Early Life
Puller was born in West Point, Virginia to Matthew and Martha Puller. His father was a grocer who died when Lewis was 10 years old. Puller grew up listening to old veterans' tales of the Civil War and idolizing Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. He wanted to enlist in the United States Army to fight in Mexico in 1916, but he was too young and could not get parental consent from his mother.
The following year, Puller attended the Virginia Military Institute but left at the end of his first year as World War I was still ongoing, saying that he wanted to "go where the guns are!" Inspired by the 5th Marines at Belleau Wood, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps as a private and attended boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina.
Although he never saw action in that war, the Corps was expanding, and soon after graduating he attended NCO school and OCS (Officer Candidates School) at Quantico, Virginia following that. Upon graduation from OCS on June 16, 1919, Puller was appointed to the grade of second lieutenant in the reserves, but reduction in force from 73,000 to 1,100 officers and 27,400 men following the war led to his being put on inactive status 10 days later and given the rank of corporal.
Read more about this topic: Chesty Puller
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“It is not too much to say that next after the passion to learn there is no quality so indispensable to the successful prosecution of science as imagination. Find me a people whose early medicine is not mixed up with magic and incantations, and I will find you a people devoid of all scientific ability.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“My dream of politics all my life has been that it is the common business, that it is something we owe to each other to understand and ... discuss with absolute frankness.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)