title: The Daily Stormer

text: "The Daily Stormer" takes its name from the Nazi Party's tabloid newspaper "Der Stürmer", known for its virulently antisemitic caricatures of Jews and semi-pornography involving Jews raping young Aryan girls. Its publisher, Julius Streicher, was executed after the Second World War for crimes against humanity.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: The Southern Poverty Law Center described the site as "the newest up and comer in the heated competition to rule the hate web", which "has in the last six months [up to March 2015] often topped the oldest and largest hate site on the web, Stormfront, in terms of reach and page views, based on Alexa data". Anglin claimed in May 2016 that the website's traffic had doubled over the last six months, peaking at 120,000 daily visitors. The website is part of the alt-right movement, and it calls itself "The World’s Most Visited Alt-Right Website". As the movement made headlines in mid-2016, "bolstered in part by the unexpected rise of Donald Trump and Britain's decision to leave the European Union", Anglin declared: "We won the meme war; now we've taken over the GOP, and we did this very, very quickly." Unlike other figures such as Milo Yiannopoulos, Anglin does not play down the extremist elements in the alt-right, stating that: "The goal is to ethnically cleanse White nations of non-Whites and establish an authoritarian government. Many people also believe that the Jews should be exterminated".


title: The Daily Stormer

text: Andrew Anglin uses "The Daily Stormer" as a platform to promote misogynistic conspiracy theories, claiming that politically active "[w]hite women across the Western world" are pushing for liberal immigration policies "to ensure an endless supply of Black and Arab men to satisfy their depraved sexual desires." In July 2018, Anglin summarized his misogynistic views, writing: "Look, I hate women. I think they deserve to be beaten, raped and locked in cages."


title: The Daily Stormer

text: Anglin asserts that the purpose of "The Daily Stormer" is to provide "a means to propagandize people ... to get them to look at the world in a certain way". Headlines include "All Intelligent People in History Disliked Jews", and "Adolf Hitler: The Most Lied About Man of All Time". The site bills itself as "America's #1 Most-Trusted Republican News Source". According to "The Jewish Chronicle", "The Daily Stormer" "posts hundreds of racist articles targeting black people, Arabs and Jews". The website offers pro-separatist coverage of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, which Anglin considers "the correct moral position". The site promotes the conspiracy theory that Jews are shape shifting reptilians who rule the Earth, which Anglin had previously discussed on his web site "Adventure Quest 2012."


title: The Daily Stormer

text: The SPLC stated that "The Daily Stormer" owed its success to the online imageboard 4chan becoming popular among racists, as both websites use similar memes and rhetorical styles. One meme the website has used is to overlay photographs of Taylor Swift with anti-Semitic quotations, including comments made by Hitler. The website puts triple parentheses around the names of Jews, a far-right meme created by fellow website The Right Stuff. Jacob Siegel of "The Daily Beast" wrote that the website was growing in popularity amongst a younger audience due to its use of humor, and was attracting activists of other anti-political correctness ideologies—such as Gamergaters, men's rights activists and opponents of social justice warriors—who would not usually identify with fascism. The SPLC has also documented Anglin's involvement in and encouragement of culture jamming by making hyperbolic statements in fake online accounts as women and minorities. He has also said that "ridiculous" statements such as "gas the kikes", if repeated in media coverage, can work to desensitize the public to the Holocaust. He also believes that his extreme right-wing rhetoric can normalize less extreme right-wingers such as Trump. In December 2017, "The Huffington Post" leaked Anglin's 17-page style guide for the website, which included the guideline that articles must be so extremely hyperbolic that readers would be unsure whether the content is parody.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: The hacker and Internet troll known as "weev" (Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer) wrote an article on the website after his release from prison in October 2014, espousing his conversion to Neo-Nazism and his opposition to Jews who had built "an empire of wickedness the likes the world has never seen". Fredrick Brennan, founder of the online community 8chan, wrote an article on "The Daily Stormer" encouraging eugenics, based on his own experiences of having brittle bone disease. Florida-based Jewish troll Joshua Ryne Goldberg, who encouraged a 2015 attack on a free speech exhibition in Garland, Texas, under the alias of a Muslim extremist, wrote white supremacist articles for "The Daily Stormer" under the pseudonym Michael Slay. "The Daily Stormer" accepts freelance work and pays $14.88 (a reference to David Lane's Fourteen Words and the Nazi slogan "Heil Hitler") per article. The second-most prolific writer on the website goes by the pseudonym "Zeiger" and was unmasked in 2018 by the "Montreal Gazette" as Gabriel Sohier Chaput, an IT consultant from Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie, Quebec. Gabriel Sohier-Chaput was also a member of the now-defunct neo-Nazi online forum Iron March and was a supporter of the terrorist organization Atomwaffen Division writing articles promoting the group. Another notable prolific writer was Robert Warren "Azzmador" Ray, an East Texas-based neo-Nazi who gained national prominence from an appearance on a Vice News documentary by Elle Reeve about the Charlottesville riots where he complained that Charlottesville was run by "Jewish communists and criminal niggers". Ray is also the creator of "The Krypto Report," the main podcast show of the Daily Stormer. A more recently-known associate/member of The Daily Stormer was Daniel Kenneth Jeffries from Granbury, Texas who goes by the nickname of "Grandpa Lampshade" (a reference to the World War II rumour that the Nazis made lampshades out of executed Holocaust prisoners) and hosts the "Thoughts on the Day" segment on the United Kingdom-based neo-Nazi radio network Radio Aryan founded by Steve "Sven Longshanks" Stone, Laurence "Max Musson" Nunn, and Jeremiah "Jez" Bedford-Turner of which the radio is prominently featured on "The Daily Stormer". Some of Jeffries/Lampshade's posts were also shared by Robert Bowers, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter and domestic terrorist.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: "The Daily Stormer" attracted media coverage when the SPLC stated that white supremacist spree killer Dylann Roof—who on June 17, 2015, shot nine African Americans to death in the Charleston church shooting—may have made several comments on the site. The SPLC found similarities between one user's comments and Roof's manifesto. "The Daily Beast" stated that Anglin "repudiated Roof's crime and publicly disavowed violence, while endorsing many of Roof's views". In October of that year, Anglin gave a positive reaction to an attempted assassination on Henriette Reker, a pro-immigration candidate to be mayor of the German city of Cologne, decrying her as a "feminist hag".


title: The Daily Stormer

text: In May 2017, "weev" set up the first non-English version of "The Daily Stormer", "El Daily Stormer" in Spanish. It focused on news related to white nationalism in Spain and Latin America. "El Daily Stormer" was one of the sites where the identity of the victim of La Manada was spread. In December 2018, three admins of the site were arrested by the national police of Spain and a fourth member has been identified.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: Anglin officially endorsed Donald Trump for president in 2015. Anglin encouraged the website's readers to "vote for the first time in our lives for the one man who actually represents our interests". The website also received national and international coverage for its endorsement of Trump's proposal of a temporary moratorium on admitting foreign Muslims into the country; it proclaimed "Heil Donald Trump – "The Ultimate Savior"". According to the SPLC, white supremacist endorsement of Trump is unprecedented, as the movement is generally skeptical of all politicians. In July 2016, Andrew Anglin and "The Daily Stormer" were mentioned by Lacy Clay, Democratic Representative from Missouri, as he asked in a congressional hearing whether FBI director James Comey was aware of Trump sharing Twitter posts by white supremacists. Anglin wrote in July 2016 that he believed that Trump was a pragmatic anti-Semite who praised Israel to win votes from evangelical Christians, while dropping subtle hints about purported Jewish domination of rival Hillary Clinton's campaign. "The Huffington Post" journalist Jessica Schulberg compared how white nationalists like Anglin and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke believed Trump to be representative of their ethnic interests, while at the same time several Jews believed him to be representative of theirs.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: In "The Daily Telegraph", Trump supporter Crystal Wright wrote that the candidate needed to separate himself from white nationalists such as "The Daily Stormer", who were endorsing him ahead of other politicians they deemed "cuckservatives" for holding more liberal positions. Writing for "The Atlantic", Conor Friedersdorf theorized that modern academia's focus on race rather than "color-blind" individualism was causing divisions and allowing white nationalist sites such as "The Daily Stormer" to gain an audience, and therefore become a "tiny but nevertheless alarming portion" of Trump's support. Al Jazeera writer Malcolm Harris analyzed the endorsement and predicted that a Trump presidency would strengthen organized racist groups and lead to civil war.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: After Trump won the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Anglin called on the site's readers to use non-violent intimidation to make "brown people" feel unwelcome in America, and to goad disappointed supporters of Clinton into committing suicide.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: In response to the bombing of the Syrian government's Shayrat Airbase in 2017, "The Daily Stormer" was one of several alt-right outlets that criticized Trump. While Anglin alleged the president could be under control of a purportedly Jewish deep state, "Daily Stormer" associate "weev" said in a video on the website that he retained faith in Trump from his past actions.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: White nationalist websites such as Stormfront and Counter-Currents have taken issue with what they see as lowbrow coverage on "The Daily Stormer", as well as Anglin's defense of Christianity and denunciation of the white supremacist group Christian Identity. Kyle Rogers of the Council of Conservative Citizens has also criticized the website for reprinting its material. Anglin has also been criticized for his relationships with Filipinas, and for his insults towards white women on his website.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: Colin Liddell of AlternativeRight.com has criticized Anglin's beliefs and tone. Liddell, who believes that stopping migration and encouraging higher birthrates is more important for preserving the white race, condemned Anglin for writing that it was impossible for the race to survive without adopting his views on Jews, Hitler and the Holocaust. Liddell considered that Anglin was attracting poor whites with his provocative online persona in the same manner as monster trucks and professional wrestling, writing that "it is hard not to conclude that Anglin is a paid shill and agent provocateur, whose purpose is simply to infest and discredit White nationalism". Jared Taylor of "American Renaissance" criticized "The Daily Stormer" "extremely harsh, dismissive and insulting tone toward blacks", which he called unhelpful.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: Others, such as the Traditionalist Youth Network, have praised "The Daily Stormer" for its reach and influence. Anglin's extreme tone has led some white nationalists to suspect that he is an undercover Jew, an accusation he finds analogous to believing that Jewish LGBT activist Allen Ginsberg was an undercover Nazi.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: Anglin has endorsed Xi Jinping, praising China's action to promote virility among men and censoring feminists and LGBT accounts from the Internet, and condemned several American conservatives for shilling a war against China in his article "What About China, Then?" published October 5, 2021. In other articles, according to "Foreign Policy" magazine, Anglin's "Daily Stormer" articles have regularly praised China for its actions against Uighur Muslims.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: Payton S. Gendron, the suspect in the 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, cited "The Daily Stormer" as having inspired the attack, in addition to 4chan and the writings of New Zealand mass shooter Brenton Tarrant.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: "The Daily Stormer" orchestrates what it calls a "Troll Army", involved in Internet trolling. It came to attention in October 2014 in a campaign against British Labour politician Luciana Berger, a Jewish Member of Parliament. A member of neo-Nazi group National Action had been sent to prison for sending her abusive messages over Twitter, and "The Daily Stormer" encouraged its readers to send her antisemitic messages, as long as they did not promote violence. It also gave out guidelines on how to limit traceability and create anonymous e-mail and Twitter accounts. Berger said she received 400 abusive messages in one week. The abuse was brought up in the British Parliament, where Speaker John Bercow deemed it "beneath contempt".


title: The Daily Stormer

text: The Troll Army launched a campaign in February 2015 against Mariam Veiszadeh, an Afghan Australian Muslim activist who demanded that a T-shirt bearing the Australian flag reading "If you don't love it, leave" be withdrawn from sale at Woolworths. A woman was arrested for sending her abusive messages, and Anglin interpreted Veiszadeh's actions as curbing freedom of speech, which he believed "should be responded to with the most ridiculous conceivable hateful speech".


title: The Daily Stormer

text: The "Troll Army" has also attacked right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for having a Jewish wife. In November 2015, they took part in "Operation: Kikebart", targeting far-right news website "Breitbart News" for opening an office in Israel. The aim was to post so much anti-Semitic content in the comments section that it would be unfeasible to moderate. Disqus, the comment platform used by websites including "Breitbart", ended its service to "The Daily Stormer" as a result.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: In 2016, "The Daily Stormer" took part in a Gamergate-related attempt to have Nintendo marketing officer Alison Rapp fired; Nintendo dismissed her and stated that it was unrelated to the controversy.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: Later in 2016, the site encouraged racially abusing Julia Ioffe, a Russian-Jewish journalist who had written a piece on Trump's wife, Melania Trump, in "GQ" magazine. Ioffe said that the abuse was unparalleled in her lifetime since leaving Russia to escape such prejudices 26 years earlier.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: In June 2016, users of the website revealed the personal details of Erin Schrode, a Jewish woman running for Congress in California, and sent her Holocaust-related messages.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit in April 2017 on behalf of Montana Jewish resident Tanya Gersh, against Anglin and "The Daily Stormer," alleging they had invaded her privacy and caused "intentional infliction of emotional distress" upon Gersh, and also violated Montana's Anti-Intimidation Act. The website initiated a "troll storm" in response to Gersh's alleged extortion of property belonging to the mother of white nationalist Richard B. Spencer. Gersh denies the allegations. The site crowdfunded $152,000 in legal fees from around 2,000 contributors and hired First Amendment lawyer Marc Randazza, whose previous clients include 8chan and right-wing author Mike Cernovich. The suit ran into difficulties because of Anglin's secrecy over his location. In November, a federal judge ruled that Gersh was not a public figure, that Anglin had intentionally incited his readers to harass Gersh, and that such harassment was not protected as free speech. Gersh testified in the lawsuit, as did her therapist, to describe the effects on her of the continued harassment of the "troll army". Anglin did not appear at a hearing, despite being ordered to do so by the trial judge, saying that he feared for his safety; he is presumed to be outside of the United States. By not appearing, he forfeited his legal right to defend his actions.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: On July 15, 2019, the federal magistrate overseeing the trial recommended that Gersh receive a default judgment of $14 million, $4 million in compensatory damages, and $10 million in punitive damages. The magistrate also recommended that Anglin be forced to remove the posts encouraging the harassment of Gersh from "The Daily Stormer" website. On August 8, the magistrate's recommendations were approved by a U.S. District Court judge. David Dinielli, the deputy legal director of the SPLC, said that the organization would "go to the ends of the earth to collect the judgment on behalf of our client, Tanya Gersh, whether it's cash, assets or intellectual property. ... We will employ various procedures to obtain any assets that can be seized, if Anglin does not pay the full $14 million judgment. And if his monetary and other hard assets are insufficient, we will go after his intangible property." According to Anglin's lawyer at the time, who no longer represents him, Anglin is not currently a U.S. resident.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: In August 2017, Muslim American radio presenter Dean Obeidallah sued "The Daily Stormer" in an Ohio federal court. Anglin had published fake images which purported to show Obeidallah celebrating the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing. The lawsuits cleared a longstanding hurdle in March 2018, when U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremiah Lynch declared that there was sufficient evidence of Anglin being domiciled in Ohio despite living abroad. In July, the court found in Obeidallah's favor, with neither Anglin nor his representatives present in court.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: Taylor Dumpson, the first black student body president at American University, sued Anglin in May 2018 for organizing a racist and sexist trolling campaign against her. She alleges that Anglin had posted her name and picture, as well as links to her Facebook page and the Twitter account of the university's student government, and urged his readers to "troll storm" her, which resulted in many hate-filled and racist online messages directed at her. Although Dumpson and Anglin have not reached a settlement, she settled in December 2018 with one of the people who harassed her, a man from Eugene, Oregon named Evan McCarty who was a neo-Nazi musician and former theatre actor known as "Byron de la Vandal" (named after Byron De La Beckwith, the assassin of Medgar Evers) who served as a member of the fascist Vanguard America and affiliated with the Daily Stormer. McCarty was required to apologize, to renounce white supremacy, to stop trolling and doxing online, and to provide information to and cooperate with authorities in the prosecution of white supremacists. The lawsuit that was brought on her behalf was led by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law which continues to use litigation as a tool to fight extremism and to slow the efforts of white supremacists.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: On August 9, 2019, a Federal judge awarded Dumpson a judgment of over $725,000, to be paid by Andrew Anglin, Brian Andrew Ade, and the shell company which owns "The Daily Stormer". The defendants did not show up to contest the lawsuit, so a default judgment was entered against them, consisting of $101,429.28 in compensatory damages, punitive damages of $500,000 and attorney's fees and costs of $124,022.10. A restraining order was also handed down, as was an injunction not to publish anything more about Dumpson. The judgement came only a day after Tanya Gersh was awarded a $14 million default judgment against Anglin.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: In 2016, "The Daily Stormer" and the hacker "weev" jointly took credit for sending copies of a racist, anti-Semitic flier to thousands of publicly accessible, Internet-connected printers throughout the country, many of them at universities. The flier urged the reader to visit the website and accompany it "in the struggle for global white supremacy". Anglin credited "weev" for the printer exploit, while one of "The Daily Stormer" crew composed the flier's text. On April 20 that year, the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birth, university printers in Germany were hacked to publish Nazi propaganda tracts including the website's name. That same year, "The Daily Stormer" expanded its activities to establish 31 "clubs".


title: The Daily Stormer

text: "The Daily Stormer" capitalized on the popularity of the augmented reality video game "Pokémon Go" in mid-2016 to distribute racist flyers to children congregating in public to play the game, with Anglin explaining that "I have long thought that we needed to get pre-teens involved in the movement. At that age, you can really brainwash someone easily. Anyone who accepts Nazism at the age of 10 or 11 is going to be a Nazi for life." On May 3, 2017, one day after a deadly stabbing attack at the University of Texas, racist flyers were posted across campus with the website address for "The Daily Stormer", a caricature of a black person, and the line "... around blacks ... never relax!".


title: The Daily Stormer

text: "The Daily Stormer" promoted readers' participation in the Unite the Right rally, a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11 and 12, 2017, in which a counter-protester, Heather Heyer, was killed in a vehicular ramming attack. "Weev" called for readers of "The Daily Stormer" to locate and attend Heyer's funeral, calling her a "fat skank". Both Anglin and "weev" denied that Heyer died from vehicular impact, claiming instead that she was killed by a weight-related heart attack.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: On August 13, the website was informed by its domain registrar GoDaddy that it had violated the terms of service by mocking Heyer in an article by Anglin. He was given 24 hours to locate a new registrar for the site. The next day it moved to Google which almost immediately cancelled its registration for violation of terms, also terminating the website's YouTube account. The following day, the website registered with Tucows, who canceled it hours later for regularly inciting violence. On August 15, it was announced by "weev" that the site had moved to the dark web, and that it was now only accessible via Tor, while Facebook banned links to the site and Discord banned its server. On August 16, Cloudflare, the DNS provider and proxy service used to protect "The Daily Stormer," also terminated their service. Cloudflare had previously refused to terminate sites based on their content, but CEO Matthew Prince made an exception, posting a public announcement and explanation on the company's blog. "The Daily Stormer" now receives DDoS protection from a content distribution network set up in March 2017, BitMitigate. The company's founder, Nick Lim, said that he found "The Daily Stormer" to be "stupid" but believed in freedom of expression. Several Twitter accounts connected with "The Daily Stormer" were also suspended.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: On August 17, after a relocation to dailystormer.ru, the Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor requested a shutdown of the domain. "The Daily Stormer" briefly returned to the clearnet with a .lol gTLD, dailystormer.lol, administered by Namecheap, but after two days, Namecheap canceled the domain. The company's CEO Richard Kirkendall stated that "the quality and context of the material, paired with the support for violent groups and causes passes from protected free speech into incitement", specifically quoting one published statement from "The Daily Stormer": "It doesn't take a Ph.D. in mathematics to understand that White men + pride + organization = Jews being stuffed into ovens."


title: The Daily Stormer

text: The site returned to the web as punishedstormer.com on August 24, hosted by DreamHost, whose other clients include the far-right National Vanguard and the Northwest Front. Denial-of-service attacks from Anonymous caused intermittent outages for all of DreamHost's sites, including those unconnected to white supremacist ideology. Within hours of the attack, DreamHost canceled the site's accounts for violating its terms of service, saying the host had already been kicked off the site years previously and was exploiting an automated sign-up process. Days later, "The Daily Stormer" was available under an Albanian .al ccTLD, dailystormer.al. Within four days, it was removed by registrar Host.al for breaking their content rules. In September, "The Daily Stormer" was briefly registered with a .at address from Austria, but this was removed by registrar nic.at when local politicians complained. Later that month, it reappeared on a .is domain from Iceland, a country known for its freedom of speech; Anglin said that the recent collapse of the Nordic island's government meant that politicians would be distracted from affairs related to his website. Before the end of September, ISNIC pulled "The Daily Stormer" because Anglin refused its standard condition of disclosing his address, fearing that the information would be passed to law agencies. From September 21 to October 6, "The Daily Stormer" was hosted on a .cat domain, exclusively reserved for websites promoting Catalan language and culture. It exploited weakened filters after the Spanish government raided the offices of registrar Fundació puntCAT amidst a political crisis, and published several pieces in support of Catalan independence. In November 2017, "The Daily Stormer" was registered with a .hk domain from Hong Kong, which was revoked before the end of the month.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: On November 29, 2017, the site returned to the clear web yet again with a new .red domain name, registered through GKG.net. The domain kept the website online until it was seized by the registrar. Hours after the domain was seized, the site was registered on a new .top website, through the same registrar they has previously used for .red. The .top domain lasted just until February 2, 2018, when it was taken offline by the registrar. In February 2018, "The Daily Stormer" registered a new domain under the .name TLD with the China-based Internet company Eranet International Limited.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: The domain blocking by Internet providers has raised questions regarding the implications of domain registrants policing the Internet. The August 21 cancellation of The Rebel Media's registration on 24 hours' notice was compared to that of "The Daily Stormer", as both had provided coverage sympathetic to Charlottesville protesters.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: The Electronic Frontier Foundation acknowledged that the companies were within their legal rights to terminate their contracts with "The Daily Stormer", but said that the move set a dangerous precedent in which other political views, including left-wing ones, could be denied legal protection. Several news outlets also published editorials discussing the free speech implications of the move.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: As of August 17, "The Daily Stormer" had returned to the dark web on the Tor network. This prompted an announcement from the Tor project team that they were "disgusted" by the website, but that they were powerless to intervene.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller (June 26, 1898 – October 11, 1971) was a United States Marine Corps officer. Beginning his career fighting guerillas in Haiti and Nicaragua as part of the Banana Wars, he later served with distinction in World War II and the Korean War as a senior officer. By the time of his retirement in 1955, he had reached the rank of lieutenant general.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Puller is the most decorated Marine in American history. He was awarded five Navy Crosses and one Distinguished Service Cross. With six crosses, Puller is second behind Eddie Rickenbacker for citations of the nation's second-highest military award for valor. Puller retired from the Marine Corps in 1955, after 37 years of service. He lived in Virginia and died in 1971 at age 73.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Puller was born in West Point, Virginia, to Matthew and Martha Puller. Puller was of English ancestry; his ancestors who came to America emigrated to the colony of Virginia from Bedfordshire, England in 1621. His father was a grocer who died when Puller was 10 years old. Puller grew up listening to old veterans' tales of the American Civil War and idolizing Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. He wanted to enlist in the United States Army to fight in the Border War with Mexico in 1916, but he was too young and could not get parental consent from his mother.


title: Chesty Puller

text: The following year, Puller attended the Virginia Military Institute but left in August 1918 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 Marine Corps was expanding, and soon after graduating he attended its non-commissioned officer school and Officer Candidates School (OCS) at Quantico, Virginia. Graduating from OCS on June 16, 1919, Puller was appointed second lieutenant in the reserves, but the 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.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Corporal Puller received orders to serve in the "Gendarmerie d'Haiti" as a lieutenant, seeing action in Haiti. While the United States was working under a treaty with Haiti, he participated in over forty engagements during the ensuing five years against the Caco rebels and attempted to regain his commission as an officer twice. In 1922, he served as an adjutant to Major Alexander Vandegrift, a future Commandant of the Marine Corps.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Puller received orders to deliver supplies to Mirebalais and Lascahobas. These two small towns were located in a region where there was a significant presence of Caco guerrillas under the command of Benoît Batraville, who was a high ranking insurgent leader. Puller's supply party consisted of twenty-five mounted Haitian Gendarmes along with the pack animals. Puller kept his force moving rapidly to avoid risking an ambush or night attack by the Caco.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Later on, the small force of Gendarmes led by Puller ran in to an equally surprised column of about one hundred Cacos coming from the opposite direction around a bend in the road. Puller ordered a charge and spurred his horse forward to attack the Cacos. The Gendarmes charged beside him and scattered the Cacos, who used guerilla tactics and therefore seldom stood their ground if attacked by a significant force. The Cacos fired a handful of shots at the onrushing American-led Gendarmes and then dispersed to make pursuit more difficult. With the burden of the pack mules, Puller could not pursue the evasive Cacos. After the clash ended, one dead Caco bandit was found.


title: Chesty Puller

text: This skirmish was Puller's first engagement in the occupation and showed his adeptness at aggressive action and effective leadership from the front. Puller and his force of Gendarmes reached Mirebalais and delivered the supplies needed by the town. The next day, Puller made a 34-hour round trip to Lascahobas to deliver the final supplies and then returned to Port-au-Prince completing his supply run.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Puller was assigned a new duty to begin offensive operations against the Cacos. Puller inherited a force of one hundred Gendarmes who were supported unofficially by about the same number of female camp followers. Puller's assigned chief assistant was acting Second Lieutenant Augustin B. Brunot, a Haitain who was fluent in English. Other pro-American Haitians added to Puller's force were newly commissioned lieutenants Lyautey and Brunot, and a Haitian private named Jean Louis Cermontout, who Puller recruited with the promise of promotion after seeing him return from a successful patrol with the severed heads of two Cacos bandits.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Brunot and Lyautey advised Puller on how to combat the Cacos insurgents. They advised him that daylight patrols had little chance of encountering the Cacos, as they hid during the day, only emerging from hiding to ambush government patrols if they had superior numbers. Chance encounters such as Puller's supply run were rare because the Cacos knew the terrain and had good intelligence of constabulary activities. They advised him that the Cacos encamped at night and that night patrols would have a better chance of surprising them. When Puller and his unit, following this advice, patrolled along a ridge-top trail one night, he observed campfires and heard drums nearby. Puller with Lyautey and some Gendarmes went to scout, while Brunot remained with the rest of the Gendarmes. The noise turned out to be a celebration at a Cacos guerrilla encampment. After returning, Puller came up with a plan to ambush the Cacos at dawn.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Puller placed the main body of men in a line facing the bandit camp and sent the smaller crews with three Lewis machine guns to the flank in a position where they covered the enemy rear, setting an L-shaped ambush. After Puller's force of Gendarmes got into position, Puller executed the ambush. As Puller had predicted, when the main body of men opened fire at first light, the surprised Cacos bandits fled from the source of immediate danger into the fields of fire of the machine guns, where all seventeen were killed. Dozens of machetes and a large flock of gamecocks were found. Puller and his Gendarmes celebrated their victory and feasted on abandoned supplies while using the game cocks for cockfighting. Puller later participated in more patrols as he gained experience and learned the peculiarities of small wars.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Puller would conduct more offensive operations to suppress the Cacos. On October 28, 1919, Puller went on a patrol with Brunot and a mixed force of fifteen American Marines and Gendarmes. They would stay out ten days, at which time another group would relieve them. The unit, using night movements, made contact on October 31 with a small band, killing two of the enemy and capturing four rifles, several machetes, and some swords. On November 1, they arrested three suspected bandits.


title: Chesty Puller

text: On the afternoon of November 4, 1919, Puller and his men entered a small village of grass shacks ten miles west of Mirebalais. A priest told Brunot that a high ranking Cacos insurgent leader named Dominique Georges had a camp about fifteen miles away. He and his men decided to take this opportunity to kill or capture Dominique Georges. Despite heavy rain, Puller took a small patrol of Marines and Gendarmes out immediately. Puller, Brunot, and Private Cermontout Jean Louis scouted out ahead of the small column during the night when they came upon the remains of a bonfire, indicating a bandit guard post. A Cacos sentry armed with a rifle challenged Puller's group. The sentry could not see them clearly as it was very dark and his bonfire had been put out by the rain. Brunot replied in his Haitain accent "Cacos", at which the guard let them through. Puller, Brunot, and Jean Louis were able to infiltrate the Cacos camp and came upon a clearing with many huts and lean-tos. Puller and Jean Louis took firing positions on the ground after Puller sent Brunot to gather the rest of the patrol to assault the camp. Puller aimed his rifle at a man he later believed was Georges, but waited for the main attack instead of firing. A Caco challenged the two prone figures, so that Puller had to shoot the Caco, starting the battle. The marines and gendarmes rushed forward, but the estimated two hundred Cacos scattered, with Puller and Jean Louis firing as fast as they could at fleeing figures. After the government forces had possession of the camp, they found one dead Caco. Puller's patrol took twenty seven rifles, swords, and machetes, and several dozen gamecocks. Among the booty was George's personal rifle, identified by his initials in the stock. Puller and his patrol spent the night at the camp and then withdrew safely to their base at Mirebalais.


title: Chesty Puller

text: On November 9, Puller and Brunot led a patrol of thirty-three Gendarmes. Just before dawn they found a camp and attacked it. This time Puller and his fellow Gendarmes killed ten Cacos and captured two rifles. After the raid of the Cacos camp, they safely withdrew to Mirebalais by a circuitous route and fell into garrison routine for a few days.


title: Chesty Puller

text: After the successful assassination of Charlemagne Péralte by Herman H. Hanneken in a raid, Benoît Batraville became the next leader of the Cacos. Puller and Brunot each took a part of the company out on a patrol. Brunot spotted a Caco force that turned out to be Batraville's, but before Brunot could get his force into position for an attack, the Cacos broke camp and melted away. Puller had better luck, with two Cacos killed and sixteen captured.


title: Chesty Puller

text: The Cacos rebellion collapsed altogether when a Marine patrol killed Batraville on May 19, 1920. A month later, the last significant Caco leader surrendered. More patrols by the Gendarmes and American Marines in the following year killed a further eighty-five Cacos. Later on in September 1920, Herman H. Hanneken penetrated a Caco camp in disguise, arresting five chiefs while killing another. By June 1921, a government military commander declared the country to be "completely tranquil."


title: Chesty Puller

text: Puller returned stateside and was finally recommissioned as a second lieutenant on March 6, 1924 (Service No. 03158). After completing assignments at the Marine barracks in Norfolk, Virginia, The Basic School in Quantico, Virginia, and with the 10th Marine Artillery Regiment in Quantico, Virginia, he was assigned to the Marine barracks at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in July 1926 and in San Diego, California, in 1928.


title: Chesty Puller

text: In December 1928, Puller was assigned to the Nicaraguan National Guard detachment, where he was awarded his first Navy Cross for his actions from February 16 to August 19, 1930, when he led "five successive engagements against superior numbers of armed bandit forces." He returned stateside in July 1931 and completed the year-long Company Officers Course at Fort Benning, Georgia, thereafter returning to Nicaragua from September 20 to October 1, 1932, and was awarded a second Navy Cross. Puller led American Marines and Nicaraguan National Guardsmen into battle against Sandinista rebels in the last major engagement of the Sandino Rebellion near El Sauce on December 26, 1932.


title: Chesty Puller

text: After Puller inherited command of Nicaraguan Guardia Nacional called Company M. He was prepared to conduct operations against the Sandinista rebels. Puller immediately departed on a patrol. Puller moved eastward for a five-day sweep, but soon received orders to head northeast. The patrol moved by day and camped each night in a village. In the afternoon of June 4, the company was at San Antonio cooking a steer in preparation for a trek into the uninhabited area around Mt. Kilande. After hearing some gunshots to the north, Puller sent thirteen men of the Guardia to investigate a thousand yards beyond the town. The Guardia encountered six rebels who may have been Sandinistas and a firefight occurred. The Guardia killed one rebel while the other five fled. The rebel bandit was armed with a Springfield rifle and Colt revolver. On June 6, the patrol moved toward the village of Los Cedros when it encountered an equally surprised force of Sandinistas who were on top of a brush covered hill that sloped about 175 yards down to the trail. The Sandinistas opened fire on the patrol and the patrol returned fire. Without hesitation, Puller dashed up the rise while yelling for his men to charge. Puller's men joined in the attack and fired their weapons while charging the enemy position. Puller and his Guardia were able to avoid being hit by small arms fire and crude improvised grenades thrown by the rebels. The rebels were routed and fled. Puller and his men realized they stumbled onto an insurgent camp. Seven dead rebel bodies were found and Puller's force suffered no casualties. Puller's patrol found two rifles, one pistol, and ten machetes. They also found rosters and papers in the rebel camp, which revealed that two of the seven dead rebels were leaders of the group. After that, Puller's company returned to Jinotega.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Puller departed on a new patrol on June 12. Puller's patrol searched fruitlessly and found nothing. Puller and his men arrived back at their base at June 20. At June 24, Puller, William "Ironman" Lee, and their men joined forces with another government patrol of thirty men under the command of Lieutenant M.K. Chenoweth. Together the combined American-Nicaraguan force left Jinotega. At Santa Fe, Puller picked up an additional fifteen Guardias. After patrolling, Puller's men had encountered lone bandits on two occasions and killed them both. Puller's large group operated for nearly two more weeks, often split into two patrols with one following the other at a distance. The reinforced unit finally returned to base on July 12.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Puller and his Company M went out on a patrol again on November 6, 1930. Puller, Lee, and twenty-one men left Jinetoga to search for the enemy. The patrol picked up a trail of about thirty bandits who were pillaging small ranches near Santa Isabel. Puller's patrol caught sight of the enemy at 9:00 A.M. on November 19 pursuing them for three miles, and wounding at least one of them. Puller's patrol decided to surprise the bandits. The patrol set up an ambush hiding themselves along a trail when a manager of a local finca spotted them and walked up to them to provide them information on a rebel band. With the ambush compromised by the finca manager, the patrol moved on. Puller's patrol reported into Corinto Finca on November 20 for supplies and pack animals, then left on the same day to check out a report of a rebel concentration near Mt. Guapinol. Puller and his patrol struggled through heavy rains, muddy trails, and flooded rivers. On the morning of 25 November, the patrol came across a bandit trail. The Guardia under Puller followed this trail and at 10:30 A.M., the point sighted about ten rebels amongst some fallen trees. Puller's men opened fire and the enemy fled. Further along the trail, the pursuers came upon the rebel camp which had four buildings with log barricades in front and a hundred-foot cliff in the rear. There were at least forty or so rebels who fought briefly. Then the rebels threw their belongings and three wounded men into the ravine and then clambered down on ropes and ladders, which they pulled down after themselves. By the time some of the Guardia worked their way down into the draw the enemy had disappeared. Puller's patrol found two dead bandits and some supplies. Puller was certain that the three wounded bandits who had gone over the cliff had died. Puller's force captured documents which showed that one of their previous operations on August 19, 1930, wounded a minor chief of the rebels. After raiding this rebel camp, Puller's unit withdrew and returned to Jinotega on November 27 after three weeks of hard patrolling.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Puller discovered a trail which seemed to be used by rebels. Puller, along with Lee, gathered 40 Guardia Nacional members for a raid like patrol against the rebels. Puller, Lee, and the Guardia left on September 20. After traveling a long distance, the patrol came by the northwest from the bank of Auyabal river. On September 26, Puller's patrol was ambushed by the rebels. Lee used a Lewis machine gun to keep the enemy pinned down while the Guardia Nacional worked their way up the slope opposite the rebel ambush party. When they gained the crest, they were able to fire directly into the rebel emplacements. Puller's men penetrated the center of a rebel encampment, killing at least 16 rebels. Of Puller's force, two men were killed and four wounded. In order to obtain medical care for the wounded, Puller immediately withdrew back to Jinotega. During Puller's withdrawal, his patrol was ambushed twice, but suffered no more casualties and fought off the ambushers. Puller's Guardia killed at least eight more rebels. Puller's force arrived back at Jinotega on September 30 after their raid on the rebel encampment.


title: Chesty Puller

text: There were rumors that Sandinista rebels were planning an attack on a ceremony that was going to commemorate the completion of the LeónEl Sauce railway. An expedition of eight American marines and 64 Nicaraguan National Guardsmen led by Puller were sent to El Sauce on the 26 December 1932. As Puller's force of American marines and Nicaraguan national guard were traveling some distance in their train to their destination, they were ambushed by the rebels from both sides of the tracks. Puller and William A. Lee quickly with their troops immediately engaged the rebel ambushers. After a firefight of one hour and ten minutes, the Marines and Guardia Nacional were able to drive off the rebels. Puller's victorious force had suffered three dead and three wounded for the Guardia Nacional. The rebels suffered thirty one killed and lost 63 live horses to capture by Puller's force. The ceremony went on as planned two days later, while Puller and Lee got promoted.


title: Chesty Puller

text: After his service in Nicaragua, Puller was assigned to the Marine detachment at the American Legation in Beijing, China, commanding a unit of China Marines. He then went on to serve aboard , a cruiser in the Asiatic Fleet, which was commanded by then-Captain Chester W. Nimitz. Puller returned to the States in June 1936 as an instructor at The Basic School in Philadelphia, where he trained Ben Robertshaw, Pappy Boyington, and Lew Walt.


title: Chesty Puller

text: In May 1939, he returned to the "Augusta" as commander of the on-board Marine detachment, and then back to China, disembarking in Shanghai in May 1940 to serve as the executive officer and commanding officer of 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines (2/4) until August 1941. Major Puller returned to the U.S. on August 28, 1941. After a short leave, he was given command of 1st Battalion, 7th Marines (1/7) of the 1st Marine Division, stationed at New River, North Carolina (later Camp Lejeune).


title: Chesty Puller

text: Early in the Pacific theater, the 7th Marines formed the nucleus of the newly created 3rd Marine Brigade and arrived to defend Samoa on May 8, 1942. Later they were redeployed from the brigade and on September 4, 1942, they left Samoa and rejoined the 1st Marine Division at Guadalcanal on September 18, 1942.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Soon after arriving on Guadalcanal, Lt. Col. Puller led his battalion in a fierce action along the Matanikau, in which Puller's quick thinking saved three of his companies from annihilation. In the action, these companies were surrounded and cut off by a larger Japanese force. Puller ran to the shore, signaled a United States Navy destroyer, the , and then directed the destroyer to provide fire support while landing craft rescued his Marines from their precarious position. 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".


title: Chesty Puller

text: Later on Guadalcanal, Puller was awarded his third Navy Cross, in what was later known as the "Battle for Henderson Field". Puller commanded 1st Battalion, 7th Marines (1/7), one of two American infantry units defending the airfield against a regiment-strength Japanese force. The 3rd Battalion of the U.S. Army's 164th Infantry Regiment (3/164) fought alongside the Marines. In a firefight on the night of October 24–25, 1942, lasting about three hours, 1/7 and 3/164 sustained 70 casualties; the Japanese force suffered over 1,400 killed in action, and the Americans held the airfield. He nominated two of his men (one being Sgt. John Basilone) for Medals of Honor. Puller was wounded himself on November 8, 1942, suffering arm and leg wounds during a Japanese attack on his command post. His injuries were serious, requiring surgery, and command of 1/7 was temporarily assigned to Major John E. Weber of 3/7. Puller was released from the hospital and resumed command of his battalion on November 18.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Puller was then made executive officer of the 7th Marine Regiment. While serving in this capacity at the Battle of Cape Gloucester, Puller was awarded his fourth Navy Cross for overall performance of duty between December 26, 1943, and January 19, 1944. During this time, when the battalion commanders of 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines (3/7) and later, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines (3/5), were under heavy machine gun and mortar fire, he expertly reorganized the battalion and led the successful attack against heavily fortified Japanese defensive positions. He was promoted to colonel effective February 1, 1944, and by the end of the month had been named commander of the 1st Marine Regiment. In September and October 1944, Puller led the 1st Marine Regiment into the protracted battle on Peleliu, one of the bloodiest battles in Marine Corps history, and received his first of two Legion of Merit awards. The 1st Marines under Puller's command lost 1,749 out of approximately 3,000 men, but these losses did not stop Puller from ordering frontal assaults against the well-entrenched enemy. The corps commander had to order the 1st Marine Division commanding general to pull the annihilated 1st Marine Regiment out of the line.


title: Chesty Puller

text: During the summer of 1944, Puller's younger brother, Samuel D. Puller, the executive officer of the 4th Marine Regiment, was killed by an enemy sniper on Guam.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Puller returned to the United States in November 1944, was named executive officer of the Infantry Training Regiment at Camp Lejeune and, two weeks later, commanding officer. After the war, he was made director of the 8th Reserve District at New Orleans, and later commanded the Marine barracks at Pearl Harbor.


title: Chesty Puller

text: At the outbreak of the Korean War, Puller was once again assigned as commander of the 1st Marine Regiment. He participated in the landing at Inchon on September 15, 1950, and was awarded the Silver Star Medal. For leadership from September 15 through November 2, he was awarded his second Legion of Merit. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross from the U.S. Army for heroism in action from November 29 to December 4, and his fifth Navy Cross for heroism during December 5–10, 1950, at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. It was during that battle that he said the famous line, "We've been looking for the enemy for some time now. We've finally found him. We're surrounded. That simplifies things."


title: Chesty Puller

text: In January 1951, Puller was promoted to brigadier general and was assigned duty as assistant division commander (ADC) of the 1st Marine Division. On February 24, however, his immediate superior, Major General O.P. Smith, was hastily transferred to command IX Corps when its Army commander, Major General Bryant Moore, died. Smith's transfer left Puller temporarily in command of the 1st Marine Division until sometime in March. He completed his tour of duty as assistant commander and left for the United States on May 20, 1951. He took command of the 3rd Marine Division at Camp Pendleton, California until January 1952, and then was assistant commander of the division until June 1952. He then took over Troop Training Unit Pacific at Coronado, California. In September 1953, he was promoted to major general.


title: Chesty Puller

text: 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 promotion to lieutenant general.


title: Chesty Puller

text: His nickname was related to the way his barrel chest stood out due to his aggressive stance, with legends claiming that a steel plate had been inserted by surgeons to treat a battle wound. In a handwritten addition to a typed 22 November 1954 letter to Major Frank C. Sheppard, Puller wrote, "I agree with you 100%. I had done a little soldiering previous to Guadalcanal and had been called a lot of names, but why 'Chesty'? Especially the steel part??"


title: Chesty Puller

text: Puller's son, Lewis Burwell Puller, Jr. (generally known as Lewis Puller), served as a Marine lieutenant in the Vietnam War. While serving with 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines (2/1), Lewis Jr. was severely wounded by a mine explosion, losing both legs and parts of his hands. Lieutenant General Puller broke down sobbing at seeing his son for the first time in the hospital. Lewis Jr. won a 1992 Pulitzer Prize for his autobiography, "Fortunate Son: The Healing of a Vietnam Vet". He committed suicide in 1994.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Puller was father-in-law to Colonel William H. Dabney, USMC (retired), a Virginia Military Institute (VMI) graduate, who was the commanding officer (then Captain) of two heavily reinforced rifle companies of the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines (3/26) from January 21 to April 14, 1968, in Vietnam. During the entire period, Dabney's force stubbornly defended Hill 881 South, a regional outpost vital to the defense of the Khe Sanh Combat Base during the 77-day siege at the Battle of Khe Sanh. Dabney was recommended for the Navy Cross for his actions on Hill 881 South, but his battalion executive officer's helicopter carrying the recommendation papers crashed and the papers were lost. It was not until April 15, 2005 that Colonel Dabney received the Navy Cross during an award ceremony at Virginia Military Institute.


title: Chesty Puller

text: He was an Episcopalian and parishioner of Christ Church Parish in Saluda and is buried in the historic cemetery there next to his wife, Virginia Montague Evans.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Puller received the second-highest U.S. military award six times (one of only two persons so honored): five Navy Crosses and one U.S. Army Distinguished Service Cross. He was the second of two U.S. servicemen (after U.S. Navy submarine commander Roy Milton Davenport) to ever receive five Navy Crosses.


title: Chesty Puller

text: For distinguished service in the line of his profession while commanding a Nicaraguan National Guard patrol. First Lieutenant Lewis B. Puller, United States Marine Corps, successfully led his forces into five successful engagements against superior numbers of armed bandit forces; namely, at LaVirgen on 16 February 1930, at Los Cedros on 6 June 1930, at Moncotal on 22 July 1930, at Guapinol on 25 July 1930, and at Malacate on 19 August 1930, with the result that the bandits were in each engagement completely routed with losses of nine killed and many wounded. By his intelligent and forceful leadership without thought of his own personal safety, by great physical exertion and by suffering many hardships, Lieutenant Puller surmounted all obstacles and dealt five successive and severe blows against organized banditry in the Republic of Nicaragua.


title: Chesty Puller

text: First Lieutenant Lewis B. Puller, United States Marine Corps (Captain, Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua) performed exceptionally meritorious service in a duty of great responsibility while in command of a Guardia Patrol from 20 September to 1 October 1932. Lieutenant Puller and his command of forty Guardia and Gunnery Sergeant William A. Lee, United States Marine Corps, serving as a First Lieutenant in the Guardia, penetrated the isolated mountainous bandit territory for a distance of from eighty to one hundred miles north of Jinotega, his nearest base. This patrol was ambushed on 26 September 1932, at a point northeast of Mount Kilambe by an insurgent force of one hundred fifty in a well-prepared position armed with not less than seven automatic weapons and various classes of small arms and well-supplied with ammunition. Early in the combat, Gunnery Sergeant Lee, the Second in Command, was seriously wounded and reported as dead. The Guardia immediately behind Lieutenant Puller in the point was killed by the first burst of fire, Lieutenant Puller, with great courage, coolness and display of military judgment, so directed the fire and movement of his men that the enemy were driven first from the high ground on the right of his position, and then by a flanking movement forced from the high ground to the left and finally were scattered in confusion with a loss of ten killed and many wounded by the persistent and well-directed attack of the patrol. The numerous casualties suffered by the enemy and the Guardia losses of two killed and four wounded are indicative of the severity of the enemy resistance. This signal victory in jungle country, with no lines of communication and a hundred miles from any supporting force, was largely due to the indomitable courage and persistence of the patrol commander. Returning with the wounded to Jinotega, the patrol was ambushed twice by superior forces on 30 September. On both of the occasions the enemy was dispersed with severe losses.


title: Chesty Puller

text: For extraordinary heroism as Commanding Officer of the First Battalion, Seventh Marines, First Marine Division, during the action against enemy Japanese forces on Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, on the night of 24 to 25 October 1942. 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. By his tireless devotion to duty and cool judgment under fire, he prevented a hostile penetration of our lines and was largely responsible for the successful defense of the sector assigned to his troops.


title: Chesty Puller

text: For extraordinary heroism as Executive Officer of the Seventh Marines, First Marine Division, serving with the Sixth United States Army, in combat against enemy Japanese forces at Cape Gloucester, New Britain, from 26 December 1943 to 19 January 1944. Assigned temporary command of the Third Battalion, Seventh Marines, from 4 to 9 January, Lieutenant Colonel Puller quickly reorganized and advanced his unit, effecting the seizure of the objective without delay. Assuming additional duty in command of the Third Battalion, Fifth Marines, from 7 to 8 January, after the commanding officer and executive officer had been wounded, Lieutenant Colonel Puller unhesitatingly exposed himself to rifle, machine-gun and mortar fire from strongly entrenched Japanese positions to move from company to company in his front lines, reorganizing and maintaining a critical position along a fire-swept ridge. His forceful leadership and gallant fighting spirit under the most hazardous conditions were contributing factors in the defeat of the enemy during this campaign and in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.


title: Chesty Puller

text: For extraordinary heroism as Commanding Officer of the First Marines, First Marine Division (Reinforced), in action against aggressor forces in the vicinity of Koto-ri, Korea, from 5 to 10 December 1950. Fighting continuously in sub-zero weather against a vastly outnumbering hostile force, Colonel Puller drove off repeated and fanatical enemy attacks upon his Regimental defense sector and supply points. Although the area was frequently covered by grazing machine-gun fire and intense artillery and mortar fire, he coolly moved along his troops to insure their correct tactical employment, reinforced the lines as the situation demanded, and successfully defended the perimeter, keeping open the main supply routes for the movement of the Division. During the attack from Koto-ri to Hungnam, he expertly utilized his Regiment as the Division rear guard, repelling two fierce enemy assaults which severely threatened the security of the unit, and personally supervised the care and prompt evacuation of all casualties. By his unflagging determination, he served to inspire his men to heroic efforts in defense of their positions and assured the safety of much valuable equipment which would otherwise have been lost to the enemy. His skilled leadership, superb courage and valiant devotion to duty in the face of overwhelming odds reflect the highest credit upon Colonel Puller and the United States Naval Service.


title: Chesty Puller

text: The President of the United States of America, under the provisions of the Act of Congress approved July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Colonel Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller (MCSN: 0-3158), United States Marine Corps, 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.


title: Chesty Puller

text: The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star (Army Award) to Colonel Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller (MCSN: 0-3158), United States Marine Corps, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity while Commanding the First Marines, FIRST Marine Division (Reinforced), in action against enemy aggressor forces during the amphibious landing resulting in the capture of Inchon, Korea, on 15 September 1950 in the Inchon-Seoul Operation. His actions contributed materially to the success of this operation and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the Military Service.


title: Chesty Puller

text: In addition to his military awards Puller has received numerous honors due to his Marine Corps service:


title: Chesty Puller

text: Following his retirement Puller lived in Saluda, Virginia, where he was later buried after his death on October 11, 1971, at Christ Church Cemetery next to his wife.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Puller remains a well-known figure in U.S. Marine Corps folklore, with both true and exaggerated tales of his experiences being constantly recounted among U.S. Marines.


title: Chesty Puller

text: A common incantation in U.S. Marine Corps boot camp is to end one's day with the declaration, "Good night, Chesty, wherever you are!" Another common encouragement is "Chesty Puller never quit!"


title: Chesty Puller

text: In U.S. Marine Corps recruit training and OCS cadences, Marines chant "It was good for Chesty Puller/And it's good enough for me" as well as "Tell Chesty Puller I did my best."—Chesty is symbolic of the "esprit de corps" of the Marines.


title: Chesty Puller

text: Puller insisted upon good equipment and discipline; once he came upon a second lieutenant who had ordered an enlisted man to salute him 100 times for missing a salute. Puller told the lieutenant, "You were absolutely correct in making him salute you 100 times, Lieutenant, but you know that an officer must return every salute he receives. Now return them all, and I will keep count."


title: Chesty Puller

text: While on duty in Hawaii and inspecting the armory, Puller fined himself $100 for accidentally discharging a .45 caliber pistol indoors, although the charge for his men was only $20.


title: Chesty Puller

text: A section of Virginia Highway 33 running from West Point to the Gloucester County community of Glenns is named Lewis B Puller Memorial Highway.


title: The K2

text: The K2 () is a 2016 South Korean television series starring Ji Chang-wook, Song Yoon-ah and Im Yoon-ah. It premiered on tvN every Friday and Saturday at 20:00 (KST) from September 23 to November 12, 2016 for 16 episodes.


title: The K2

text: Kim Je-ha (an alias) is a former mercenary soldier for the PMC Blackstone. While in Iraq, he gets framed for the murder of his lover Raniya, a civilian. As a result, he runs away and becomes a fugitive. He returns to South Korea and by chance is offered work as a bodyguard by Choi Yoo-jin, the owner of JSS Security Company and wife of presidential candidate Jang Se-joon. He accepts the job in exchange for resources that he needs to get his revenge on another presidential candidate, Park Kwan-soo, who previously ordered Raniya's killing. Je-ha is assigned to guard Go An-na, the hidden daughter of Jang Se-joon whose life is always threatened because of Yoo-jin, her stepmother. An-na, who has been a recluse and lonely all her life, starts relying on Je-ha, who shows concern for her and protects her at all costs. They slowly fall in love, causing Je-ha to be torn between having to work with his boss, Yoo-jin, to enable him to take revenge on Park Kwan-soo and protecting his newfound love, An-na, against the wishes of Yoo-jin.


title: The K2

text: Another key figure is Choi Yoo-Jin's half brother, Choi Sung-won, the son of her father's mistress and eventual second wife, who is his half-sister's fierce rival. Plotting with Park Kwan-soo, he eventually causes the deaths of Jang Se-joon and Choi Yoo-jin but later pays for this with his life at the hands of Choi Yoo-Jin's devoted (and ruthless) assistant Kim Dong-mi. Je-ha achieves his goal of revenge, with Park hanging himself for his atrocious acts and Je-ha clearing his name. The series ends with Je-ha and An-na embracing in a foreign country, with An-na asking Je-ha what his real name is and Je-ha about to reveal it.


title: The K2

text: The drama is written by scriptwriter Jang Hyuk-rin, who wrote "Yong-pal" (2015) and directed by Kwak Jung-hwan of "Neighborhood Hero ("2016).


title: The K2

text: Being depicted with a bodyguard action theme, the drama utilized various fighting techniques including systema, taekwondo, aikido, and jujutsu for its action scenes. It became the first Korean television drama to introduce the Bullet Time effect.


title: The K2

text: The first script reading was held in August 2016 at the CJ E&M Center in Seoul, South Korea. Filming began in September.


title: The K2

text: Some scenes of the drama, primarily in episodes 1 and 2, were filmed in Catalonia (along the mountain of Montserrat, the Gothic and Baroque Cistercian Monastery of Santes Creus in Aiguamúrcia), followed by various places in Barcelona (center, Old City, etc., as well as various metro / commuter rail stations such as Plaça d'Espanya and Magòria / La Campana), Gaudí's Modernista Colònia Güell Crypt (fashion show party) among other locations in Spain (probably near Almería for the Iraq War desert locations). The closing scene of episode 16 was filmed at Barcelona's Turó de la Rovira hill. The rest of the series was apparently filmed in Korea.


title: The K2

text: The male lead Ji Chang-wook, due to his casting, became the highest-paid actor for a tvN drama. He had special training and performed the action stunts in the drama by himself, without a body double. At the press conference, director Kwak expressed "On top of Ji's splendid action, the drama will tell the story of insatiable desire and political fights between people holding secrets of their own."


title: The K2

text: The drama received favorable reviews, topping cable channel viewership ratings throughout its 8-week broadcast. It was praised by viewers for good performances. The drama currently (2021) streams internationally on Netflix with English subtitles. Its broadcasting rights were sold to Vietnam, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, China, Thailand, Israel and Greece.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The M1919 Browning is a .30 caliber medium machine gun that was widely used during the 20th century, especially during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. The M1919 saw service as a light infantry, coaxial, mounted, aircraft, and anti-aircraft machine gun by the U.S. and many other countries.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The M1919 was an air-cooled development of the standard US machine gun of World War I, the John M. Browning-designed water-cooled M1917. The emergence of general-purpose machine guns in the 1950s pushed the M1919 into secondary roles in many cases, especially after the arrival of the M60 in US Army service. The United States Navy also converted many to 7.62 mm NATO, and designated them Mk 21 Mod 0; they were commonly used on riverine craft in the 1960s and 1970s in Vietnam. Many NATO countries also converted their examples to 7.62 mm caliber, and these remained in service well into the 1990s, as well as up to the present day in some countries.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The M1919 originally fired the .30 cal M1906 (.30-06) ball cartridge, and later the .30 caliber M2 ball cartridge, contained in a woven cloth belt, feeding from left to right. A metal M1 link was later adopted, forming a "disintegrating" belt.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: Loading was accomplished by inserting the pull tab on the ammunition belt from the left side of the gun - either metal links or metal tab on cloth belts - until the feeding pawl at the entrance of the feed way engaged the first round in the belt and held it in place. The cocking handle was then pulled back with the right hand, palm facing up (to protect the thumb from injury if the weapon fired unexpectedly, which could happen if the barrel was very hot), and then released. This advanced the first round of the belt in front of the bolt for the extractor/ejector on the bolt to grab the first cartridge. The cocking handle was then pulled and released a second time. This caused the extractor to remove the first cartridge from the belt and chamber it (load it into the barrel ready to fire). As the bolt slid forward into battery, the extractor engaged the next round on the now-advanced belt resting in the feedway, preparing to draw it from the belt in the next firing cycle. Every time the gun fired a shot, the gun performed the sequence of extracting the spent round from the chamber and extracting the following round from the belt as the bolt came rearward, the fresh round ejecting the spent one when the bolt was to the rear and the fresh round was cycled in front of the bolt, then on the forward stroke chambering the next round to be fired, advancing the belt, and engaging the next round in preparation for loading. Once the bolt closed, the firing pin dropped and the round was fired, and the sequence was repeated (at a rate of roughly ten cycles per second) until the trigger was released or the ammunition belt was exhausted.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The gun's original design was as a water-cooled machine gun (see the M1917 Browning machine gun). When it was decided to try to lighten the gun and make it air-cooled, its design as a closed bolt weapon created a potentially dangerous situation. If the gun was very hot from prolonged firing, the cartridge ready to be fired could be resting in a red-hot barrel, causing the propellant in the cartridge to heat up to the point that it would ignite and fire the cartridge on its own (a cook-off). With each further shot heating the barrel even more, the gun would continue to fire uncontrollably until the ammunition ran out, since depressing the trigger was not what was causing the gun to fire (although rarely as full rate automatic fire; it takes time for heat to soak into a cartridge, so usually it would manifest as a series of unexpected random discharges, the frequency increasing with the temperature of the barrel). Gunners were taught to cock the gun with the palm facing up, so that in the event of a cook-off, their thumb would not be dislocated by the charging handle, and to seize the ammunition belt and pull to prevent it from feeding, if the gun ever started an uncontrollable cycle of cooking off. Gunners were trained to manage the barrel heat by firing in controlled bursts of three to five rounds, to delay heating. Most other air-cooled machine gun designs were fired in the same way, even those featuring quick-change barrels and which fired from an open bolt, two features that make air-cooled machine guns capable of somewhat more sustained fire, both features that the M1919 design lacked.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: When the gun was ready to fire, a round would be in the chamber and the bolt and barrel group would be locked together, with the locking block at the rear of the bolt. When the rear of the trigger was pivoted upwards by the operator, the front of the trigger tipped downward, pulling the sear out of engagement with the spring-loaded firing pin, allowing it to move forward and strike the primer of the cartridge.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: As the assembly of bolt, barrel and barrel extension recoiled to the rear of the gun upon firing, the locking block was drawn out of engagement by a cam in the bottom of the gun's receiver. The recoiling barrel extension struck the "accelerator" assembly, a half-moon shaped spring-loaded piece of metal pivoting from the receiver below the bolt and behind the barrel extension. The tips of the accelerator's two curving fingers engaged the bottom of the bolt and caused it to move rapidly to the rear. The extractor-ejector was a mechanism that pivoted over the front of the bolt, with a claw that gripped the base of the next round in the belt. A camming track in the left side of the receiver caused this to move down as the bolt moved back, lowering the next round down on top of the fired case, pushing it straight down out of the extraction grooves of the bolt face through the ejection port. A spring in the feed tray cover pushed the extractor-ejector down onto the next round, so if the feed tray cover was opened, the extractor-ejector would be pulled upwards if the belt needed to be removed.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The belt feed lever was connected to the belt feeding pawl at the front end, had a cam pin at the rear end which ran through a track in the top of the bolt, and a pin in the feed tray cover acted as the pivot between the two ends. The rearward movement of the bolt caused the rear end of the feed lever to pull to the right, causing the feeding pawl at the other end to move left over the belt. The pawl would pull the belt further to the right as the bolt came forward again, also sending the loose M1 link of the previous round to be taken out of the belt to fly out the right side of the receiver. A recoil buffer tube extended from the back of the receiver to make the cycle of the bolt smoother than previous designs, to absorb some of the recoil of the bolt, and formed a place for the pistol grip to be installed.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: Except for the M1919A6, all other variants had to be mounted on a tripod or other type of mount to be used effectively. The tripod used by infantry allowed traverse and elevation. To aim the gun along its vertical axis, the adjustment screw needed to be operated. This allowed the point of aim to be moved upwards or downwards, with free traverse to either side, allowing the gunner to set an elevation and sweep a wide band of fire across it by simply moving the gun from side to side. There was no need to control barrel climb or keep careful track of the fall of shots to make sure the fire was falling at the proper range. The gun was aimed using iron sights, a small folding post at the front end of the receiver and a rear aperture sight on a sliding leaf with range graduations from 200 to 1,800 meters in 200 meter increments. When folded down, the aperture formed a notch that could be used to fire the gun immediately without flipping up the leaf. The rear sight also had windage adjustment with a dial on the right side.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: As a company support weapon, the M1919 required a five-man crew: the squad leader; the gunner (who fired the gun and when advancing carried the tripod and box of ammunition); the assistant gunner (who helped feed the gun and carried it, and a box of spare parts and tools); two ammunition carriers. The original idea of the M1919 was to allow it to be more easily packed for transport, and featured a light barrel and bipod when first introduced as the M1919A1. Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that the gun was too heavy to be easily moved, while at the same time, too light for sustained fire. This led to the M1919A2, which included a heavier barrel and tripod, and could sustain fire for longer periods.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The M1919A4 weighed about , and was ordinarily mounted on a "lightweight" (14 lb), low-slung tripod for infantry use (light and low compared to the previous M1917 tripod). Fixed vehicle mounts were also employed. It saw wide use in World War II mounted on jeeps, half-tracks, armored cars, tanks, amphibious vehicles, and landing craft. The M1919A4 played a key role in the firepower of the World War II U.S. Army. Each infantry company normally had a weapons platoon in addition to its other organic units. The presence of M1919A4 weapons in the weapons platoon gave company commanders additional automatic fire support at the company level, whether in the assault or on defense.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The M1919A5 was an adaptation of the M1919A4 with a forward mounting point to allow it to be mounted in tanks and armored cars. This, along with the M37 (another M1919 variant) and the Browning M2 machine gun, was the most common secondary armament during World War II for the Allies. The coaxial M37 variant had the ability to feed from either the left or the right of the weapon, and featured an extended charging handle similar to those on the M1919A4E1 and A5. A trial variant fitted with special sighting equipment was designated M37F.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: Another version of the M1919A4, the M1919A6, was an attempt to make the weapon into a true light machine gun by attaching a bipod, buttstock, carrying handle, and lighter barrel (4 lb (1.8 kg) instead of 7 lb (3.2 kg)). The M1919A6, with a wooden buttstock, handle, pistol grip and bipod directly mounted to the body of the weapon was in fact one pound heavier than the M1919A4 without its tripod, at 32 lb (15 kg), though its bipod made for faster deployment and enabled the machine gun team to dispense with one man (the tripod bearer). The A6 version saw increasing service in the latter days of World War II and was used extensively in Korean War. While the modifications were intended to make the weapon more useful as a squad light machine gun, it was a stopgap solution. Even though it was reliable, it proved somewhat impractical for its intended role.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: In the late 1950s, an M1919 designed for remote firing via a solenoid trigger was developed for use in the XM1/E1 armament subsystem was designated M37C. The US Navy later converted a number of M1919A4s to 7.62mm NATO chambering and designated them Mk 21 Mod 0; some of these weapons were employed in Vietnam War in riverine warfare patrols.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: From the 1960s until the 1990s, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) used ground tripod and vehicle-mounted M1919A4 guns converted to 7.62 mm NATO on many of their armored vehicles and M3 personnel carriers. Israel developed a modified link for these guns due to feeding problems with the original US M1 link design. The improved Israeli link worked with .30 caliber, 7.62 mm NATO and 8×57 mm cartridges.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: With assistance from firearms engineers at Fabrique Nationale de Herstal, Belgium, the Model 1919 was completely re-engineered into the .30 caliber M2/AN (Army-Navy) aircraft machine gun (not to be confused with the .50 caliber M2/AN or the 20mm AN/M2, the two other primary US aircraft weapons of WWII). The .30 in M2/AN Browning was widely adopted as both a fixed (offensive) and flexible (defensive) weapon on aircraft. Aircraft machine guns required light weight, firepower, and reliability, and achieving all three goals proved a difficult challenge, with the mandate for a closed bolt firing cycle to enable the gun to be safely and properly synchronized for fixed-mount, forward-aimed guns firing through a spinning propeller, a necessity on many single-engined fighter aircraft designs through to nearly the end of World War II. The receiver walls and operating components of the M2 were made thinner and lighter, and with air cooling provided by the speed of the aircraft, designers were able to reduce the barrel's weight and profile. As a result, the M2 weighed two-thirds that of the 1919A4, and the lightened mechanism gave it a rate of fire approaching 1,200 rpm (some variants could achieve 1,500 rpm), a necessity for engaging fast-moving aircraft. The M2's feed mechanism had to lift its own loaded belt out of the ammunition box and feed it into the gun, equivalent to a weight of 11 lb (5 kg). In Ordnance circles, the .30 M2/AN Browning had the reputation of being the most difficult-to-repair weapon in the entire US small arms inventory.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The M2 also appeared in a twin-mount version which paired two M2 guns with opposing feed chutes in one unit for operation by a single gunner, with a combined rate of fire of 2,400 rpm. All of the various .30 M2 models saw service in the early stages of World War II, but were phased out beginning in 1943, as hand-trained rifle-caliber defensive machine guns became obsolete for air warfare (the .50 in/12.7 mm M2/AN Browning and 20 mm AN/M2 automatic cannon had replaced the .30 in as offensive air armament as well). The .30 in M2 aircraft gun was widely distributed to other US allies during and after World War II, and in British and Commonwealth service saw limited use as a vehicle-mounted anti-aircraft or anti-personnel machine gun.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The same basic weapon (albeit modified to fire from an open bolt and therefore not compatible with synchronization) was also chambered for the British .303 round, and was used as the United Kingdom's primary offensive (fixed forward firing) aircraft gun in fighters such as the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane and as fixed armament in bombers like the Bristol Blenheim, the Fairey Battle, Handley Page Hampden and Martin Maryland, until the widespread introduction of the larger 20mm caliber Hispano-Suiza Mk.II cannon, and throughout the war and defensive turret weapons in bombers. British night fighter Mosquitoes used quartets of .303 Brownings in the nose and Beaufighters used six in the wings, supplementing the main armament of four 20mm Hispano cannon in ventral fuselage mounts. The British modification to open bolt firing meant that it was now impossible to synchronize the guns to fire through the propeller arc, but wing-mounted armament was the norm on British single-engine fighters.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: Similar versions for a variety of European calibers were delivered by the Belgian gun maker Fabrique Nationale (FN), notably German-standard 7.92×57mm Mauser which was widely used in Eastern Europe; and by Swedish gun maker Carl Gustaf SGF in 6.5×55mm and 8×63mm calibers.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The .303 variant equipped the Hawker Hurricanes delivered to Soviet Air Forces, during World War II (in both eight and twelve-gun variants). Soviet airmen compared them to their own, rapid-firing (at up to 1,800 rounds/min) ShKAS machine gun in terms of reliability: "But they often failed due to dust," recalled pilot Nikolai G. Golodnikov. "We tackled the problem gluing percale on all the machine-gun holes, and when you opened fire, bullets went right through. The machine guns became reliable then. They were of low efficiency when fired from distances of 150–300 m."


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The M1919 was manufactured during World War II by three different companies in the United States; Buffalo Arms Corporation, Rock Island Arsenal, and the Saginaw Steering Gear division of General Motors. In the UK, production was chiefly by BSA. Originally unit priced at $667 each, mass production lowered the price to $141.44.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The original M1919 was designed for use with tanks. The water-cooled M1917 was inappropriate due to weight and the vulnerability of the water jacket. Browning modified the M1917 to be air-cooled by making changes that included dropping the water jacket and using a heavier barrel.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The M1919A2 was another lightweight development specifically for mounted cavalry units, utilizing a shorter 18-inch barrel and a special tripod, though it could be fitted to either the M1917 or M2 tripods. This weapon was designed to allow greater mobility to cavalry units over the existing M1917 machine gun. The M1919A2 was introduced in 1922, and was used for a short period between World War I and World War II after the cavalry had converted from horses to wheeled and tracked vehicles.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The M1919E1, commonly known as the M1919A3, was introduced in 1931 as an improved version of the M1919A2 for the infantry.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The most common variant of the series was the M1919A4. Production blueprints of the new variant were complete in late 1936, and slow-scale production soon followed. The driving force behind the development of this variant was the lack of reliability in the previous 18-inch barrel versions, which did not produce enough recoil to cycle the action reliably. The gun was given a heavier "bull barrel", much thicker and was lengthened to like the M1917, for cooling purposes, and a recoil booster to enhance cycling performance, even with the heavier barrel. Various other small adjustments to the design were made, such as moving the front sight from the barrel jacket to the receiver, which made it easier to mount the gun on vehicles. The design of the barrel jacket was changed to include circular holes instead of long slits of earlier models. The recoil buffer assembly was also a new addition to the design between A3 and A4 development, designed to reduce the impact of the bolt hitting the backplate.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The M1919A4 was used in both fixed and flexible mounts, by infantry and on vehicles. It was also widely exported after World War II and continues to be used in small numbers around the world. Two variants were developed specifically for vehicular use, the M1919A5, with an extended charging handle, and the M1919A4E1, a sub-variant of the M1919A4 refitted with an extended charging handle developed in the 1950s.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: During the war it became clear to the US military that the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle, while portable, was not sufficient as a sustained fire weapon due to its fixed barrel and 20-round magazine. The M1919A4 was faster and cheaper to produce, but did not have the portability of a rifle. Realizing that producing an entirely new replacement machine gun would take time, the military decided that a stop-gap solution would be best and adapted an existing design. The M1919A6 was an attempt at such a solution, to parallel the designs of the German MG 34 and MG 42 machine guns, each of which were portable for a squad weapon and were very effective at sustained fire.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The M1919A6 first saw combat service in the fall of 1943. It had a metal buttstock assembly that clamped to the backplate of the gun, and a front barrel bearing that incorporated both a muzzle booster and a bipod similar to that used on the BAR. A lighter barrel than that of the M1919A4 was fitted, and a carrying handle was attached to the barrel jacket to make it easier to carry. Previous M1919 designs could change the barrel, but it required essentially field stripping the gun to pull the barrel out from the rear the pistol grip back plate, bolt group and the trigger group all had to be removed before the barrel could be replaced, and this put the gun out of action for minutes, and risked losing and damaging parts in the field. The M1919A6 muzzle device allowed the gun crew to replace the barrel from the front; an improvement, but still an awkward procedure compared to other machine guns of the day. The M1919A6 was a heavy () and awkward weapon in comparison with the MG34 () and MG42 () and was eventually replaced in US service by the M60 machine gun () in the 1960s.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The M1919A6 was used by Springfield Armory in the late 1940s and early 1950s as a testbed for an interim general-purpose machine gun. It was rechambered for the experimental T65 series cartridges, culminating in 1951 with the T66 machine gun chambered for the T65E3 cartridge (one of the forerunners to the 7.62mm NATO cartridge). It had a new barrel with a flash-hider attachment, a shorter action, and modified M1 disintegrating belt links to feed the new cartridge. It was deemed still too heavy for field use and was not adopted.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: A specific aircraft version of the .30 caliber Model 1919A4 was manufactured by Browning as the .30 AN/M2. It had a thinner barrel and receiver walls to keep down weight. Compared to the M1919A4, the AN/M2 had a substantially higher rate of fire (1,200 to 1,500 rounds per minute). It was used on US aircraft early in World War II, but the lighter .30-caliber weapon was increasingly relegated to training duties as the war progressed. A derivative of this weapon was built by Colt as the civilian market MG40.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: It was later replaced by the larger caliber – and is not to be confused with – the Browning Machine Gun, Cal. .50, M2, Aircraft, with the smaller-calibre ordance bearing the official designation of "Browning Machine Gun, Cal. .30, M2, Aircraft." The .50 AN/M2 "light barrel" version, used in the majority of fixed and flexible/turreted mounts on U.S. World War II-era aircraft as the war progressed, lacked the massive "cooling collar" of the heavy barrel M2HB version, which is still in service with the ground forces of the U.S. military in the 21st century.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The AN/M2 was responsible for seriously wounding "one of the best Japanese fighter pilots of the war" flying ace Saburō Sakai when he attacked eight SBD Dauntlesses from behind mistaking them for F4F Wildcat fighters.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The "Stinger" was a field modification by Marines in the Pacific Theater during World War II and used on the ground as a light machine gun. These were salvaged from crashed and disabled aircraft and fitted with a bipod (spade grips still attached). Later more extensive modifications led to six being fitted with a custom trigger, M1 Garand buttstock, M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle bipod and rear sights to allow for use without a tripod or other mount. The resulting weapon was a belt-fed, long, gun and fired three times as fast as the M1919A6's of the day. The Stinger was recommended as a replacement for the BAR in squads however the war ended just six months later. Marine Corporal Tony Stein used a "Stinger" during the invasion of Iwo Jima. Stein would posthumously receive the Medal of Honor for his actions during the battle."


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: "Flygplanskulspruta" m/22, (fpl)ksp m/22 for short, was a Swedish variant of the .30 AN/M2 aircraft machine gun. The name literally translates to "airplane machine gun model 22". It was originally used by the Swedish army's aviation branch but moved over to the Swedish air force when it was formed in 1926. The first guns delivered were built by Colt but Sweden later got a license to produce the weapon domestically. The "ksp" m/22 stayed in active service all the way to 1957, although by then only in a gunpod for ground strafing. Originally the "ksp" m/22 was chambered in 6.5x55 mm but in 1932 almost all guns where re chambered to 8x63 mm.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The Browning was adopted by the Royal Air Force as a replacement for the .303 Vickers machine gun and manufactured by Vickers Armstrong and BSA to fire the British .303 inch (7.7 mm) round and named "Browning .303 Mk II" in British Service. It was essentially the 1930 Pattern belt-fed Colt–Browning machine gun with a few modifications for British use, such as firing from an open bolt to avoid cooking off the cordite rounds, hence prohibiting the use of synchronization to fire them through a spinning propeller and a lighter bolt, increasing the rate of fire, much like the US .30 M2/AN aircraft variant. It was designed to fire hydraulically or pneumatically as a wing mounted machine gun but was also adopted as hand-fired mount for use in bombers and reconnaissance aircraft. It had a rate of fire of 1,150 rounds per minute. The licence was issued to BSA by July 1935.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The Browning .303 was used as the RAF and Fleet Air Arm (FAA) primary fixed forward firing aircraft armament before the war, both on pre-war biplane fighters (Gloster Gladiator, Hawker Fury) and on the UK's new 'eight-gun fighters' the Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire and the naval Fairey Fulmar, and as secondary weapons in mid-war variants of the Spitfire, as well as being fitted in single, double or quadruple mounts as offensive weapons for the Bristol Blenheim, the Fairey Battle, Handley Page Hampden, Martin Maryland/Baltimore, Fairey Swordfish, Lockheed Hudson, Douglas Boston, Blackburn Skua and Bristol Beaufort. It was also used as a turret gun in various Boulton Paul or Nash & Thompson turrets on bombers, and flying boats. Even after the introduction of autocannon as primary fighter armament .303 Brownings were retained as supplementary weapons on many aircraft including later versions of the Spitfire, as well as fighter-bomber and night fighter versions of the de Havilland Mosquito, among others.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: There is pictorial evidence of the .303 Browning being placed on improvised bipods for ground use during the early campaigns in Burma and Malaysia.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: In the late 1940s and early 1950s the US military was looking for an upgrade to the M1919 that could feed from either side for use as an improved coaxial machine gun. Saco-Lowell developed a model that had the driving spring attached to the back plate (eliminating the need for a mainspring and driving rod protruding out the back of the bolt), a solenoid trigger for remote firing, a feed cover that could open from either side, a bolt with dual tracks that could feed from either side, and a reversible belt feed pawl, ejector, and feed chute. The experimental T151 had a flat backplate, the T152 had spade grips and a "butterfly" trigger like the M2HB, and the T153 had a pistol grip and back-up trigger like the M1919A4 and an extended charging handle similar to those on the M1919A5. The T153 was adopted as the M37 and was produced by SACO-Lowell and Rock Island Arsenal from 1955 to 1957. It was in regular service from 1955 until it was replaced by the M37E1 in the late 1960s and the M73A1 in the early 1970s.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The M37 was used mostly on the M47 and M48 Patton medium tanks. The M37F was a trial variant fitted with special sighting equipment. The M37C was a variant without a sight bracket designed for use in aircraft armament (like the skid-mounted XM1/E1 helicopter armament subsystem).


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The M37E1 was a M37 machine gun converted by Rock Island Arsenal and Springfield Armory to chamber the 7.62×51mm NATO cartridge and feed the M13 disintegrating belt. They were designed for interim use until the M73 machine gun could be fielded. The M37E1 was to be standardized as the M37A1 but development of the improved M73A1 precluded this.


title: M1919 Browning machine gun

text: The increasing American involvement in Vietnam created a demand for small arms, especially the new M60 machine gun. The Navy had surplus machine guns left over from World War 2 and Korea, but they were chambered for the earlier .30-06 Springfield cartridge rather than the new standard 7.62mm NATO cartridge. The Mk 21 Mod 0 was a US Navy conversion of the .30 M1919A4 to fire the 7.62mm NATO cartridge. This was accomplished by replacing the barrel, bolt, and feed cover and adding a chamber bushing, a link-stripper, and a second belt-holding pawl to allow it to feed and fire the new cartridge. Spacer blocks were added to the front and back of the feedway to guide the shorter round and block the use of the longer .30-06 Springfield ammunition. A six-inch flash hider was also added to the barrel to reduce the muzzle flash.