Donald Marshall Call

Corporal, U.S. Army

Medal of Honor Recipient

World War I

Corporal Donald Marshall Call (29 November 1896 - 19 March 1984) was a U.S. Army soldier who received the U.S. military's highest award for valor, the Medal of Honor, for his heroic actions during World War I.

Donald Marshall Call was born on 29 November 1896 in Larchmont, NY. He studied landscape architecture at Harvard, but pursued a stage acting career prior to the U.S. declaration of war on Germany in the spring of 1917.

In June 1917, Army Private Call sailed to Europe, after joining the New York City Club's Volunteer Ambulance Section. His unit was attached to the French 37th Division north of Verdun. "At this time things were pretty lively at Verdun and the roads were under fire practically all of the time. Every member of the ambulance section worked day and night for five weeks," he wrote later.

Call's unit merged with the American Ambulance Service in early 1918, at which time he volunteered to join the new Tank Corps. It was while he was serving with the Tank Corps that he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism.

Medal of Honor

Rank and organization: Corporal, U.S. Army, 344th Battalion, Tank Corps.

Place and date: Near Varennes, France, 26 September 1918.

Citation: 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.

Post-Military Life

After returning to the U.S., Call resumed his acting career, which he continued until 1926, when he became the resident landscape architect for Condé Nast Publications. Later he headed the Vogue magazine Pattern Department.

In 1936 Call accepted a position with the new Federal Housing Administration (FHA) in Washington, DC. He remained in the Washington area after World War II, opening a landscaping business in 1946. He operated that firm for thirty years, retiring in 1975. 

Death and Burial

Corporal Donald Marshall Call died on 19 March 1984. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered in a flower garden in Bethesda, MD.