Red Millett and Hill 180
Some 75 years ago this week, on 7 Febuary 1951, the well-mustachioed Captain Lewis L. “Red” Millett and the “Wolfhound” Infantrymen of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry, 25th Infantry Division, conducted the last full-unit bayonet charge in U.S. Army history when they took Hill 180, later just known as “Bayonet Hill,” near the smoke-blackened village of Soam-ni, just to the west and south of Osan, South Korea.
From Millett’s official Medal of Honor citation:
While personally leading his company in an attack against a strongly held position, he noted that the 1st Platoon was pinned down by small-arms, automatic, and antitank fire. Capt. Millett ordered the 3d Platoon forward, placed himself at the head of the two platoons, and, with fixed bayonet, led the assault up the fire-swept hill. In the fierce charge, Capt. Millett bayoneted two enemy soldiers and boldly continued, throwing grenades, clubbing, and bayoneting the enemy, while urging his men forward by shouting encouragement. Despite vicious opposing fire, the whirlwind hand-to-hand assault carried to the crest of the hill. 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.”
Millett was a bit of a fire-eater, having enlisted in the Massachusetts National Guard in 1938 at age 18, then deserted in mid-1941 to cross over into Canada, where he wound up in the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery in an AAA battery during the Blitz on London.
Transferring to the U.S. Army in 1942, he earned a Silver Star as a gunner with the 1st Armored Division in Tunisia and, after fighting at Salerno and Anzio, came clean about his 1941 desertion. Then, following a $52 fine, received a battlefield commission as Second Lieutenant. Following Korea, he attended Ranger School, served in the 101st Airborne, and clocked in on the Phoenix Program in Vietnam. He retired as a colonel in 1973, capping a wild service history.
Colonel Lewis Lee Millett, Sr. died of congestive heart failure on 14 November 2009, one month short of his 89th birthday, and was buried on 5 December 2009 at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, CA. His grave can be found in Section 2, Site 1910.
The National Infantry Museum and Soldier Center has a superb diorama of Millet’s charge in their Last 100 Yards exhibit.
From my visit last year:
He left an amazing interview in 2002 that is in the LOC.