PFC. George Mills Hill Jr., WWII/Korea: Survived Okinawa only to fall in Korea

U.S. Marines move forward against Chinese troops through mud from an unexpected thaw in South Korea in late winter 1951 in this otherwise undated photo which is believed to have been taken during Operation Killer in which Pfc. Griswold Mills ("M") Hill Jr. died on March 1, 1951. (Photo courtesy U.S. Marine Corps, Official Marine Corps Photo A6853)

Griswold Mills (“M”) Hill Jr., the son of an Army officer, ran track and played tennis at Irvington High School before graduating with the Class of 1944. But it was on the battlefield that “M,” as he liked to be called, distinguished himself for the ages.

Hill, born Nov. 27, 1926, was an only child who lived with his parents, father Griswold Mills Hill Sr., a U.S. Army veteran of World War I, a textiles purchasing agent and a City College of New York instructor, and mother Isabel (Brogan) Hill.

The family lived at 615 W. 142nd St. in Harlem between Riverside Drive and the CCNY campus during M’s childhood, then briefly in a rented house in Barney Park in the late 1930s before moving to Westfield, N.J., shortly before 1940. A brief sojourn during World War II would see the family move to Rome, N.Y. where now-Major G.M. Hill Sr. was stationed at the Rome Army Air Depot, chief of the Supply Division of its Reparable Property Branch, responsible for the restoration of damaged war equipment.

Griswold Mills ("M") Hill Jr. is
shown in his Class of 1944
Irvington High School graduation
photo taken from the Irvington
Gazette newspaper.

Little is mentioned in the local Irvington newspaper of the family’s time in Irvington except that the Hills resided in the one-time residence of renowned national labor and social work expert Courtenay Dinwiddie on what was then known as Brookside Avenue in Barney Park, which ran south and west from the southern end of South Eckar Street, west past South Dutcher Street to southernmost South Cottenet Street.

It would appear that young M must have lived with an unspecified relation or friend of the family while attending Irvington High from September 1940 to June 1944 since his parents don’t appear to have lived in the village at all during that period. We know that he graduated from Irvington High and promptly moved to the Rome, N.Y., base to live with his parents and work a summer job on the base.

Hill was just a little less than a month shy of his 18th birthday when he enlisted in the Marines on Oct. 30, 1944 and was assigned to basic training at Parris Island, S.C. From there is it believed he was sent to Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif., near San Diego and finally to the Pacific theatre with the Marines’ 1st Infantry Division where he took part in the 82-day Battle of Okinawa, April 1-June 22, 1945.

He quite likely would have been assigned with the rest of the 1st Division to take part in Operation Downfall, the planned Allied invasion of the Japanese homeland scheduled to begin in November 1945. That attack was canceled after the Empire of Japan surrendered in the aftermath of August’s Nagasaki and Hiroshima nuclear attacks.

He went on to serve in Occupied Japan after Sept. 2, 1945.

Hill, who had enlisted for a four-year stint in 1944, was discharged from active duty on Aug. 21, 1946 but remained on active reserve, a status which would eventually cost him his life.

After completing his active duty requirements, Hill enrolled at Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica and later transferred to the Syracuse University School of Business Administration, from which he graduated in 1949. He remained in upstate New York, getting a job in March 1950 in the advertising department of the Syracuse Post-Standard newspaper.

It wasn’t long before the Marine Corps came calling again. Private first class Hill was called to active duty on August 31, 1950, with the 10th Marine Tank Battalion, a little more than a month after communist forces from northern Korea invaded the southern half of the Korean Peninsula on June 25, 1950. Hll arrived in Korea on Oct. 25, 1950 and he entered combat on Nov. 1, 1950 with the Marine Corps’ 1st Division as part of the United Nations Command’s X Corps force led by the United States.

Six weeks before Hill’s arrival in Korea, the 1st Marines had taken part in the brilliant Inchon amphibious assault devised by Gen. Douglas MacArthur on Sept. 15, 1950 that had severed communist supply lines, liberated Seoul and sent North Korean and Communist Chinese forces reeling back to the north.

A column of troops and armor of the 1st Marine Division move through communist Chinese lines during the United Nations Command's X Corps' successful breakout and retreat from the Chosin Reservoir in December 1950 in North Korea. The Marines were besieged when the Chinese, outnumbering them 4-to-1, encircled them and X Corps on November 27, 1950. They were able to make it to the port of Hungnam and escape by sea to the Pusan perimeter in southeastern-most South Korea. (Photo by Corporal Peter McDonald, U.S. Marine Corps)

That was the good news. The bad? The weather was about to take a turn to the arctic and Hill and the 1st were about to face an onslaught of Chinese troops as the retreating North Korean and Chinese forces they were chasing led them to the fateful Chosin Reservoir, a man-made lake about 60 miles south of the Chinese-North Korean frontier.

The 1st Division, part of the 30,000-man X Corps of the United Nations Command, was around the Chosin Reservoir on Nov. 27, 1950 when 120,000 Chinese soldiers poured across the border and surrounded them. Being outnumbered 4-to-1 was bad enough, but an unseasonably cold weather system had descended on the region, dropping nighttime temperatures to as low as minus-36 Fahrenheit. The cold caused rifles and firearms to misfire, drained batteries disrupting radio transmissions and stalling tanks and other military vehicles, not to mention inflicting frostbite and other cold-related casualties.

The battle lasted 17 days and was brutal, but the X Corps and 1st Division were able to break out of the encirclement and make it east to the port of Hungnam, 78 miles away via the only road available for the fighting retreat. The 1st Division was evacuated by the Navy from the port of Hungnam, marking the UN Command’s last presence in North Korea for the duration of the three-year conflict.

Pfc. Griswold Mills Hill Jr. is shown
in uniform in the photo that appeared
with his 1951 newspaper obituary.

He was not happy with his situation in Korea. In his obituary, the Oswego (N.Y.) Palladium Times newspaper on March 7, 1951 reported:

“Hill sent back many graphic accounts of the rigors of war to friends in Syracuse. Feeling the bitterness of the infantryman, he said in one letter that in his opinion, the Korean war ‘is a useless waste of time and life, to wait to be trampled beneath Chinese boots. There is no doubt,’ he wrote, ‘that our present strength is insufficient against the Chinese hordes. Personally, I hope Korea is soon evacuated by all hands’.”

In his own case, Pfc. Hill’s prognostication about the Chinese was on target. And Hill’s war was not over.

British video look at Operation Killer

The 1st Division rooted out North Korean infiltrators in South Korea in early 1951 and also fought in the mountains of east-central South Korea. That mountain action, Feb. 20-March 6, was part of the UN Command’s second major offensive of the war — under U.S. Gen. Matthew Ridgway — dubbed “Operation Killer” by Ridgway.  It was during Operation Killer that Pfc. Hill was killed in action on March 1, 1951. The exact location of his death was not released.

Hill’s parents were told of his death in a message from the Department of Defense within a week of his death. “M” was 24 years old and had never married, never had children and became the second member of the Irvington High Class of 1944 who fought in World War II to die during his service time. Pvt. Peter R. Robertson of North Eckar Street, who was lost during a flight over the Pacific to Japan in 1946 was the other.

U.S. Marine Corps Pfc. Griswold Mills Hill Jr. was interred
 with full military honors on Sept. 27, 1951 at Arlington
National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., near the grave of his father,
U.S. Army Major Griswold M. Hill Sr., and his mother Isabel.
He was killed in action almost seven months earlier
on the Korean peninsula. (Photo courtesy Arlington
National Cemetery)

Pfc. Hill’s remains were returned to the U.S. in September 1951 and he was interred with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery on Sept. 27, 1951. His father and mother are buried at Arlington next to him.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Pfc. Hill is not one of the 16 Irvington soldiers on the Veterans Memorial Monument on Main Street at Aqueduct Lane listed as killed in action in World War II. But several others who are noted as having been killed in action in that war actually died while in service, but outside the Dec. 7, 1941-Sept. 2, 1945 window of the actual war. The original monument was supposed to include those who were "killed in action" or who "died in service." 

One Irvington soldier, Marine Corps Staff Sergeant James Peter Kelley served in both World War II and Korea and died after a fall in his Marine barracks in Okinawa in 1958, well after both wars had ended, but while he was still in the service. He is listed as "killed in action" under World War II veterans on the Main Street monument.

Hill's classmate, Peter Robertson also died outside the war window but was still in the service and is only noted as having served in World War II on the monument, which appears to be an unfortunate error.

This blog was originally intended to profile all 16 of the World War II Irvington veterans who died in service. Since Pfc. Hill served in World War II and was still in service when killed in Korea, his profile is included in this blog. So, too, is Pvt. Peter Robinson, bringing to 18, not 16, the total who died in service and served in World War II, or the World War II era.

Lt. Col. George Washington Beavers, who re-enlisted in the Army anticipating service in World War II but died of a heart attack during training in North Carolina two weeks before Pearl Harbor is also included on the monument, a WWII-era veteran who gave his life for his country.

Links to similar personal stories about Irvington heroes who gave their lives for their country*

WORLD WAR II

◼ Pfc. Cuthbert Powell Sinkking: Class of '42 gave 3 of its own to the ages

◼ Sgt. Arnold J. Meszaros: Among first to land on Utah Beach

◼ 2LT. Robert R. Chalot, Jr.: Son of French WWI pilot dies in dad's homeland

◼ Pfc. John Joseph (Joe) Gilchrist: Died after capture of Saint-Lo

◼ Lt. (j.g.) George Eddison Haines: Lost at sea, awarded Silver Star

◼ Pfc. Joseph Thomas Costello: Teen lost life in Battle of Mindanao

◼ MSgt. James Peter Kelley: Survived WW II and Korea; died in fall

◼ S1 Archibald Ronald: Lost on next-to-last Navy ship sunk by U-boat

◼ TSgt. Raffaele R. (Ralph) Reale: A hero's life ended on East Sunnyside Lane

◼ Sgt. Robert F. Morrison: Took fight to the enemy, fell in Alsace

◼ Lt. Col. George W. Beavers Jr.: Re-upped as private; died on war's eve

◼ F2 Claude L. Bronnes: Went down with the Atlanta at Guadalcanal

◼ MMLC William James Downey: Died aboard ship off West Coast

◼ Pvt. Alick Main Ian: Died taking Aachen, first German city to fall in WWII

◼ Pfc. George Mills Hill Jr.: Survived Okinawa, only to fall in South Korea

◼ Pvt. Peter R. Robinson: Lost to shadows of time over Pacific, answers never found

◼  Pfc. Matthew A. Smith: Felled by friendly fire in training accident

WORLD WAR I

◼ Profiles of Philip McGovern, Louis Kindervatter, George Hazlett, Frank Farrell and John Kelly Jr. who gave their lives in the Great War

* World War II deaths include soldiers who enlisted during the World War II era and died while still in uniform, either killed in combat, or died of accidental or other causes. Two of the World War II fallen served in both World War II and the Korean Conflict and are listed under World War II. One of those died in an accidental fall after surviving both wars, the other was killed in action in Korea after surviving World War II.World War I deaths also include battlefield deaths and accidental or illness-related deaths by service members still in uniform at the time of their passing.