|
Col Lewis Millett -- From deserter to colonel over 3 wars and a bayonet charge
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.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. 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. Posted by: Dar 2009-11-19 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=283766 |