Another comment-inspired post, this latest one brought on by Ironbear’s use of one of true American hero Chesty Puller’s most well-known quips: They have us surrounded. There’s no way they can escape from us now. That got me to digging around for more Puller quotes to respond with, plenty of which are easy to find on the Intarwebs. A sampling—all of them good, all candid and plain-spoken, some alarmingly prescient.
“Our country won’t go on forever, if we stay soft as we are now. There won’t be any America—because some foreign soldiery will invade us and take our women and breed a hardier race.”
“They are in front of us, behind us, and we are flanked on both sides by an enemy that outnumbers us 29:1. They can’t get away from us now!”
“Great. Now we can shoot at them from every direction.”
“We’re surrounded. That simplifies our problem of getting to these people and killing them.” – November 1950, during Chosin Reservoir campaign
“Remember, you are the 1st Marines! Not all the Communists in Hell can overrun you!” (at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir)
“Take me to the Brig. I want to see the real Marines.”
“Where do you put the bayonet on the damn thing?” (upon seeing a flamethrower demonstrated for the first time)
“You don’t hurt ’em if you don’t hit ’em.”
There’s something for Real Americans to learn from in every one of these, either the words themselves or the fearless, never-say-die spirit of the man who spoke them. A few more:
“The mail service has been excellent out here, and in my opinion this is all that the Air Force has accomplished during the war.” – Chesty Puller in a letter to his wife while in Korea
When an Army captain asked him for the direction of the line of retreat, Col Puller called his Tank Commander, gave them the Army position, and ordered:
“If they start to pull back from that line, even one foot, I want you to open fire on them.”
Turning to the captain, Chesty Puller replied “Does that answer your question? We’re here to fight!” At Koto-ri in Korea
“They are a damn sight better than the U.S. Army, at least we know that they will be there in the morning.” – Lewis B. Chesty Puller, when a journalist asked him about being surrounded by 22 enemy divisions
“There are not enough Chinamen in the world to stop a fully armed Marine regiment from going where ever they want to go”
That last one smarts a bit, seeing as how Puller’s beloved Corps has fully knuckled under and is now welcoming opportunistic cross-dressers seeking choppadicktomy surgery on the USMC’s dime, as well as boatloads of mollycoddled bimbelinas incapable of meeting minimal standards for physical fitness, into its ranks. The entire US military is now every bit the hollow, ineffectual parody of its former robust self that the country it serves has become. Which is only fitting, I guess. Really, how could it possibly be otherwise? They’ve both been drinking from the same poisoned well.
America just isn’t turning out fierce, indomitable warriors like Chesty Puller anymore, and that’s no accident; it isn’t, because it can’t. That’s no accident either, rather being just one of the Left’s strategic objectives. Thanks to “diversity,” political correctness, general pusillanimity, and overall Leftard tomfoolery, the nation has created a military wholly unable to effectively fulfill its sole purpose of defending the nation.
How powerfully ironic that the Chinese will never even need worry about stopping that “fully-armed Marine regiment” of Chesty’s in the first place. Neither will it be necessary to send a single PLA soldier here for invasion, conquest, and colonization purposes. Thanks to the FUSA’s having sat back limply as its internal enemies slit its throat, the ChiComs already own the banana republic lock, stock, and barrel anyway, without ever mussing a single dink grunt’s hair.
The intentional sapping of our national will and self-respect cost us legendary fighting men like Puller, Claire Chennault, Curtis LeMay, George Patton, Jimmy Doolittle, Pappy Boyington, Audie Murphy, Dick Winters, and too many others to list, “fundamentally transforming” them from role models into icons of American immorality and disgrace. Even worse, celebrating their selfless bravery has been disallowed; in certain despicable circles, they and their exploits are to be harshly condemned, eventually to be quietly edited out of the historical record and forgotten.
The most bitter irony of all? The Left robbed us of these exemplars of real American greatness precisely when we needed them most. Which was no accident either.
Look up casualty rates for Marines versus Soldiers in Korea and think about whether Puller’s attitude might explain some of the difference.
Now look up retention rates for Marines and Soldiers at the end of their first enlistment and think about it some more.
Choppadicktomy. Isn’t that where Ted Kennedy drowned Mary Jo Kopechne?