View source for Robert Alexander United States Army officer

Major General Robert Alexander was a senior U.S. Army officer. He served in World War I, where he commanded the 77th Infantry Division, in which the famous Lost Battalion served. He was awarded the Distinguished Service medal for heroism at the Grand Ardennes in October 1918. He died on August 25, 1941, in Washington, D.C., and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He is remembered for his bravery during the Battle of the Argonne Forest in 1918, when his battalion was cut off by the Germans and suffered large losses. Alexander was also one of the officers who reported on the Lost Battalion incident in a report to the headquarters of the division in France. He also served in the American Indian Wars and the Spanish–American War, and was wounded by a bolo during the Pancho Villa Expedition. He studied law in the offices of J. B. and Edwin H. Brown in Centreville, Maryland, but decided against a legal career, instead enlisting in the United States Army's 4th Infantry Regiment as a private on April 7, 1886. His father had been Justice of the Circuit Court of Baltimore City.