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By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
Published: November 18, 2009
Col. Lewis L. Millett, an Army veteran of three wars who received the Medal of Honor for leading a rare bayonet charge up a hill in Korea, died Saturday in Loma Linda, Calif. He was 88.
His death was announced by his sister Ellen Larrabee.
Colonel Millett’s forebears fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and World War I. He was so eager to follow in their footsteps that he deserted the American armed forces in the months before the Pearl Harbor attack and joined the Canadian military in the hope of seeing combat quickly. He was eventually court-martialed for desertion, but not before he had returned to the American Army and fought with distinction.
When he became a company commander in the Korean War, serving as a captain in the 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, he seemed a visage from battlefields past with his red handlebar mustache. On Feb. 7, 1951, he employed a tactic of bygone wars with a fury that overwhelmed the enemy.
During the fighting near Osan, South Korea, Captain Millett’s unit encountered Communist troops atop a spot called Hill 180.
It would be remembered as Bayonet Hill for what the military historian Brig. Gen. S. L. A. Marshall would call “the most complete bayonet charge by American troops since Cold Harbor,” a reference to the carnage at an 1864 Civil War battle in Virginia.
After ordering his men to fix bayonets, Captain Millett charged up the hill in front of them in the face of heavy fire, blasting away with his carbine, throwing grenades and, most spectacularly, wielding his bayonet when he encountered three enemy soldiers in a V-shaped gun position.
“I assaulted an antitank rifle crew,” he told Military History magazine in 2002. “The man at the point was the gunner. I bayoneted him. The next man reached for something, I think it was a machine pistol, but I bayoneted him — got him in the throat.”
The third soldier had a submachine gun.
“I guess the sight of me, red-faced and screaming, made him freeze,” he recalled. “Otherwise he would have killed me. I lunged forward and the bayonet went into his forehead. With the adrenaline flowing you’re strong as a bull. It was like going into a watermelon.”
Captain Millett was wounded by grenade fragments, but his men took the hill. President Harry S. Truman presented him with the Medal of Honor in July 1951. As the citation put it, “His dauntless leadership and personal courage so inspired his men that they stormed into the hostile position and used their bayonets with such lethal effect that the enemy fled in wild disorder.”
Lewis Lee Millett was born in Mechanic Falls, Me., but grew up in Massachusetts. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1940, then went AWOL to fight for Canada on the side of Britain against Nazi Germany.
After serving in England with Canadian troops, he transferred back to the American Army in 1942. A year later, the Army court-martialed him for having deserted. By then he was a sergeant, fighting in Italy, and had already taken part in the invasion of North Africa, winning a Silver Star in the Tunisian campaign. The Army fined him $52 and later gave him a commission as a lieutenant.
He left military service after World War II, but rejoined the Army in 1949 after attending Bates College in Maine. Remaining in the armed forces after the Korean War, he set up a reconnaissance and commando school for the Army and during the Vietnam War served as an adviser to the II Corps Phoenix program, directed against the Vietcong and what was called their infrastructure.
“The Phoenix program got a lot of bad publicity about being murderers and so forth,” Colonel Millett told Military History, evidently referring to charges that civilians had been singled out by the program as Vietcong sympathizers. “I never saw any of that. We were trying to capture Vietcong leaders to find out more about them. But we did kill a lot of them when they wouldn’t surrender.”
Colonel Millett, who lived in Idyllwild, Calif., retired from military service in 1973.
In addition to his sister Ellen, he is survived by his sons Lewis Jr., known as Lee, and Tim; a daughter, Elizabeth Millett; his brother, Albert; his sisters Alice Pepin and Marion Finnerty; and several grandchildren. His wife, Winona, died in 1993, and another son, John, a sergeant in the 101st Airborne Division, died in December 1985 when a chartered airliner carrying troops home from peacekeeping duty in the Sinai Peninsula crashed in Newfoundland.
In an interview with The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif., in 2002, Colonel Millett reflected on his long military career.
“I went from Army deserter to colonel,” he said. “I served in two armies, in three wars — in Africa, Europe and Asia.” He said he had met presidents, “had my picture taken with some of them. But I was honored to fight for freedom, and I’d do it again.”
badass,rest in peace.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/us/19millett.html?hpw
Published: November 18, 2009
Col. Lewis L. Millett, an Army veteran of three wars who received the Medal of Honor for leading a rare bayonet charge up a hill in Korea, died Saturday in Loma Linda, Calif. He was 88.
His death was announced by his sister Ellen Larrabee.
Colonel Millett’s forebears fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and World War I. He was so eager to follow in their footsteps that he deserted the American armed forces in the months before the Pearl Harbor attack and joined the Canadian military in the hope of seeing combat quickly. He was eventually court-martialed for desertion, but not before he had returned to the American Army and fought with distinction.
When he became a company commander in the Korean War, serving as a captain in the 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, he seemed a visage from battlefields past with his red handlebar mustache. On Feb. 7, 1951, he employed a tactic of bygone wars with a fury that overwhelmed the enemy.
During the fighting near Osan, South Korea, Captain Millett’s unit encountered Communist troops atop a spot called Hill 180.
It would be remembered as Bayonet Hill for what the military historian Brig. Gen. S. L. A. Marshall would call “the most complete bayonet charge by American troops since Cold Harbor,” a reference to the carnage at an 1864 Civil War battle in Virginia.
After ordering his men to fix bayonets, Captain Millett charged up the hill in front of them in the face of heavy fire, blasting away with his carbine, throwing grenades and, most spectacularly, wielding his bayonet when he encountered three enemy soldiers in a V-shaped gun position.
“I assaulted an antitank rifle crew,” he told Military History magazine in 2002. “The man at the point was the gunner. I bayoneted him. The next man reached for something, I think it was a machine pistol, but I bayoneted him — got him in the throat.”
The third soldier had a submachine gun.
“I guess the sight of me, red-faced and screaming, made him freeze,” he recalled. “Otherwise he would have killed me. I lunged forward and the bayonet went into his forehead. With the adrenaline flowing you’re strong as a bull. It was like going into a watermelon.”
Captain Millett was wounded by grenade fragments, but his men took the hill. President Harry S. Truman presented him with the Medal of Honor in July 1951. As the citation put it, “His dauntless leadership and personal courage so inspired his men that they stormed into the hostile position and used their bayonets with such lethal effect that the enemy fled in wild disorder.”
Lewis Lee Millett was born in Mechanic Falls, Me., but grew up in Massachusetts. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1940, then went AWOL to fight for Canada on the side of Britain against Nazi Germany.
After serving in England with Canadian troops, he transferred back to the American Army in 1942. A year later, the Army court-martialed him for having deserted. By then he was a sergeant, fighting in Italy, and had already taken part in the invasion of North Africa, winning a Silver Star in the Tunisian campaign. The Army fined him $52 and later gave him a commission as a lieutenant.
He left military service after World War II, but rejoined the Army in 1949 after attending Bates College in Maine. Remaining in the armed forces after the Korean War, he set up a reconnaissance and commando school for the Army and during the Vietnam War served as an adviser to the II Corps Phoenix program, directed against the Vietcong and what was called their infrastructure.
“The Phoenix program got a lot of bad publicity about being murderers and so forth,” Colonel Millett told Military History, evidently referring to charges that civilians had been singled out by the program as Vietcong sympathizers. “I never saw any of that. We were trying to capture Vietcong leaders to find out more about them. But we did kill a lot of them when they wouldn’t surrender.”
Colonel Millett, who lived in Idyllwild, Calif., retired from military service in 1973.
In addition to his sister Ellen, he is survived by his sons Lewis Jr., known as Lee, and Tim; a daughter, Elizabeth Millett; his brother, Albert; his sisters Alice Pepin and Marion Finnerty; and several grandchildren. His wife, Winona, died in 1993, and another son, John, a sergeant in the 101st Airborne Division, died in December 1985 when a chartered airliner carrying troops home from peacekeeping duty in the Sinai Peninsula crashed in Newfoundland.
In an interview with The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif., in 2002, Colonel Millett reflected on his long military career.
“I went from Army deserter to colonel,” he said. “I served in two armies, in three wars — in Africa, Europe and Asia.” He said he had met presidents, “had my picture taken with some of them. But I was honored to fight for freedom, and I’d do it again.”
badass,rest in peace.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/us/19millett.html?hpw
