John Thomas Hall

Rank: Private First Class, U.S. Army

Serial: 11107566

Unit: 463rd Parachute Field Artillery Battalion, 101st Airborne Division

Entered service from: New Jersey

Died: December 25, 1944

Awards: Purple Heart

Buried: Beverly National Cemetery, Plot F O 1790E, Beverly, New Jersey

Private First Class John Thomas Hall, 22, of 331 Woodland Avenue, Haddonfield, New Jersey, was killed in action on December 25, 1944, while serving with an airborne unit in the European Theater. Hall was the son of Joseph M. and Edith A. Hall. His father was the director of the Camden County Vocational and Technical School, on Browning Road in Pennsauken. As a youth he was an active member of Boy Scout Troop No. 112 in Collingswood, and was a member of the Haddonfield Presbyterian Church. A 1942 graduate of Haddonfield High School, where he was on the football, baseball, and swimming teams, John Hall attended classes at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he participated in football and lacrosse.

John T. Hall enlisted in the Army Reserve in December of 1942, and was called to active duty April 4, 1943. After basic training, Private Hall served on the Presidential Honor Guard at Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Hyde Park, New York residence, before his request for a transfer to a paratroops unit was granted. After receiving training at Fort Benning, Georgia and at Camp McCall, North Carolina, he went overseas as a member of the 101st Airborne in May 1944, and parachuted into France on D-Day.

John Thomas Hall was killed in action near Bastogne, Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge, on Christmas Day, December 25, 1944.