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Chesty and Paul by Jim Roberts May 9, 2007 Sometime around 1948 someone told me, a seven-year old, that a famous man, a famous general, was visiting the family which lived down the block. Not only was he a famous general, he was Chesty Puller, the bravest and the most famous Marine. I had never heard of a famous person being in our town let alone ever seen one. So, fascinated, I staked out the house in question. We didn't know the people who lived there so I just hung out on the sidewalk or across the street determined to get a look. Chesty was indeed the most famous United States Marine. His name was synonymous in America with guts, glory and victory. I didn't know that at the time; all I knew was that he was the only famous person who had come near me and our little town of West Point, Virginia, I was going to get a look. I don't know how long it was, maybe an hour or so, when three or four adults came out of the house and down the steps and into the front yard. Two of them were men and as both were in summer civilian clothes I didn't know which one was Chesty Puller. To this day I don't know what made me do it, but I forgot my normal shyness and approached the group, which had come to a halt near the driveway, chatting, until I was but a few feet away. I stood silently and respectfully looking and listening to them visit and laugh. Finally, I was noticed. They really didn't know me and then someone asked me what I wanted. I said I wanted to meet General Chesty Puller. I still don't know where the chutzpah that that took came from. It may have been the fear that Chesty Puller was the only famous person I'd ever get the chance to meet and it was a now-or-never kind of thing. At that point I half expected these people to shoo me away, but one of the two men stepped toward me, bent over a little and extended his hand. I shook hands with Chesty Puller. That was pretty remarkable in anybody's book. But the ante was about to get upped. A year or two later my family was visiting my grandparents in Toledo, Ohio. We visited them often enough that I had developed friends my own age in the neighborhood. One day I was hanging around with one of them who lived a few doors down the street from Papa and Mamma Steele. We were in the rear of his house where two men, one of whom I believe was my friend's father, were smoking and drinking beer and chatting while cooking some hamburgers or hot dogs outside on the back porch. My friend told me I'd never guess who the man was who stood leaning on the porch railing. He was in his shirtsleeves, hatless and tie-less, obviously in a relaxed mood, but his khaki shirt and pants and brass belt buckle and collar devices made it obvious that he was a soldier. My friend was right. I couldn't guess. Then he told me. The soldier was the airplane pilot and had dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. I don't know if he told me the pilot's name at the time, but it was Paul Tibbetts, pilot of the famed B-29 named the Enola Gay which had destroyed the city of Hiroshima. Unlike the earlier encounter with Chesty, I had no urge to go up to Paul Tibbets and shake his hand. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I didn't know how famous he was at the time or maybe it was simple overwhelming awe at what he had done. I may have had a sense of that even at the age of seven or eight. These two events, of course, remained in my memory over the course of my life, but it only dawned on me recently how remarkable it was that I should personally encounter even one of these men who personified the image of the American military in those days. But that I had encountered both of them! And that both events had happened at about the same time, in that respite of five years between WWII and Korea. About the author: I am a writer of short tales based on my own life experiences, an insurance broker, Navy veteran and a volunteer for Amnesty International. | | | |
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