USMA Class of 1924. Cullum No. 7232
He was the son of Lewis S. Sorley, USMA Class of 1891 and Ann Merrow Sorley.
On Wednesday, April 10, 1929 at 12 noon, he married Louise Mabelle Barnes at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in San Antonio, Texas.
She was the daughter of Lieut. Colonel J. Fauntleroy Barnes.
They were the parents of two children.
Sometime between the 1940 and 1950 censuses their marriage ended in divorce.
Although Louise Barnes was the daughter of Albert Perry Hunt, she used the surname of her stepfather, Joseph Fauntleroy Barnes.
In the announcement of the engagement of her daughter, her name was Mrs. Louise Barnes Sorley in the newspaper article.
Merrow Sorley was born at Fort Porter, New York, the son of Colonel Lewis Stone Sorley, USMA Class of 1891. He was a graduate of Lowell High School in San Francisco, California. Too young to enter West Point after graduation he attended business school and worked in the District of Columbia. He won a Presidential appointment, entering West Point with the Class of 1924. His brother, Lewis Stone Sorley Jr. was a graduate of the USMA Class of 1919. After graduation he served with the topographical engineers and earned a civil engineering degree at Cornell. He was then assigned to Panama where he engaged in surveying duty in the interior. Later service included a tour in Hawaii with the 3d Engineers and River and Harbor duty in the Rock Island District. During the 1937 floods he was responsible for rescue and resupply operations along a 400-mile stretch of the Ohio River. Before World War II, he served with the 1st and 2d Engineers, then activated and briefly commanded the 46th Engineer GS Regiment at Camp Bowie, Texas. He was recalled to temporary duty to reorganize the G1 Section, Third Army, during the initial stages of full mobilization. He then took command of the 2d Engineers. Late in 1942 he activated and assumed command of the 354th Engineer GS Regiment and accompanied it to England the following summer. After completion of an extensive construction program in support of the invasion force, he requested and was given command of a combat unit, the 1109th Engineer Combat Group. He led his command of 4,000 troops in the Normandy invasion and the remainder of the fighting in Europe. The invasion code name of his group was Makeshift and much of the bridging done by his unit involved shortages of equipment. In late August 1944, in support of XV Corps, his unit put the first three Allied bridges across the Seine below Paris. He was decorated with the Bronze Star for this accomplishment. Shortly after V-E Day he assumed command of the 1325th Engineer GS Regiment in France which set sail for the Pacific. Before his departure he was decorated by the French with the Croix de Guerre with Palm. He established his new regiment on Guam, where the troops engaged in construction activities in support of operations against the Japanese. On V-J Day he flew over the U.S.S. Missouri as the surrender was being signed in Tokyo Bay. After World War II, he was assigned successively as Engineer of the Seventh and Third Armies, student at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces and Chief of the Priorities and Allocations Division of the Munitions Board. While at the Allocations Division during the early days of the Korean War, the office obtained and distributed among the armed services procurement authority for contracts totaling $64 billion within a period of four months. By 1952, after a period as Engineer of the reactivated XV Corps, he was in Korea, serving briefly as commanding officer of the 36th Engineer Combat Group and then as Engineer, I Corps. In that assignment he commanded 8,000 Engineer troops, American and Korean. His awards included the Legion of Merit and he Republic of Korea awarded him the Ulchi Distinguished Service Medal with Gold Star. He retired shortly after his return from Korea. While on duty with the 3d Engineers he was named commandant of the West Point Preparatory School, Schofield Barracks. Later he served a tour of duty in the Department of Civil and Military Engineering at West Point. He was twice assigned to training duties at Fort Belvoir, first as commanding officer of the Training Group of the Engineer Replacement Training Center, and then as management officer of The Engineer School. After retirement he became project director of the State of Illinois Survival Planning Project, a civil defense post and a consulting engineer on defense construction sites in Turkey. He then accepted a position as professor of physics at Valley Forge Military Academy Junior College. He won a fellowship to a National Science Foundation summer institute in computer sciences and implemented and offered a course in the field for cadets. After upgrading the content and equipment of the physics and general science courses at Valley Forge, he also designed a new laboratory and classroom building which was nearing completion at the time of his death. He was well-known to historians and genealogists for his 900 page book, Lewis of Warner Hall, written while he was teaching at West Point. The review of the book in William and Mary Quarterly called it a monumental achievement in the field of genealogy, the accuracy of which is guaranteed by the professional training and peculiar fitness of the one who has undertaken and accomplished the task.
A second major genealogy book, the product of the ten years of his research, was completed a day before his death. His articles appeared in scholarly magazines in the United States and England. He was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, the Sons of the Revolution, and the Society of Colonial Wars. He collapsed and died Thursday, February 4, 1962 in his physics and chemistry class room at Valley Forge Military Junior College. Survivors included one son who was also a graduate of the USMA; one daughter; his father, Colonel Lewis S. Sorley and one brother, Colonel Lewis S. Sorley Jr., who was also a professor at Valley Forge Military Junior College.
Sources: The Evening Star, Saturday, February 6, 1965 and United States Military Academy Association of Graduates memorial.