This Day in History: Lewis Millett's bayonet charge

On this day in 1920, a future Medal of Honor recipient is born.  Lewis “Red” Millett is best known for leading the last major bayonet charge in U.S. Army history. He would receive a Medal for his action.

Was it a surprising outcome for a man who had once deserted the Army?

Of course, the reason he deserted was because he wanted to fight. He’d fled across the border and joined the Canadian Army, returning to the fold only after the United States entered World War II.

He’d transferred back into the U.S. Army in London, fortunately proving himself a hero before his desertion records finally caught up with him.

“I immediately made the invasion in North Africa,” he explained. “And in the first battle, I get a Silver Star, and they start promoting me. . . . [I 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!”

Millett’s Medal action came years later, as he fought in Korea.  In a funny twist, he got the idea for his bayonet charge from the Chinese.

“We had acquired some Chinese documents stating that Americans were afraid of hand-to-hand fighting and cold steel,” he laughed. “When I read that, I thought, ‘I’ll show you, you sons of bitches!’  So I had every rifleman in the company fix his bayonet to his rifle and leave it fixed, 24 hours a day.”

He taught his men to use the bayonets, running drills and having them practice thrusts into bundles of straw or into mud banks.

“From now on, we lead off with bayonet assaults!” he told his troops.

Then-Captain Millett’s memorable bayonet charge came on February 7, 1951, as he led Company E, 27th Infantry, 25th Infantry Division near Soam-Ni, Korea.

One of his platoons had become pinned down near Hill 180. The Americans were badly outnumbered, about 3 to 1, but Millett didn’t hesitate. He put himself at the head of two platoons, bayonet fixed, ready to charge the hill. “In the fierce charge,” his Medal citation describes, “Capt. Millett bayoneted two enemy soldiers and boldly continued on, throwing grenades, clubbing and bayoneting the enemy, while urging his men forward by shouting encouragement.”

“There was a man at the point,” Millett later remembered, “and two others, one at each end of the V. The man at the point was the gunner. I bayoneted him. I guess the other two didn’t realize I was that close. The next man reached for something, I think it was a machine pistol, but I bayoneted him.”  A third man froze, he mused, probably because “the sight of me, red-faced and screaming, made him freeze.”

He bayoneted that enemy also.

When all was said and done, Millett’s men had killed at least 50 of the enemy, but potentially as many as 100 of them. They had captured the hill and sent the enemy fleeing.

“Yeah, it’s kinda crazy to go charging up with bayonets, you know,” Millett smiled. “Against people with machineguns and all that?” He marveled that his men followed him—but also was so glad they did.

“That’s why I say this [Medal of Honor] is not just mine,” he concluded. “It’s for a hundred men that I had, too. And if they all hadn’t gone, I’d be dead. . . . I’m alive today because I had some damn good men.”

Humble, as so many Medal recipients are.  “He was a rare breed,” Major General Robert L. Caslen, Jr. concluded after his passing many years later, in 2009, “a true patriot who never stopped serving his country. He was a role model for thousands of soldiers, and he will be missed.”

RIP, Sir.

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Primary Sources:

• David Lee, Hero of Korea’s Bayonet Hill now battles enemies as speaker for John Birch Society (Houston Chronicle; Nov. 7, 2019) (p. 3)

• Katie Lange, Medal of Honor Monday: Army Col. Lewis Millett Sr. (Dept. of Defense; March 6, 2023)

• J.R. Labbe, Lewis Millett, a true American hero (News & Record; May 29, 2000) (p. A9)

• Local Medal of Honor recipient dies (March Air Reserve Base; Nov. 30, 2009)

• Medal of Honor citation (Lewis Lee “Red” Millett; Korea)

• Medal of Honor oral history (Lewis Millett; Korea)

• Steve Sherlock, The Mechanic Falls Native who led the last bayonet charge in U.S. Army history (Morning Sentinel; May 25, 2025) (p. W4)

• #VeteranOfTheDay Army Veteran Lewis Millett (VA News; Nov. 29, 2022)