Having the heart of a warrior, Lewis Millett joined the U.S. military before he officially became an adult. During his military career that lasted over three decades, Millett earned several awards for his valor in three of America’s major wars.
Millett was born in Maine in 1920 and moved to Massachusetts with his mother after his parents divorced. The young man grew up hearing battlefield stories about a grandfather who served in the Civil War and an uncle who fought in World War I.
While he was still attending high school in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, he became a member of the National Guard. Millett wanted to join the Allied Forces so badly that he fled to Canada to join the army because he thought the United States was not going to join the war.
Millett served overseas as an anti-aircraft radar operator for the Canadian Army in London during the bombing attack known as “The Blitz.” After the United States joined the war, Millett transferred to the U.S. Army in 1942. He was then sent to Tunisia in North Africa to serve as an antitank gunner.
While in a battle in Africa, the enemy set fire to a pile of hay that ignited a halftrack (a military vehicle with wheels on the front and a track on the back) that was full of ammunition. Millett promptly went into action and jumped into the burning vehicle even though he didn’t know how to drive it. He drove the halftrack away from the other soldiers and was able to jump out of it just before it exploded.
Millett was awarded a Silver Star for his efforts. While in Tunisia, he also shot down a German fighter plane with a vehicle-mounted machine gun.
Bravery in the Korean War
At the height of the Korean War, Millett’s bravery would be put to the test. In an interview archived by the Library of Congress, he recounted what happened leading E (“Easy”) Company of the 27th Infantry Regiment (“Wolfhounds”): “Right after the Chinese hit, ... in lieu of pulling back eventually, we withdrew south of Seoul, and we’re off on the western flank, and we got reports of captured enemy messages, .... and in one of them the Chinese said Americans are afraid of bayonets!“And I said that’s a blankety-blank lie! ... So I went and got bayonets and had them sharpened up and trained the troops and said, from now on, we'll lead off on bayonet assaults! ... I led three different bayonet assaults.”
During one enemy assault, Millett led two platoons forward in a rice paddy. The enemy was on the top of a hill and had pinned another American platoon down at the hill’s base; the enemy was firing heavy gunfire from small arms and automatic and antitank weapons.
Millett took command of the second platoon and led the soldiers up the hill armed with bayonets. Millett was in the front and was forced to dodge grenades coming from both his soldiers behind him and the enemy in front of him. He successfully dodged eight before the ninth hit him, spraying shrapnel into his legs and back.
Millett continued his surge up the hill swinging his rifle like a club and yelling words of encouragement to his soldiers. Millett and his platoon made it to the top of the hill, forcing the enemy to surrender.
In the end, about 100 enemy soldiers were killed with about half of them dying by bayonet. Millett himself killed two soldiers with a bayonet. Despite being injured by the grenade blast, he stayed with his men until all enemy troops had fled.
In 1951, President Harry Truman awarded Millett a Medal of Honor for leading the U.S. Army’s last major bayonet battle.
After the Korean War, Millett went to Army Ranger School and ended up training Vietnamese soldiers during the Vietnam War before retiring from the military in 1973.
Millett was heavily involved in veterans’ organizations before he died in 2009 a month before his 89th birthday.
