Hall was born on 12 October 1922 into a Christian Anglo-Burmese family in Rangoon, Burma, British India (present-day Myanmar). His father was a combat engineer in the British Army, and went missing in action during the Japanese invasion of Burma in 1941, shortly after which he was declared dead. Due to the Japanese invasion and outbreak of war in Burma, the women in Hall's family were airlifted to India while the men fled on foot. Arriving in Dibrugarh, Northeast India a few weeks later, Hall was hospitalized for a short time before he enlisted in the Royal Air Force and was subsequently deployed to Burma, where he flew sorties against Japanese forces as a Hawker Hurricane fighter pilot.