In Memoriam
1st Lt ROBERT A.
LEWIS
Company Commander,
A Company
15th Armored
Infantry Battalion
The first Fifth Armored man to enter
Belgium
Excerpt from "Paths of Armor":
... 2 September, the combat command
(CCB) broke loose and hurtled forward in a spectacular 85-mile
dash; it was the deepest drive into enemy territory made thus
far in a single day by any outfit on the Western Front. At daylight
CC B found that most of the enemy forces which had presented the
stonewall resistance the previous night had withdrawn. From its
positions south of Noyon it then rolled its halftracks and tanks
onto the roads at 6:30 a.m and pointed them toward the Belgian
border. After grinding through Noyon, it pushed on to Ham, where
the bridge over the Somme-Oise Canal had been wrecked with demolitions.
Engineers of B Co, 22nd Engineers, were called forward to the
site and they quickly threw a 30-foot treadway bridge across the
barrier. Crossing the canal and driving beyond Ham, the column
then began to pick up speed. It by-passed St Quentin to the west
and, later, Cambrai to the east. Then it shot into Valenciennes
and by 10:15 that night was across the Belgian border two miles
north of Condé.
The first Fifth Armored member to
enter Belgium was Lt Robert A. Lewis, company commander of A Co
, 15th Infantry Bn; he was carried across by a jubilant crowd
of Belgian citizens.
He was killed on September 20, 1944
in Germany
Photo of his grave at Arlington National Cemetery.
(in fact A Co, there is an error
on the tombstone, note of the webmaster)
Excerpt from "Paths of Armor":
As daylight brightened over the debris-laden
hills and valleys that morning, 20 September, the Germans were
anxious to find out whether any Americans were still in Germany.
They sent a force of tanks and infantrymen intoNiedersgegen from
the norteast and quickly discovered that all of the Fifth Armored
troops had not departed. They were repulsed by a platoon from
the married B companies of the 81st Tank Bn and 15th Infantry
Bn. Two Shermans, however, were lost in the counterattack.
The German then stepped up the intensity
of their artillery barrages in the Niedersgegen Valley and on
Hill 375. The shell fragments caused so many casualties in the
valley south of Niedersgegen that the area was dubbed "Purple
Heart Valley" just as Hill 407 had been known to the men
of CC R as "Purple Heart Hill".
During one of these barrages Lt.
Robert A. Lewis, the first Fifth Armored man to enter Belgium,
was killed.
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All rights reserved, Yves J. Bellanger
Created June 29, 2001 by Yves J. Bellanger
Updated July 4, 2001