Charles Lowndes Steel was born on April 26, 1891, in Richmond, Virginia. He was the son of Charles L. Steel and Ella Martin Harris Steel. He was the husband of Katharine P Steel.
Colonel Steel came to Baltimore after he graduated from Pennsylvania State College, and joined the Consolidated Gas and Electric Company.
His first military experience was with Troop A of the Maryland National Guard. He went to the Mexican border with that unit in 1916 and remained in the Army after returning from the Mexican campaign. He married Miss Katherine Keen Porter, of Harford County.
A sergeant in the 1916 campaign, he was commissioned and later graduated from the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Ga., in 1931. At one time he commanded the Reserve Officers Training Corps unit at Davidson College.
Steel left for the Far East in November 1941, and during the Battle of Bataan commanded the 31st Infantry Regiment, called "Manila's Own." His unit was given credit for counterattacking and preventing Japanese forces from splitting the troops commanded by Gen. Douglas A. MacArthur.
Later, Colonel Steel was captured at the fall of Corregidor and survived the death march before being kept as a prisoner of war for three and a half years in Formosa and Manchuria. For his service in the Philippines, he won the Silver Star with oak leaf cluster and the Legion of Merit. Freed in 1945, he returned to the United States. Because of declining health resulting from his years of imprisonment, he retired shortly thereafter.
He and Mrs. Steel had raised orchids as a hobby and as a business since his retirement. Colonel Steel died on December 21, 1959, at the age of 68. He is now buried in the Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Arlington County, Virginia, USA.
Source of information: www.findagrave.com