11.19.2009

Lewis Millet: from Army deserter to colonel


Col. Lewis Millett, Who Led ‘Bayonet Hill’ Charge, Dies at 88

Excerpt:

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.”


Comment: Celebrating an American hero! More info below:

1 comment:

  1. I had the privilege of handling a M1 carbine once, complete with bayonet lug. The owner told me he loved that gun, as its large magazine made it a great way to keep NK troops' heads down. He also had "hit his target" a few times with it as well.

    I've also read that early British reports on the War Between the States lamented that the officers of both sides were reluctant to use the bayonet, as they had seen what had happened when British regulars used it effectively--the comment was more or less suggesting that the war could have been over by 1863 with the saving of hundreds of thousands of lives if it had been done.

    Thank God this man was able to do the same.

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