Hometown: Manitowoc, WI
Branch: U.S. Army 
Unit: Company G, 377th Infantry Regiment, 95th Infantry Division
Military Honors: Medal of Honor, Purple Heart
Date of Sacrifice: November 29, 1944 - KIA near Kerprich-Hemmersdorf, Germany
Age: 28
Conflict: World War II, 1939-1945

Rifle squad leader Andrew Miller led his Company G for 36 days of continuous action in General George S. Patton’s Third Army march into Germany. Miller would destroy four enemy machine gun positions and capture 27 German prisoners, earning the Medal of Honor for an incredible string of heroic actions.

Born in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, to Henry and Margaret (Ludwig) Miller on August 11, 1916, Andrew was one of 11 children. His parents immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1913, making their home in Manitowoc two years later. Located on Lake Michigan, Manitowoc’s shipyard built 28 submarines for the U.S. Navy in the early 1940s.

Miller joined the United States Army in June 1941, and left the cool Lake Michigan breezes for training at Camp Swift, near Austin, Texas, then Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, and Camp Polk in Vernon Parish, Louisiana. He was later transferred to Fort Indiantown Gap near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for special training in mountain climbing.

Miller and his girlfriend—Mayme Jansky from Tisch Mills, Wisconsin—were married in San Antonio in June 1942. When Andrew was sent to Europe in September 1944, Mayme moved back to Wisconsin to be near family. Andrew was assigned to Company G, 377th Infantry Regiment, 95th Infantry Division.

In the Allied push to free France from Nazi occupation, Staff Sergeant Andrew Miller’s tenacious courage would earn him the nation’s highest military honor (posthumously) on September 1, 1945. His Congressional Medal of Honor citation recounts the harrowing details of his numerous acts of bravery:

For performing a series of heroic deeds from 16 to 29 November 1944, during his company’s relentless drive from Woippy, France, through Metz to Kerprich Hemmersdorf, Germany. As he led a rifle squad on 16 November at Woippy, a crossfire from enemy machine guns pinned down his unit. Ordering his men to remain under cover, he went forward alone, entered a building housing one of the guns, and forced five Germans to surrender at bayonet point. He then took the second gun singlehandedly by hurling grenades into the enemy position, killing two, wounding three more, and taking two additional prisoners.

At the outskirts of Metz the next day, when his platoon, confused by heavy explosions and the withdrawal of friendly tanks, retired, he fearlessly remained behind armed with an automatic rifle and exchanged bursts with a German machine gun until he silenced the enemy weapon. His quick action in covering his comrades gave the platoon time to regroup and carry on the fight.

On 19 November S/Sgt. Miller led an attack on large enemy barracks. Covered by his squad, he crawled to a barracks window, climbed in, and captured six riflemen occupying the room. His men, and then the entire company, followed through the window, scoured the building, and took 75 prisoners.

S/Sgt. Miller volunteered, with three comrades, to capture Gestapo officers who were preventing the surrender of German troops in another building. He ran a gauntlet of machine-gun fire and was lifted through a window. Inside, he found himself covered by a machine pistol, but he persuaded the four Gestapo agents confronting him to surrender.

Early the next morning, when strong hostile forces punished his company with heavy fire, S/Sgt. Miller assumed the task of destroying a well-placed machine gun. He was knocked down by a rifle grenade as he climbed an open stairway in a house, but pressed on with a bazooka to find an advantageous spot from which to launch his rocket. He discovered that he could fire only from the roof, a position where he would draw tremendous enemy fire. Facing the risk, he moved into the open, coolly took aim, and scored a direct hit on the hostile emplacement, wreaking such havoc that the enemy troops became completely demoralized and began surrendering by the score.

The following day, in Metz, he captured 12 more prisoners and silenced an enemy machine gun after volunteering for a hazardous mission in advance of his company's position. On 29 November, as Company G climbed a hill overlooking Kerprich Hemmersdorf, enemy fire pinned the unit to the ground. S/Sgt. Miller, on his own initiative, pressed ahead with his squad past the company’s leading element to meet the surprise resistance. His men stood up and advanced deliberately, firing as they went. Inspired by S/Sgt. Miller’s leadership, the platoon followed, and then another platoon arose and grimly closed with the Germans. The enemy action was smothered, but at the cost of S/Sgt. Miller’s life. His tenacious devotion to the attack, his gallant choice to expose himself to enemy action rather than endanger his men, his limitless bravery, assured the success of Company G.

The 95th Infantry Division’s Journal magazine (November 1964 edition) would later recount: “For 14 of the bloodiest days in history [Andrew] Miller taught the world to do the impossible. He proved to the ‘brass’ of a dozen armies that the fury and fighting spirit of the American soldier is the most unconquerable weapon of war the universe has ever seen.”

Staff Sergeant Andrew Miller was laid to rest with his fellow soldiers at the Lorraine American Cemetery, St. Avold, France (Plot A, Row 26, Grave 1).

A cargo ship serving as a U.S. Army transport, the USAT Sergeant Andrew Miller (T-AK-242), was named in Miller’s honor. The Army’s Miller Barracks in Marburg, Germany, and the Andrew Miller US Army Reserve Center in his hometown of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, are also named for SSG Miller.

Sources
Manitowoc County Historical Society: Remembering a Local War Hero: Andrew Miller
The Sheboygan Press, Nov. 24, 1961: Obituary: Mrs. Margaret C. Miller
Manitowoc Herald-Times, Nov. 28 and Dec. 13, 1944, via University of Wisconsin Library
Historical Marker Database: Staff Sgt. Andrew Miller
Congressional Medal of Honor Society: Andrew Miller
Naval History and Heritage Command: Sgt. Andrew Miller
The Bugle, Fall 2022, p.10-11: Every Veteran is a Story
HonorStates.org: Andrew Miller
Burial Site: Find a Grave