Robert George Cole (March 19, 1915 – September 18, 1944) was an American soldier who received the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Battle of Normandy in World War II. Cole, the commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, successfully led his outgunned unit in a daring bayonet charge against an entrenched German force. He was killed in action three months later during Operation Market Garden.
Early life and education
Cole was born on March 19, 1915, at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. His father was Colonel Clarence Leroy Cole, an Army doctor, and his mother Clara was a schoolteacher. Cole graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in San Antonio in 1933 and enlisted the United States Army in 1934. In 1935, he accepted an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Cole graduated in 1939 and married his sweetheart, Allie Mae Wilson, with whom he had a son.
Career
After graduation from West Point, Cole was commissioned as a second lieutenant and assigned to the 15th Infantry Regiment at Fort Lewis, Washington. In 1941, he volunteered for paratrooper training and joined the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment at Fort Benning, Georgia, earning his jump wings in March. Cole rose in the ranks rapidly, and by D-Day in mid-1944, Lieutenant Colonel Cole was the commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division.
Battle of Normandy
On June 6, 1944, Cole parachuted into France with the 502nd as part of the American airborne landings in Normandy. Landing behind Utah Beach, he assembled 75 men and assaulted German positions before aiding the landing of the 4th Infantry Division.
During the Battle of Carentan on June 10, the objective of Cole's 3rd Battalion was a bridge over the Douve River near Carentan, the linkup point with the 29th Infantry Division coming inland from Omaha Beach. Cole led 265 men toward the bridge down a narrow, exposed causeway flanked by marshes. Entrenched German soldiers began to fire upon the battalion, inflicting considerable casualties with rifles, machine guns, and mortars.
Cole then blew his whistle, beginning the bayonet charge under cover of a smoke screen, leading his unit from the front with his pistol, eventually taking up a rifle from one of the fallen men. The charge was successful in driving the Germans away but at a heavy cost, with 130 of Cole's 265 men becoming casualties. Afterward, the 1st Battalion of the 502nd, along with concentrated artillery fire, eliminated the remainder of German resistance near the bridge. While looking skyward to sight the plane, Cole was shot and killed by a German sniper in a farmhouse away.
Walter Cronkite, reporting for United Press, wrote that Cole "knew the woods were filled with German snipers...so rather than order a man into the field to place the panels, Cole carried them himself."
Legacy
thumb|Memorial to Cole in Best, Netherlands
Cole was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions of June 11, 1944. The honor was accepted by his widow Allie on October 30, 1944, at a ceremony at Fort Sam Houston. as well as a plaque in Best near where he was killed.
Robert G. Cole High School at Fort Sam Houston is named in his honor,
Medal of Honor citation
The citation reads as follows: