Memorial

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When Lewis W. Meade was 9 years old his father died and his mother moved with her children to North Wilkesboro, Wilkes County, North Carolina. There was work to be found in one of the numerous local furniture factories. Lewis was a member of their Boy Scouts (Boy Scout Troop 336). He ended school after the first year at high hchool. Despite the loss of their father, the children had a well-protected childhood. The boys enjoyed riding their bicycles and their visits to the movie theatre. Going through old pictures it is obvious that the family had pet dogs. Lewis W. Meade did yard work in the neighborhood to help his mother with the money. He later went squirrel hunting with friends in the Brushy Mountains. Wilkes County has a lot of small towns and is mainly farming country.

Lewis got his first public job in a drugstore of the Rexall Company before he started work for the Forest Furniture Company. He occasionally built furniture as a hobby

He enlisted at Camp Croft, South Carolina on 14 November 1942.

Traffic had to use a temporary wooden bridge over de Alzette river in the town center. The tank drivers had to maneuver carefully to avoid touching each other on the bridge. Although the lanes roadway on the bridge had been separated from the footbridges on either side by heavy horizontal beams, the driver of one of the tanks coming from the town made the mistake of driving onto the right-hand footbridge. One of the men in the tank was standing up in the turret and was just taking a drink from a canteen when the vehicle tipped to the right, broke through the thin floorboards of the footbridge and fell with a loud crash into the river. Traffic stopped immediately, and in no time, the crews of the following tanks had leapt from their vehicles, hurried across the frozen marshland to reach the Alzette and waded through the water in an attempt to help. A few seconds later the first crew member emerged from the icy waters. His eyes revealed his horror and fright. Screaming and crying, he was wading around the tank when a second crew member came up out of the water. Holding on to each other, the two men moved toward the bank. They were to be the only survivors. The tank was resting on its turret and only the driver and the tank commander had been able to free themselves. Despite desperate efforts, the helpers were only able to open the escape hatch on the bottom of the tank some time later. Their endeavors were in vain, for they could only recover the dead body of one of their comrades from the interior of the tank. He had lost consciousness in the crash and had drowned in the oil leaking from the engine and the intruding river water.

Later two army cranes managed to right the tank and drag it to "Onnerklaus" (nearby field name) to remove the remaining two victims from the turret.

One other crew member is buried at Luxembourg Cemetery: Isidore M. Vasko.

On 19 October 2013, a memorial was inaugurated at the spot of the accident.

He was first buried at the Temporary American Military Cemetery in Grand-Failly, France.

On one photo he poses with his brother Robert (left). On another picture he poses with his mother.