Charles Hughes

Puller Charles Hughes

Lewis "Chesty" Puller, the most decorated marine in the history of the Corps, fought in every conflict from the Banana wars of Nicaragua to the Pacific campaign of World War II and finally to the bitter cold Chosin Reservoir of Korea, becoming for his courage in many battles a true legend. The only thing Chesty loved more than the Corps was his family and chief among them was his son Lewis Puller Jr., the son he called "my immortality." The two men were very different, but a strong love bound them together. To please his dad Lewis joined the Corps during the Vietnam War, but after only two months in Vietnam he was blown apart by a booby trap rigged from an unexploded American artillery shell. He survived the blast but lost both legs and suffered other grievous wounds. In spite of his agonizing and painful wounds and difficult rehabilitation Lewis went on to become a father, earn a law degree and write his Pulitzer Prize winning autobiography, Fortunate Son. Sadly, however, after years of struggling with pain and battling alcoholism, Lewis took his own life. He was one of the veterans who dedicated himself to making the Vietnam Memorial Wall a reality and visited it regularly where he would sit in his wheelchair with his reflection looking back at him from the black burnished granite. He always left behind a long-stemmed red rose in memory of those names on the wall and never forgot all the suffering that misguided war had inflicted on the people of Vietnam. Puller: Thicker Than Water is a story of the cruelty, destruction and insanity of war, but it is also a moving story of the powerful bond of love between a father and his son.