George Lyle Hall
| NAME: George Lyle Hall | NICKNAME: Lyle / Flatfoot | SERVICE NUMBER: 464134 | |||||
HOME OF RECORD: | NEXT OF KIN: Father, Mr. John Hall (of Fallentimber, PA) | ||||||
| DATE OF BIRTH: 6/14/1924 | SERVICE DATES: 10/6/1942 – 11/6/1945 | DATE OF DEATH: 10/27/1952 | |||||
| CAMPAIGN | UNIT | MOS | RATE | RESULT | |||
| Roi-Namur | A/1/24 | 604 | PFC | ||||
| Saipan | A/1/24 | 521 | PFC | ||||
| Tinian | A/1/24 | 521 | PFC | ||||
| Iwo Jima | Rear Echelon | Rear Echelon | Rear Echelon | ||||
| INDIVIDUAL DECORATIONS: — | LAST KNOWN RANK: Corporal | ||||||
George Lyle Hall was born in Fallentimber, Pennsylvania on 14 June 1924. He was right in the middle of a very large family headed by John “Jack” Patterson and Edna Rickard Hall – the sixth of ten children who lived to adulthood. Edna had several multiple pregnancies, but sadly each one went hand in hand with tragedy. The oldest Hall children, Dorothy and Evelyn, were two surviving triplets. James and Bernard were born a year after Lyle, but James died in infancy. And the final twins, Robert and Norman, were born prematurely in 1932 and lived only a few days. The last calamity claimed Edna’s life, as well; she died of post-partum shock on 28 June 1932 at the age of thirty-four. [1]
Jack Hall was a foreman at a coal mine and probably could have secured employment for his sons in their native Cambria County. However, several of the Hall children decided their fortunes lay to the north, in New York State. John, Margaret, Margie, Lyle, and Bernard all moved to Corning in the late 1930s to early 1940s. Lyle arrived in 1941; he and Evelyn took up residence at 78 Bridge Street near the Chemung River. Every day, he walked a few blocks to the Corning Glass Works to his job in the Apparatus Department. The Halls were familiar faces around the Works; John and Bernard worked there, too, and in 1942 Margie married Harold Carpenter, a company truck driver. [2] All in all, the younger generation of Halls were quite well-established in the Corning community
Lyle registered for Selective Service on 30 June 1942, shortly after his nineteenth birthday. For the next few months, he kept up his job at the Glass Works and waited to be called up. By the fall, however, he made up his mind to volunteer. On 6 October 1942, Lyle Hall – accompanied by his brother-in-law Harold Carpenter – walked through the doors of the post office in Elmira, New York, and asked to speak to the Marine recruiter. Both young men were accepted, sworn in, and shortly on their way to Parris Island. [3]
Lyle and Harold had their training cut short. On 10 December 1942, most of their recruit platoon arrived at New River, North Carolina to form the nucleus of Company A, First Separate Battalion (Reinforced). Here, Lyle was informed that he would train as a machine gunner in the company weapons platoon. He moved into a pasteboard hut with a dozen other men, met his platoon leader (an equally inexperienced second lieutenant named Philip E. Wood, Jr.) and got to know the others in First Squad: Jeff Jowers, Lester Kincaid, Peter Markovitch, George Smith, Amedeo Izzo, David Spohn, and Norman Reber. At New River, they learned to operate in cohesive units at the squad, platoon, and company level, and also became familiar with the complicated weapons they would carry in combat.
In early March of 1943, the battalion boarded trains and traveled to California, arriving at Camp Pendleton near San Diego. Their designation was changed to the First Battalion, 24th Marines, and they began a program of more intensive training at the battalion level. This included long, punishing hikes across the California mountain ranges, marches to tent camps many miles from barracks, and constant competitions between companies to see whose men could endure the strain. Captain Irving Schechter pushed his men particularly hard, earning them the nickname “Rugged Able Company.” Not everyone could take the pressure. Towards the end of May, Harold Carpenter went on liberty and didn’t come back for several days. Schechter threw the book at him, and Private Carpenter was transferred out of the company.[4]
The marches were tough on the strongest of men, but for Lyle Hall they were pure torture. He began to complain of excruciating pain in his feet and legs. His buddies teased him at first, but grew sympathetic when they saw how much he struggled. “He didn’t just have flat feet,” commented squadmate George Smith. “I think his arches were lower than the rest of his feet. We used to go to a training area, five miles out and five miles back, every day. He had a terrible time.” [5] The problem worsened as time went on – “[Hall] has bad flat feet and can’t march,” noted Lieutenant Wood in a letter to his mother – and, inevitably, the nickname “Flatfoot” stuck. However, Lyle managed to carry on and keep up with his buddies – even during the intensive field training at Tent Camp #3.
In January 1944, PFC Lyle Hall deployed overseas with his company. He saw action in the Marshall Islands at the battle of Roi-Namur in February, and then in the Mariana Islands on Saipan and Tinian from June to August. Between campaigns, his company was based at Camp Maui in the Territory of Hawaii.
Hall managed to survive three bloody battles without a scratch. However, his feet continued to cause terrible pain – to the point where they could be a liability in combat. Although he manned a machine gun on Namur, it seems that his job changed over the summer of 1944. “In the last couple of operations, they [officers] kept him back and out of it,” recalled George Smith.[6] Indeed, battalion muster rolls record a change of Lyle’s military specialty from “604” (machine gunner) to “521” (basic) – which may indicate that he was given a role at company headquarters to take some of the strain off his feet. (A photo taken towards the end of the war shows him with a group of Company HQ personnel.)
In the end, it appears that Lyle was kept with the rear echelon at Camp Maui when the company sailed off to fight their final battle on Iwo Jima. Having proven his mettle on three battlefields, Lyle was probably quite content with this decision. Along with a small administrative staff, he kept the company’s living quarters in running order until the survivors returned in late March of 1945.
On 24 May 1945, Lyle received a long-awaited promotion to corporal. He spent six final weeks with Company A before receiving a transfer to the Marine Garrison Forces at Pearl Harbor. This light duty was something of a reward for combat veterans – fewer responsibilities, more opportunities for liberty, and best of all, no further expectations of combat. Lyle was at Pearl Harbor when the war ended, and with nearly three years in the service plus three campaigns under his belt, he was eligible for demobilization. He rejoined Company A for one final voyage on 2 October 1945, returning to the United States as a member of the same unit with which he’d trained and fought for so many months. Lyle received his honorable discharge on 6 November 1945 and became a private citizen once again.
Lyle Hall returned to Corning and moved in with his brother, John, at 190 Park Avenue while he contemplated his next move. His plans, he told a reporter for the Corning Evening Leader, were “indefinite” – but soon he was back at the Glass Works, attempting to pick up a life put on pause.
In 1946, Lyle married Delores Pesci; the couple welcomed a son, David, three years later.
Tragically, George Lyle Hall did not live to see his son grow up. In October 1952, he was stricken with polio; paralysis quickly set in, and he was rushed to the hospital. Within two days, Hall was dead. He was just 28 years old.
Hall is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Elmira, New York.
[1] A detailed and well-documented account of the family may be found in the George Rickard family tree created on Ancestry.com by user “masonsnber.”
[2] “Marriages: Hall-Carpenter,” The Evening Leader (Corning, NY) 25 May 1942.
[3] “6 New Marines at Parris Island,” The Evening Leader (Corning, NY) 20 October 1942.
[4] Muster roll, Company A, First Battalion, 24th Marines, May & June 1943. Harold Carpenter spent the war driving a truck with a depot company in the Russell Islands – quite fitting, given his civilian occupation.
[5] George A. Smith, interview with the author, 2009.
[6] Ibid.
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