Cemetery in Norfolk, Virginia. The family's extensive public service is exclusively civilian. In 1920, when Tony Waller Jr. joined the Sons of the American Revolution, his application was based on his ancestor's participation in the Committee of Independence. The Waller family website says little about the Civil War years, and the associated Tazewell website says even less. The Wallers and Tazewells seem to have had no military members prior to Tony's commissioning. His decision to become an officer must have surprised his family, but they were supportive of his ambition. In his teens, Tony was a corporal in the Norfolk Light Artillery Blues, a local militia unit. Turned down for a commission in the cavalry (at 5' 4" he was too short), he was accepted into the Marines. Early years Tony Waller was bright, but indifferent to education. He was an outdoorsman, fond of hunting, fishing and riding, and uncomfortable in the classroom. Historian David McCulloch noted that, in the nineteenth century, every literate person in the English-speaking world was familiar with three books – the King James Bible, the works of Shakespeare, and John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Waller's writing shows the influence of all three. His report from Peking compares the condition of the Marines to Falstaff's army, in reference to Shakespeare's Henry IV. He uses the Biblical phrase "the peace of God which passeth all understanding" in his letter to the Marines in France in 1918. In reporting the death in action of one of his officers in China, Waller expressed confidence that "all the trumpets will sound for him upon the other side", a phrase taken from Bunyan's description of the death of Faithful. In their ghostwritten memoirs Smedley Butler and Frederick C. Wise remember him as an eloquent speaker and fascinating storyteller. Yet he apparently never considered the study of law or a career in politics. Early Marine career Waller first went to sea as the Executive Officer of the Marine Detachment aboard the sloop-of-war , the flagship of the European Squadron and a veteran of the Civil War, in 1881. The Commanding Officer of the Detachment, also a veteran of the Civil War, was the legendary Captain Henry Clay Cochrane. The following year, Waller was present at the British Naval bombardment of Alexandria, Egypt during a serious local uprising in the summer of 1882. He participated in the landing of a mixed bluejacket and Marine