Capt. Lewis Millett Led America’s Last Bayonet Charge in Korea
Bayonet training infuses aggression, warrior spirit, and elan in the hearts and minds of the soldiers being trained in it.
Some may consider bayonet fighting to be an outmoded infantry tactic, a bygone relic of eighteenth– and nineteenth-century warfare. To be sure, the use of massed bayonet charges at enemy positions dwindled significantly as a result of the horrific bloodletting in the trench fighting of World War I.
However, quite a few militaries still train with bayonets, and understandably so. Bayonet training infuses aggression, warrior spirit, and elan in the hearts and minds of the soldiers being trained in it, and there’s just something about the thought of having one’s guts probed with nine inches of pointed steel that plays havoc with an enemy soldier’s psyche.
In the twenty-first century, British Army units are known to have successfully employed bayonet warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. Going back a few decades further, during the 1982 Falklands War, there were the legendary bayonet charges employed by the 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment (3 Para) and the 2nd Battalion, Scots Guards during the Battles of Mount Longdon and Mount Tumbledown, respectively; these engagements are covered in superb detail in the 1999 book Bayonet Battle: Bayonet Warfare in the 20th Century by Tim Ripley.
But when it comes to the last documented U.S. military bayonet charge, one has to go back to the Korean War and a hard-charging (pun intended) soldier by the name and rank of Captain (later colonel) Lewis Millett.
Who Was Lewis Millett?
Lewis Lee Millett Sr. was born on December 15, 1920, in Mechanic Falls, Maine, but grew up in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, with his mother after his parents divorced and his mother remarried. There was already a martial tradition in his lineage, as his grandfather had served in the American Civil War and an uncle fought in World War I with the 101st Field Artillery Regiment of the Massachusetts Army National Guard (the oldest active field artillery regiment in the United States Army, tracing its lineage back to 1636).
In 1938, young Lewis followed in his uncle’s footsteps by joining the 101st (not to be confused with the 101st Airborne Division [Air Assault]), then transferred to the Army Air Corps in 1940. From there, in COL Millett’s own words:
“We were at peace at the time and the Canadians were fighting the Nazis. Shortly thereafter I deserted the Army, went to Canada, but for a different reason. People went to Canada during Vietnam to get out of the war. I went to Canada to get in the war.”
So, Lewis joined the Canadian Army and was soon sent to London to man an antiaircraft gun during the blitz. Soon enough, of course, America finally did enter the war, and Millett naturally jumped at the chance to fight on behalf of his own country of citizenship:
“When I transferred back to the American Army, I immediately made the invasion of North Africa. And in the first battle, I get a Silver Star, and they start promoting me. By the time my records catch up—because see, I deserted so they didn’t have no records of me. Well, by the time they caught up, I had fought six months in Africa, six months in Italy, had a Silver Star and a Bronze Star, and was a buck sergeant. And my records catch up and they court-martial me for desertion … found me guilty, and they fined me a $52 fine and made me a second lieutenant!”
A classic example of getting “kicked upstairs” or “let no good deed go unpunished.”
As if that service record (and lucky break) wasn’t already impressive enough, Millett would go on to truly immortalize himself in the pages of history in a different conflict the following decade.
CPT Millett’s Bayonet Charge
Upon arriving in-country in Korea, Millett and his brethren had to contend with not only hostile fire and weather conditions but also the annoyance of Chinese Communist propaganda:
“We got reports of captured enemy messages and stuff like that. And in one of them the Chinese said the Americans are afraid of bayonets. And I said ‘That’s a blankety-blank lie! . ..And we’ll teach those son-of-a-bitches a lesson!’ So I went and got bayonets and had ‘em sharpened up and trained the troops. I said ‘From now on we lead off with bayonet assaults!’”
That training would soon prove fortuitous. The red-letter day took place on February 7, 1951, near the village of Soam-Ni, South Korea, by which time Millett was a captain and commander of Company E of the 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division. Noticing a platoon pinned down by intensive fire from a numerically superior Chinese force, CPT Millett, in true lead-from-the-front fashion, placed himself at the head of two other platoons, gave the order to “Fix bayonets(!),” and led a screaming charge up Hill 180 (later renamed Bayonet Hill).
The enemy fled the hill in discombobulation, leaving behind 100 dead, thirty of whom died via bayonet; at least two of them were bayonetted by CPT Millett himself.
In July 1951, President Harry S. Truman (himself a former artilleryman during World War I) presented CPT Millett with the Medal of Honor: “When he put it around me, he said, ‘I’d rather have this than be President of the United States.’”
Legacy
Millett retired from the U.S. Army in 1973 with the rank of colonel. His first marriage, to Virginia Young, ended in divorce, but his second marriage, to Winona Williams, lasted until her death in 1993. That second marriage produced four children; tragically, one of those four children, Army Staff Sergeant John Millett, was among 240 servicemen who lost their lives in 1985 when Arrow Air Flight 1285R crashed in Gander, Newfoundland.
Millet died of congestive heart failure on November 14, 2009, a month shy of his eighty-ninth birthday. He was laid to rest on December 5, 2009, at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, California; his grave can be found in Section 2, Grave #1910.
Bravo Zulu, COL Millett. R.I.P. and God bless, ‘til Valhalla.
About the Author: Christian D. Orr
Christian D. Orr was previously a Senior Defense Editor for National Security Journal (NSJ) and 19FortyFive. He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch, The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security, and Simple Flying. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS). If you’d like to pick his brain further, you can ofttimes find him at the Old Virginia Tobacco Company (OVTC) lounge in Manassas, Virginia, partaking of fine stogies and good quality human camaraderie.
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