reeducation camps" in an area northwest of Hanoi. Garwood worked as a member of the staff of this camp complex where he was seen by many of the South Vietnamese personnel. Many of these South Vietnamese personnel later emigrated from Vietnam and told interviewers of their encounters with Garwood. Their testimony provides further evidence of Garwood's willing collaboration.
Maj. Werner Hellmer, the Marine Corps prosecutor said that the defendant ''did all those things,'' and throughout the trail gave continuous inferences that Garwood had fallen far short of the ideals and traditions of Marine Corps manhood.
Garwood did not deny the charges that he lived with his captors and sometimes carried a weapon. The defense lawyers maintained that their client had for the better part of two years suffered the same torture and deprivation as the other prisoners and that his mental condition had deteriorated further from the experience before the other prisoners saw him.
Coercive persuasion, more commonly known as brainwashing, produces such mental disorders as a dissociative reaction, which involves identification with one's captors. It also produces post-traumatic stress disorder, defense psychiatrists testified. All three defense psychiatrists said they were certain that the young marine did not have the mental capacity to appreciate the criminality of his acts or even have knowledge of them.
Civilian lawyer John C. Lowe of Charlottesville, VA, said his client "was driven mad by this coercive persuasion." Lowe went on to say that "he adapted his behavior to that demanded by his captors. It was a matter of survival. He was incapable of appreciating the criminality of his acts.'"
One of the most interesting and sensitive elements of the entire trail was Garwood's adamant claim about POWs left behind. He insisted he saw other American prisoners of war after the 1973 release of all American POWs, but none were ever found and his story never checked out.
Long after the court-marshal, a U.S. task force examined the sites where Garwood claimed to have seen live U.S. prisoners. They interviewed nearby residents and met with Vietnamese officials. However, the task force reported that "no evidence could be found to suggest that there are, or ever were, any live U.S. POWs" in those areas.
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which called Garwood a "stay-behind," investigated Garwood's claim that he saw live American POWs after 1973 at a "motel-shaped masonry building" in North Vietnam. The DIA reported it could not locate any masonry structures at the indicated location. Senator Bob Smith requested that the DIA search again. After a second search produced no results, Smith initiated a personal search with ABC News, Garwood, and Bill Hendon. The group traveled to Vietnam in 1993. Following Garwood's directions, they reported they did find a building exactly as Garwood had described it. The Vietnamese government and a former head of the DIA POW/MIA office angrily disputed the finding, insisting the structure had not existed when Garwood was a POW.
While the issues of duty, duress and mental disease dominated the words in the courtroom in the two and a half months of the trial, other issues were larger in the minds of the officers and enlisted men throughout the Marine Corps.
Training officers said that that reaction is typical, that young infantrymen believe that Garwood disgraced the uniform. On the other hand, there is much talk on the post and in the restaurants along the highway that the prosecution of Garwood was unnecessary in light of the refusal of the Government to bring to trial other prisoners of war, including several officers, for cooperating with the enemy in a war the country would like to forget.
Some older noncommissioned officers express two thoughts most often. First, they say that the code of conduct establishes an unrealistic standard for teen-age servicemen, especially since, after boot camp, virtually no training is given in methods to withstand torture. Second, they seem to think that Garwood was not the standard by which other marines should be judged; that he was mentally ill upon entering the Corps.
It could be argued that Garwood's life was blighted from the beginning. He was born on April Fool's Day, 1946. His mother abandoned him when he was 4 years old and his father had other wives.
As a youngster, he ran away from home twice and worked as a migrant laborer before his father had him declared a juvenile delinquent and placed in a detention home, from which the Marine Corps recruited him in 1963.
On February 5, 1981, a jury of five Marine Corps Officers deliberated two days before returning the conviction. The thin-haired 34-year-old marine, whose defense was based on a plea of insanity, stood motionless and expressionless while the verdict was read in the cramped courtroom. Donna Long, the woman with whom he lived, wept.
Garwood was found not guilty of desertion, not guilty solicitation of U.S. troops in the field to refuse to fight and to defect, and not guilty of maltreatment. However, he was convicted on communicating with the enemy and of the assault on an American prisoner of war interned in a POW camp, in violation of Articles 104 and 128, Uniform Code of Military Justice. He was also judged by the Department of Defense to have acted as a collaborator with the enemy.
Within minutes after the verdict was announced, Marines were shouting from nearby barracks: "He got what he deserved!" Yet, within the first hour after the verdict, the base public affairs office received seven telephone calls from men and women, all protesting the verdict.
A hearing on any extenuating and mitigating circumstances in the Garwood case was convened over the next few days and the same jury decided on a sentence. The maximum penalty is life imprisonment because the court-martial judge, Col. R.E. Switzer, ruled out the death penalty. The assault conviction carried a maximum sentence of six months.
He was found not guilty of desertion, solicitation of U.S. troops in the field to refuse to fight and to defect, and of maltreatment. However, he was convicted on February 5, 1981 of communicating with the enemy, and of the assault on an American Prisoner of War interned in a POW camp, in violation of Articles 104 and 128, Uniform Code of Military Justice. He was reduced to the lowest rank in the Marine Corps and given a dishonorable discharge as well as forfeiture of veteran's benefits and stripped of all pay and allowances - including the $148,000 in private's pay that had built up during his 14 years in captivity. He was not sentenced to confinement, however.
His conviction was upheld on appeal. United States v. Robert R. Garwood, 16 M.J. 863 (N.C.M.R. 1983), aff'd, 20 M.J. 148 (C.M.A. 1985). Garwood's record of trial covered 16 volumes and 3,833 pages of trial record.
With all the evidence given at Robert "Bobby" Garwood' court-marshal, he most certainly was not a Prisoner of War for fourteen years. He was arguably a POW for eight years, but he voluntarily chose to remain behind when all the rest of our POWs from the Vietnam War were released in 1973. That might have had something to do with the fact that he collaborated with the enemy.
Garwood was the only Vietnam POW to be tried by a court-marshal on collaboration charges. His conviction was also the first of such charges in the armed service since 10 POWs of the Korean War were convicted 25 years prior.
Branded a "traitor," Garwood became over the years the most vilified Marine in U.S. History.
The son of a grocer, Lewis Puller was born June 26, 1898, at West Point, Virginia, to Matthew and Martha Puller. He loved hunting and fishing and was a military history buff who grew up listening to old veterans' tales of the American Civil War and idolizing Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. He was forced to help support his family after his father's death when he was ten. Puller attempted to join the U.S. Army in 1916 to take part in the Punitive Expedition to capture Mexican leader Pancho Villa, but he was too young and his mother refuses to grant parental consent. In 1917, he followed his martial interest to VMI (the Virginia Military Institute).
Finally, by March 3, Manila had fallen and MacArthur had turned the city over to the Filipino government. But the victory was not without great cost. In addition to the 1,000 Americans and 16,000 Japanese estimated to have been killed, it's believed that at least 100,000 Filipino civilians were killed during the battle. Many were brutally murdered by the Japanese, others were killed in fires that swept through portions of the city, and still more were killed as an unintended consequence of the American attack (particularly the artillery fire). In all, 80 percent of the southern residential district, 75 percent of factories, and all of the business district were destroyed, as were numerous governmental, educational, cultural, commercial, financial, and religious buildings. 