Lew Harned, Brigadier General Who Served From WWII to Desert Storm, Dies at 101

Retired Brig. Gen. Lewis B. Harned, a physician whose military service spanned World War II, the Korean War and Operation Desert Storm, has died at 101.

Harned's death was reported April 16 by Madison television station WMTV 15 News, four months before what would have been his 102nd birthday.

The Wisconsin Army National Guard officer was the oldest U.S. commander in the 1991 Gulf War. He reached that posting nearly five decades after the Army turned him away during WWII.

Early Life, Italy and Korea

Harned was born Aug. 17, 1924, in Madison. He graduated from High School in 1942 and tried to enlist in the U.S. military, but recruiters classified him 4-F because of his nearsightedness.

He found another route to the war through the American Field Service, a civilian volunteer corps that supplied ambulance drivers to British and Allied forces. He sailed for Egypt in 1943 and joined the British Eighth Army.

As a driver with the 485th Ambulance Company attached to the British 78th Division, Harned served across North Africa and the Middle East before moving with the Eighth Army into the Italian campaign. At the Battle of Monte Cassino, his unit operated from a forward aid station that came under German artillery fire.

The British government awarded him three campaign medals for his service, including the Italy Star.

Harned graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1947 and earned his medical degree at Hahnemann Medical School in Philadelphia in 1951. The Korean War draft reached him as a newly credentialed doctor.

Commissioned as an Army warrant officer, he transferred to the Air Force during training and served as a surgeon at the 2791st U.S. Air Force Hospital in Ogden, Utah, from 1953 to 1955. He left active duty as a captain in the Medical Corps.

National Guard Command and Desert Storm

Harned completed his orthopedic residency at Northwestern University in 1958 and joined Surgical and Orthopedic Associates in Waterloo, Iowa. He practiced there until 1985 and served as team physician for University of Northern Iowa athletics from 1960 to 1984.

He returned to Madison in 1985 and accepted a lieutenant colonel's commission in the Wisconsin Army National Guard, which needed an orthopedic surgeon. A promotion to colonel followed the next year, and in May 1988 he took command of the Madison-based 13th Evacuation Hospital.

Desert Shield activated the 350-member unit in November 1990. The 13th Evac deployed to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 10, 1991, and set up a 408-bed field hospital near the Iraqi border under the Army's VII Corps, according to the Wisconsin National Guard.

Harned, then 66, was the oldest U.S. commander in theater. The hospital logged more than 3,500 outpatient visits and 109 surgeries during the 100-hour ground war, caring for both American troops and Iraqi wounded.

VII Corps commander Lt. Gen. Fred Franks visited the unit repeatedly, a relationship recorded in "Into the Storm," a book co-authored between Franks and Tom Clancy.

Harned earned the Bronze Star for his Gulf War leadership and was promoted to brigadier general before retiring from the military on Nov. 30, 1992.

Later Years in Madison

Harned's military record placed him in uniform over the course of 48 years, from an ambulance driver's post in Italy in 1943 to command of a Gulf War evacuation hospital in 1991. He sat on the Wisconsin Veterans Museum board and often voiced his fear that his wartime generation would be forgotten.

He and Linda Harned spent each Memorial Day placing American flags on veterans' graves at rural Rock County cemeteries, a practice they began in the mid-2010s at Lima Center Cemetery in Whitewater. At 100, Harned handed the duty to the Lima 4-H group.

“Maybe someday there might be a young man who will come put a flag at my burial place," he told WSAW-TV in 2019. "I hope so."

When he turned 99, Harned set out to try 99 new things before his 100th birthday. The list eventually grew to 107 items. He waterskied on the Mississippi River, rode a drag-racing car at Great Lakes Dragaway and reprised a 1941 stage role from his Wisconsin High School years.

Miss Madison Teen Natalie Popp, who met Harned while volunteering at the River Food Pantry in Madison, wrote and published a children's book about his life titled "Lew for the Red, White and Blue."

His decorations included the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star, the Meritorious Service Medal, three Army Commendation Medals, the Southwest Asia Service Medal with three service stars and the Army Reserve Components Achievement Medal. The U.S. Army inducted him into its ROTC Hall of Fame in 2022.

Funeral arrangements had not been publicly announced as of Friday. He is survived by his daughters Cathy Amundson, Linda Harned and Debra Ondell, and four great-grandchildren.