Lanham, Charles Trueman “Buck”.

Lanham, Charles , known as “Buck”, born 14-09-1902 in Washington DC, to Ira Clifford and Alice Bryan, born O’Neil, Lanham. Charles attended Eastern High School in Washington, DC. Charles, known as “Buck,” graduated from West Point\

in 1924. He included among his many military adventures the command of the U.S. 22^nd Infantry Regiment  in Normandy in July 1944, and was the first American officer to lead a break through the Siegfried Line on 14-09-1944.

He led a breakout in the Battle of the Bulge (see Anthony McAuliffe)

and (Harry Kinnard)

after surviving a bloody ordeal in the Battle of Hurtgen Forest. It was in the Normandy battles that Lanham and Ernest Hemingway first met. Hemingway was doing battlefield stories for the American audience for Collier’s, Collier’s Weekly was an American magazine founded by Peter Fenelon Collier and published from 1888 to 1957. With the passage of decades, the title was shortened to Collier’s and sought assignment with Lanham’s regiment. Hemingway described Lanham as,

Colonel “Buck” Lanham was the model for Colonel Cantwell in Hemingway’s Across the River and Into the Trees.  After his promotion to Major General, Buck took command of the 1st Infantry Division in West Germany in January 1953. In 1954, Lanham went to Norfolk, VA, to accept his final assignment as Deputy Commandant of the Armed Forces Staff College. He was a short story writer and poet. Colonel Lanham was brave under fire earning the Distinguished Service Cross in the Huertgen Forest. He retired from the military at the end of 1954, as a Major General, to join the Pennsylvania-Texas Corporation of Colt’s Patent Firearms. He resigned in 1958 and joined Xerox in 1960 as Vice President for Government Relations, retiring from that post at the end of 1970.

Death and burial ground of Lanham, Charles Trueman “Buck”.

Major General Raymond Oscar Barton “Tubby” (right) and Colonel Buck T. Lanham (left) after the latter’s 22nd Infantry was first to break through the Siegfried Line on 14-09-1944.

Charles died 20-07-1978 in Chevy Chase, Maryland from cancer at the age of 76. Lanham is buried with his wife Mary, born Gapen, who died age 64 in 1969, on the Arlington National Cemetery, Section 4. In Section 4, are also buried Brigade General. Commander 99^th Artillery Division, Frederick Black, the Flyer Ace Marion Carl and General, Commander Army Ground Forces, Ben “Yohoo” Lear.