Robert W. Grow
Robert Walker Grow was a senior United States Army officer who commanded the 6th Armored Division during World War II. He was notable for his court-martial in 1951 for failing to safeguard classified information.Biography
Born in Sibley, Iowa to Nellie and John Thomas Grow. His mother died when he was two years old and Grow went to live with his paternal grandparents, as his father went to Canada to work. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1916. He married Mary Louella Marshall, daughter of Willamina H. "Willie" and J Walter Marshall, of Cleveland, Tennessee on November 5, 1917 in Hamilton, Tennessee. They had two sons, Robert Marshall and Walter Thomas, both attendees of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. They had an additional child die as a one-day-old in Brownsville, Texas.
Robert W. Grow was the commander the U.S. 6th Armored Division on the Western Front, fighting during the battles of Normandy and of the Bulge.
His command of the 6th Armored Division in its rapid assault across the Brittany Peninsula is considered one of the finest examples of armor in the exploitation phase. This stunning advance is often overlooked due to the more glamorous exploits of the rest of the U.S. Army surrounding the German Seventh Army at the same time.
He is also known for being court-martialed in 1951 during the Cold War on charges of failing to safeguard classified information. At the time, he was the senior U.S. military attache in Moscow, and portions of his diary fell into Soviet hands. Grow retired after the court-martial and later became an executive of the Falls Church, Virginia chamber of commerce.
Not long after the court-martial, his son, Walter Thomas Grow, was on summer vacation from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1953 when a fire started in his bedroom of the family home in Falls Church, Virginia. Walter Thomas Grow, 21, died of smoke inhalation on August 12, 1953.
