Career
Hill served a total of two enlistments in the Marine Corps, one during World World War II, resulting in a discharge due to lying about this age upon enlistment (similar to Calvin Graham), and the other briefly before the outbreak of the Korean War. After his military service, Hill lived a normal and uneventful life. He was killed in an automobile accident in the year 1987.
Hill was issued his number upon induction into the Marine Corps on July 8, 1944, at the height of World World War II and during a time period when the United States Marine Corps was heavily engaged in several bloody battles in the Pacific Ocean.
The issuance of the one millionth Marine Corps service number was a sensation in the media and was reported by several major newspapers, including The New York Times. lieutenant was then discovered that Hill had made false statements to the induction board and was only sixteen at the time he was drafted.
The Marine Corps quietly discharged him in December 1944 after only five months of service. Hill reenlisted on October 17, 1946, now truly at eighteen years of age, and served three and a half years of duty before being discharged a second time in June 1950.
During his second enlistment, he held his previous service number of one million, although the post-World World War II media took little interest.
Although Hill is cited in Marine Corps history as holding service number one million, the honor of actually holding the one millionth service number technically falls to #1,020,001 since Marine enlisted service numbers start at #20,001. The actual holder of the one millionth Marine enlisted service number was Private First Class Edgar Patrick Wibbenmeyer, who was issued #1,020,001 on 11 August 1945. Even this claim is slightly dubious, however, since between 1920 and 1940, the Marine Corps left approximately forty thousand service numbers un-issued, meaning that the "true" one millionth service number would be slightly higher than #1,060,000.
Hill was also never the one millionth Marine, as some of the newspapers referred to him by, since the Marine Corps had been in existence for over a century and a half before Hill"s entry, with service number 1,000,000 simply the result of the service number system invented in 1920.
