THE STREETS OF HEAVEN – Trying to sit down for a quiet brew in Tun Tavern, the ghost of Dan Daly complained that once again the ghost of Chesty Puller “doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up.”

“We’re supposed to be guarding the streets up here, and I know our seventh general order is ‘talk to no one except in the line of duty,'” said Daly. “But there he goes, running his mouth to every new angel we get up here.”

“Hi, I’m Chesty Puller. I won five Navy Crosses,” mimicked Daly in a girlish falsetto. “Shit, I’ve got one of those… right next to my TWO Medals of Honor.”

“Blah blah blah, Japanese hordes on Guadalcanal. Blah blah blah, Chinese hordes in Korea,” Daly continued, mimicking Puller. “Wow, because I wouldn’t know anything about Chinese hordes, like when I was single-handedly killing dozens of them in Peking during the Boxer Rebellion.”

“And I don’t recall having on-call artillery or airpower to back me up.”

The ghosts of other famous Marines reluctantly agreed that someone needs to take Puller out to the tree line, especially after Daly complained, “Come on you sons of bitches, do you want to have to listen to this shit forever?”

“War is a racket,” said the ghost of Smedley Butler, “but not half the racket that asshole makes every night.”

While some Marine ghosts have defended Puller, the most vocal critics are usually former Marines who served with Puller and died under his command.

Their views are echoed by a rare survivor, John Basilone.

“Chesty was my CO on [Guadalcanal],” Basilone said, reflecting on the 1942 battle, “and I’ve noticed that most of this pro-Chesty Puller crowd never actually served under him. I always ask our new arrivals if they’ve ever met a Chesty Puller Marine, and they usually say, ‘No’.”

“There’s a good reason for that,” Basilone added, before screaming: “HE GOT THEM ALL KILLED!”

Other Marine ghosts from earlier conflicts think the controversy over Puller is just “a bunch of boots whining,” in the words of the ghost of John Mackie.

“I was the first Marine to ever be awarded the Medal of Honor, and what do I get? The worst barracks in the Marine Corps named after me,” complained Mackie, whose namesake graces Marine Corps Base Hawaii’s Mackie Hall, not far from a river of sewage called “shit creek” by its residents. “Marines need to just harden the fuck up.”

“Yeah, I’m sure Guadalcanal was real bad,” chimed in the ghost of Littleton Waller.

“Trapped in the jungle for weeks, literally running out of food, having to shoot our native guides when they mutinied. Oh wait, that was Samar, which nobody even remembers anymore.”

The ghost of John Quick said that as bad as Puller’s constant bragging is, things could be worse.

“It’s always hell to get these historical legends, with their PR machine and laundry list of extraordinary achievements, who think they have the right to just come up here and jump the chain of command,” said Quick.

“At least Al Gray isn’t dead yet.”

Duffel Blog investigative writer Dark Laughter also contributed to this report.