From Dartmouth to France
Richard Nelville Hall, less than 21 years old when killed, was the youngest son of Dr. and Mrs. Louis P. Hall, of Ann Arbor, Michigan. In June, 1915, he was a senior at Dartmouth College and with other members of that class he enlisted with the American Ambulance Corps for a period of three months, and was assigned to Section Three. When his term was up there was such urgent need of men and the new enlistments were so few that Dick volunteered to remain in service until he could be spared more easily. About that time Louis P. Hall, Jr., his next older brother, enlisted and surprised Dick by appearing in the yard of the American Ambulance Corps in Paris. Dick had just driven in from the firing line. The meeting can be appreciated only by those who know what a bond of affectionate devotion united the brothers, and which is expressed in the foregoing quotation from Louis’ letter to his parents dated Decoration Day, 1916.
But even when recruits came the work of the Ambulance Corps was such that the need of men was increased, and Dick continued to drive his ambulance, postponing a little further his expected return home. There was terribly fierce fighting in the Vosges in that period, it will be remembered, and the demands upon the ambulance driver were almost incessant, the peril of it constant, gathering up the wounded from the battle front and hurrying them to a place of safety. For five months he had made those hazardous trips from battle front to safety station, unhesitatingly, devoted, inspired by the consciousness that he was engaged in saving, not in destroying life, his work not for France alone but for humanity.
Lovering Hill, the chief of the section, says of him: “I have never known any one who always showed so much dévouement in his work. He was the steadiest of all, and the most reliable. He never slacked up in times when work was dull, when day in and day out was the same grinding monotony; and in times of activity after many hours without rest or sleep, he was always cheerful and stuck to the work with a tenacity which was astounding. His frankness and straightforwardness, his cheerfulness and good nature, his kindness—for he was always the first to help his comrades—made him beloved by all of us, and by most of the French with whom he came in touch, who admired the wholehearted way in which he worked. In the technical matter of the upkeep of his car he was my special delight, for both his car and his equipment were always in perfect order.”
The incidents of the days preceding the death of Hall have been indicated briefly in a tribute written soon after the fatality. There had been something of a respite from fighting, but on December 21 “the mountains spoke” and all the cars rolled upwards toward the post of Hartmanns-Weilerkopf—taken and retaken a score of times, a bare, brown, blunt shell-ploughed top where before the forest stood—up, elbowing and tacking their way through battalions of men and beasts. From one mountain slope to another roared all the lungs of war. For five days and five nights, scraps of days—the shortest of the year—nights interminable—the air was shredded with shrieking shells—intermittent lulls for slaughtering after the bombardment—then again the roar of the counter-attack.