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Chesty: The Story of Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller, USMC. By Jon T. Hoffman. New York: Random House, 2001. ISBN 0-679-47732-6. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xx, 628. $35.00.
Lieutenant General Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller died in 1971, but he still looms large in the collective memory of the United States Marine Corps. His deeds have assumed legendary proportions, his image is an icon, and Marines regard him as the ideal role model for all their officers.
Born in Virginia on 26 June 1898, Puller grew up steeped in Confederate traditions. He enlisted in the Marine Corps toward the end of World War I, and graduated from Officers' Training Camp on 19 June 1919. He spent much of the next thirteen years in Haiti and Nicaragua, becoming one of the Marines' foremost combat officers....