On the rain-soaked night of 24 October 1942, Lieutenant Colonel Lewis "Chesty" Puller's 1st Battalion, 7th Marines held a thinly manned ridge in front of Henderson Field on Guadalcanal. A full Japanese division came at them in the dark. Puller walked his line through the assault, feeding ammunition and steadying his men, calling artillery down almost on his own position, and his battalion held against odds that should have broken it. He earned a Navy Cross — one of an eventual five — and in the same fight Sergeant John Basilone won the Medal of Honor. It was the kind of night that made Puller the Corps' enduring legend.

K&C sculpts Puller mid-command — striding forward, pointing the way with one hand, an M1 Carbine slung over his shoulder and the ever-present pipe in the other. He wears HBT utilities and a camouflage-covered M1 helmet, a pistol at his side. As the Corps' great anchor he bridges the Pacific war around him: the Marine Raider who fought the same Guadalcanal campaign and the rifleman-memoirist Eugene Sledge of Peleliu, where Puller led the 1st Marines — and he looks ahead to the same Chesty Puller at Chosin eight years later in Korea.

King & Country model USMC059. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Single foot figure on a sculpted groundwork base. Boxed.