Lewis Burwell Puller Jr.
American Marine officier and attorney (1945-1994)
Lewis Burwell Puller Jr. (August 18, 1945 – May 11, 1994) was an attorney and a United States Marine Corps officer who was severely wounded in the Vietnam War. He won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for his autobiography Fortunate Son.
Life and career
Lewis Burwell Puller Jr. was the son of Lt. General Lewis "Chesty" Puller, the most decorated Marine in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps. He followed in his father's footsteps and became a Marine officer.
Puller graduated from the Christchurch School, in Christchurch, Virginia, in 1963 and from the College of William and Mary in 1967. After his graduation from Officer Candidate School, he received orders to South Vietnam in July 1968, where he served as an Infantry Platoon Leader for three months in 1st Marine Division. On October 11, 1968, his rifle jammed during an engagement with North Vietnamese troops; Puller was wounded when he tripped a booby-trapped howitzer round, losing his right leg at the hip, his left leg to above the knee, his left hand and most of his fingers on his right hand in the explosion.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lewis Burwell Puller Jr.” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.