Forgotten Hero

Oregon Military History: Warren C. Gill, U.S. Coast Guard

By C. Douglas Kroll, Ph.D.

Born in 1912, Warren Calavan Gill grew up in Lebanon, Oregon, in farm country not far from the state capital of Salem. Gill longed to go to sea and signed on with a ship in Seattle during his junior year of high school. He returned home to graduate and earn a law degree from the University of Oregon, moving to take a position in an admiralty law firm.

On Dec. 7, 1941, a day that lived in infamy for the nation, Gill’s fate too was changed. For on that date he happened to attend a concert in New York where his soon-to-be future wife, Vadne Scott, was performing. They married within the next month. A few days after their wedding, Gill enlisted, receiving an ensign’s commission in the Coast Guard Reserve.

By August 1942 Gill had become an Assistant Beach Officer, helping direct amphibious landings at Morocco. Once North Africa was captured and Allied planners shifted their focus to Italy in July 1943, Ensign Gill was placed in command of a small craft flotilla landing elements of General George Patton’s Seventh Army on the island of Sicily.

During the landing, not a single man was lost in Gill’s flotilla. For his leadership, Gill received the Legion of Merit Medal and promotion to lieutenant (junior grade).

Gill next saw combat in midSeptember 1943 when he took part in the invasion of Italy’s western coast. While the biggest challenge faced by the landing at Sicily had been an inconveniently timed storm, the landing at Salerno would be far different.

Allied troops expected to meet only light resistance since Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had been deposed and placed under arrest, and the new Italian leadership had signed an armistice with the Allies the day before the landings.

Unknown to Allied forces, the Germans had rushed large numbers of battle-hardened troops to Italy to prevent its fall. The Germans installed sound monitoring devices miles offshore and had their artillery ranged for amphibious vessels. As the invasion ships approached in the pre-dawn darkness, German artillery opened up.

Gill’s landing craft was waiting to lead the first wave to the beaches when the first salvo hit his boat, the LST 357. An 88mm shell sent shrapnel tearing through Gill and his assistant. Several more crew-members and 25 soldiers were wounded by the same shell hit. Although severely injured and fighting for breath, Gill remained at his post and oversaw the landing of his craft on the beach.

After the deadly explosion, the medical officer aboard the LST gave Gill an immediate blood transfusion. Gill refused to take morphine or be transported away until he received word that the boats had beached successfully and the Germans were falling back. He would later be awarded the Purple Heart for the wounds he sustained at Salerno.

Gill spent the next three months in a British hospital in the North African desert before transferring to an American hospital in Algiers. While hospitalized, he was awarded the Navy Cross Medal, the Navy’s second highest decoration for valor in combat, becoming one of only six Coast Guardsmen to be awarded the Navy Cross during the war.

During a 20-month stint at the Navy Hospital in Long Beach, California, Gill became a prominent figure in the war bond campaign in Southern California. The student newspaper at the University of Southern California heralded his presence as the guest of honor at a war bonds rally, “Lt. Warren C. Gill, known as the Coast Guard’s most decorated man, will appear today.”

Despite multiple surgeries, doctors were unable to remove all of the shrapnel in Gill’s upper body. Gill returned home to Lebanon upon his discharge in 1945 and was medically retired from the Coast Guard the next year. Since the Secretary of the Navy had commended him for performance of duty in combat, Gill received the rank of lieutenant commander.

Back home, Gill practiced law and cultivated a political career. From 1949 to 1957 he served as a state representative and then state senator, becoming the Republican leader of the State Senate in his final term. In 1958, he ran for the gubernatorial nomination of the Republican Party but was narrowly defeated by the up-and-coming Secretary of State Mark Hatfield, who went on to serve nearly 10 years as governor and 30 years as a U.S. Senator.

Gill retired from politics to devote his later years to his hometown of Lebanon, holding the office of Lebanon City Attorney from 1961 until his death. His personal interests returned to the water where he founded Lebanon Boat Works, built boats and joined the Lebanon Outboard Racing Association. Gill became an avid racer himself, building three hydroplanes named after his wife Vadne.

In 1981, Gill was chosen as the Linn County (Oregon) “Veteran of the Year.” When he learned of the recognition, he called it “my greatest honor” because his fellow veterans had selected him.

Warren Gill died in October 1987 at the age of 75 while making a series of take-offs and landings in an ultralight “autogyro” aircraft he had built himself. His valor in combat during World II and his service to his state and community truly made him a great Coast Guard combat hero and honorable citizen of the State of Oregon.