World War I Medal of Honor Recipient. He received the award for his actions as a corporal in the 344th Battalion Tank Corps, US Army, on September 26, 1918, west of Varennes-en-Argonne, France at the start of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive (or Battle of the Argonne Forest) near the end of World War I. After the US entered World War I in April 1917, he joined the US Army as a private and was sent to the Western Front in France. Prior to the war, he had studied landscape architecture at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and performed as a stage actor. Following the war, he resumed his acting career and in 1926 he became the resident landscaping architect for Conde Nast Publications and later worked in the Vogue magazine Pattern Department. In 1936 he obtained employment with the Federal Housing Administration in Washington DC and ten years later opened a landscaping business there, running it until his retirement 1975. He died at the age of 87. His Medal of Honor citation reads: "During an operation against enemy machinegun nests west of Varennes, Cpl. Call was in a tank with an officer when half of the turret was knocked off by a direct artillery hit. Choked by gas from the high-explosive shell, he left the tank and took cover in a shellhole 30 yards away. Seeing that the officer did not follow, and thinking that he might be alive, Cpl. Call returned to the tank under intense machinegun and shell fire and carried the officer over a mile under machinegun and sniper fire to safety." His ashes were scattered in a flower garden in Bethesda, Maryland.
World War I Medal of Honor Recipient. He received the award for his actions as a corporal in the 344th Battalion Tank Corps, US Army, on September 26, 1918, west of Varennes-en-Argonne, France at the start of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive (or Battle of the Argonne Forest) near the end of World War I. After the US entered World War I in April 1917, he joined the US Army as a private and was sent to the Western Front in France. Prior to the war, he had studied landscape architecture at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and performed as a stage actor. Following the war, he resumed his acting career and in 1926 he became the resident landscaping architect for Conde Nast Publications and later worked in the Vogue magazine Pattern Department. In 1936 he obtained employment with the Federal Housing Administration in Washington DC and ten years later opened a landscaping business there, running it until his retirement 1975. He died at the age of 87. His Medal of Honor citation reads: "During an operation against enemy machinegun nests west of Varennes, Cpl. Call was in a tank with an officer when half of the turret was knocked off by a direct artillery hit. Choked by gas from the high-explosive shell, he left the tank and took cover in a shellhole 30 yards away. Seeing that the officer did not follow, and thinking that he might be alive, Cpl. Call returned to the tank under intense machinegun and shell fire and carried the officer over a mile under machinegun and sniper fire to safety." His ashes were scattered in a flower garden in Bethesda, Maryland.
Bio by: William Bjornstad
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