John William Hall

John William Hall (June 18, 1916 — Sept. 16, 1982) was a United States Army officer in World War II. As a company commander untested in battle, his “extraordinary heroism” on Dec. 18, 1944, within the first 72 hours of the Battle of the Bulge, earned him the Distinguished Service Cross and the Purple Heart. He also would be awarded the Bronze Star for heroic action.Citation letter 200.6-HALL, JOHN W., July 21, 1945, “Award of Bronze Star medal”; by Major General John W. Leonard, U.S. Army, Commanding against Nazi forces in Germany on March 14, 1945.
== Early years and National Guard rifle championship ==
John William Hall was born in Durant, Oklahoma, one of eight children of Arnold Muldrew Hall and Lucy Lee Hall. As a young man his father, Arnold Hall, fled to Oklahoma with his brother whom he had freed from a Mississippi jail while awaiting trial for shooting a law officer. Durant was part of the Oklahoma territory in the Choctaw Nation and outside the jurisdiction of the United States. A cotton broker and speculator, Arnold Hall was ruined by the Crash of 1929. When John’s mother died two-and-a-half years later at the age of 49, his father moved to Lubbock, Texas. He left John, 16, to care for the Durant homestead and John’s nine-year-old sister Lucille.
John Hall joined the Oklahoma National Guard underage to provide income and get access to government training rifles and ammunition to practice marksmanship. At the age of 22, he won the Guard’s state shooting championship and its 18k gold medal. It was 1939, the year Adolf Hitler invaded Poland and launched World War II.
==== In World War II ====
Hall left the Oklahoma National Guard after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He enrolled in the U.S. Army Officer Candidate School at Ft. Benning, Gerogia, graduating as a Second Lieutenant on July 15, 1942Change of Station Orders for U.S. Army Officer Candidate School graduates, dated July 15, 1942, Ft. Benning, Georgia, by order of Colonel Fulton and ordered to active duty. Hall trained as an infantry and armored tank commander at Ft. Polk (Louisiana), Camp Ibis (link: Camp Ibis|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Ibis ), and Ft. Riley (Kansas), headquarters of Ninth Armored DivisionWikipedia, 9th Armored Division (United States), [add link: 9th Armored Division (United States)|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9th_Armored_Division_(United_States). The division, with Hall now a captain, shipped from New York harbor for England late in August 1944 on the luxury liner Queen Mary converted to a troopship. Assigned to the Ninth Armored Division’s 60th Armored Infantry Battalion, Hall commanded the battalion’s Headquarters and Headquarters Company. The battalion’s commander of Charlie Company and a colleague of Hall’s was Captain Roger Lincoln Shinn, who would become a renowned ethicist at Union Theological Seminary add link: Union Theological Seminary (New York City)|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Theological_Seminary_(New_York_City) ) in New York. At the onset of the Battle of the Bulge, Shinn witnessed Hall’s action on December 17 and on December 18 when Task Force Hall was dispatched to rescue American companies surrounded by the German Wehrmacht. Hall would be wounded leading his task force, but seized an assault gun and cleared the enemy. Shinn noted Hall in his bookShinn, Roger Lincoln, Wars and Rumors of Wars, Abington Press, 1972, ISBN 0-687-44017-3, Library of Congress Catalogue Number: 70-185550, pp. 28, 37 Wars and Rumors of Wars which won The Abingdon Award. As Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of
Social Ethics Shinn also cited Hall’s ethics in battle to his classes at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University (add link: Columbia University|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University )Shinn interview with Richard Hall, Hall’s son, at the University of North Carolina, 1981
==== World War II Citations ====
=====Distinguished Service Cross =====
Hall was the only soldier in the Ninth Armored Division in World War II to receive the DSCColumbia University Libraries: Roger L. Shinn Papers, 1920-2010 https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/11447037?counter=1; Shinn interview with Richard Hall, John William Hall's son, at the University of North Carolina, 1981. It was awarded for “extraordinary heroism against the enemy on 18 December 1944, in Luxembourg. Although dazed by the concussion of of a German rocket which knocked him from the top of a tank, Capt. Hall single-handedly assaulted the rocket position and killed the gunner. As the enemy machine guns opened fire, he directed assault gunfire which destroyed one gun and personally led a charge upon the other, eliminating the entire gun crew. Though painfully wounded by an enemy grenade, he returned to an assault gun, manned the weapon, and placed devastating fire upon numerous enemy positions, clearing the entire area and permitting the passage of a larger armored task force.”Hodges, Courtney H., Lieutenant General, U.S. Army, Commanding, First United States Army, Citation: Award of Distinguished Service Cross to Captain John W. Hall, undated
Maj. Gen. John W. Leonard, commanding general of the U.S. Army’s Ninth Armored Division presented the medal to Hall in a ceremony after the war.Op Cit, Lubbock (TX) Avalance-Journal, Sunday, July 8, 1945)
=====Bronze Star =====
Awarded “for heroic action in connection with military operations against the enemy on 14 March 1945 in Germany….Under intense artillery and small arms fire, Captain Hall took his machine gun section to the support of a rifle company, which was bearing the brunt of the onslaught. Setting up his machine guns under fire and directing the fire with utter disregard for his own life, Captain Hall was instrumental in repulsing the attack. The bold and timely action of Captain Hall was an inspiration to the men about him and reflects great credit on himself and the military service.”
=====Purple Heart' =====
=====American Campaign Medal =====
==== Later Life ====
Unsuccessful at farming in Bentonville and Gravette, Arkansas after the war, Hall took a position at the Neosho (MO) Daily News and later the Spencer (IA) Daily Reporter. He with his wife Clyrene started their own advertising newspaper in 1963 in northwest Iowa and became successful in business. He helped organize reunions of the 60th Armored Infantry Battalion. John Hall died in Spencer, Iowa in 1982.