William G. Hills

William Giles Hills was born on June 26, 1841, in Conewango, Cattaraugus County, New York. When the American Civil War began, he was a young man from western New York who soon entered military service in support of the Union. On October 1, 1861, Hills enlisted at East Randolph, New York, for a three-year term of service. Six days later, on October 7, he was mustered into Company E of the 9th New York Cavalry as a Private.

The 9th New York Cavalry became an active mounted regiment of the Union Army and served in a demanding series of operations in the Eastern Theater. Cavalry soldiers were required to perform a wide range of duties, including reconnaissance, screening troop movements, protecting lines of communication, pursuing enemy forces, conducting raids, and fighting both mounted and dismounted. Hills remained a Private during his verified military service, and no higher rank is confirmed in the surviving authoritative record.

By 1864, the 9th New York Cavalry was involved in major cavalry operations in Virginia, including the Shenandoah Valley campaigns. These campaigns placed Union cavalry in frequent contact with Confederate mounted forces and infantry while Federal commanders attempted to destroy Confederate military strength in the Valley and deny the region’s resources to the Confederate war effort. The rapid movement of cavalry units often produced sudden, dangerous encounters in which individual soldiers had little time to consider their own safety.

William Hills performed the action for which he would become nationally recognized on September 26, 1864, near the North Fork of the Shenandoah River in Virginia. The incident occurred during operations in which Union cavalry had encountered Confederate forces and driven enemy cavalry toward the river. Across the North Fork, Confederate infantry belonging to Lieutenant General Jubal Early’s army occupied positions that placed the approaching Union cavalry under dangerous rifle fire.

Among Hills’s fellow cavalrymen was Joel H. Lyman, another soldier connected with the 9th New York Cavalry. Lyman moved forward toward the river before realizing that Confederate infantry and rifle pits were positioned across the water. As he advanced down the slope, a Confederate musket ball struck him and knocked him from his horse. He was severely wounded and left exposed between the forces while enemy bullets struck the ground around him.

The Union regiment had begun withdrawing, leaving Lyman in an extremely dangerous position. He was wounded, unable to escape on his own, and exposed to sustained Confederate fire. Hills saw what had happened and chose to return for his wounded comrade rather than remain in relative safety with the withdrawing troops.

Hills spurred his horse toward Lyman while Confederate soldiers continued firing into the area. Reaching the wounded man, he dismounted in the open despite the intense fire surrounding them. Hills lifted the severely wounded Lyman onto his own saddle, remounted, and supported him as they moved away from the exposed position. Enemy bullets continued to pass around them throughout the rescue.

Lyman later remembered the incident in exceptionally strong terms. He recalled that Hills appeared calm while carrying out the rescue even though the enemy seemed to be concentrating its fire on them. Having experienced several years of active military service himself, Lyman regarded Hills’s courage and comradeship during the rescue as one of the finest acts of bravery he had personally witnessed.

The significance of Hills’s action rested in the fact that it was entirely voluntary. He was not carrying out an order that required him to enter the exposed position. He deliberately returned under heavy enemy fire because a fellow soldier had been wounded and could not escape without assistance. In doing so, Hills placed his own life at immediate risk to save another man from death, further injury, or capture.

There was another remarkable element to the story. The wounded soldier Hills rescued, Joel H. Lyman, later became a Medal of Honor recipient in his own right. Lyman’s decoration recognized a separate action performed at Winchester, Virginia, on September 19, 1864, only a week before Hills rescued him at North Fork. Thus the September 26 rescue connected two soldiers who would eventually both be formally recognized with the nation’s highest military decoration.

Hills’s period of active Civil War service ended shortly afterward. He was mustered out with his company on October 27, 1864, completing approximately three years of Union Army service. His verified rank remained Private. Although he left military service soon after his heroic action, the events at North Fork continued to be remembered by the men who had witnessed them.

Formal recognition did not come immediately. Nearly twenty-nine years passed between Hills’s rescue of Lyman and the presentation of the Medal of Honor. This long delay was not unique among Civil War recipients. Many soldiers who performed extraordinary actions during the war received their medals years or even decades later after their deeds had been reviewed, documented, and recommended for official recognition.

On September 26, 1893, exactly twenty-nine years after the action at North Fork, William Giles Hills was presented with the Medal of Honor. His official recognition honored his voluntary rescue of a severely wounded comrade from heavy enemy fire. The award transformed an act of battlefield comradeship witnessed by fellow cavalrymen into a permanently recognized part of United States military history.

Hills received the Civil War-era Army Medal of Honor, the decoration established during the war to recognize exceptional military conduct by soldiers of the United States Army. The Army Medal of Honor had been authorized in 1862 and became the nation’s highest military award. Hills’s decoration therefore recognized not rank, command responsibility, or the capture of an enemy position, but individual courage and self-sacrifice in saving the life of another soldier under direct enemy fire.

The Medal of Honor is the only decoration conclusively verified for Hills under the evidence standard applied to his record. His Civil War cavalry service by itself is not sufficient evidence to add the later Army Civil War Campaign Medal without recipient-specific proof of entitlement. For that reason, his verified medal record remains centered on the Medal of Honor awarded for the North Fork rescue.

Hills lived for many years after the Civil War and survived into the early twentieth century. By the time he received the Medal of Honor in 1893, the war had been over for almost three decades, and the generation that had fought it was increasingly being honored through veterans’ organizations, reunions, monuments, histories, and formal government recognition of wartime heroism.

William Giles Hills died on April 18, 1912, in St. Louis, Missouri, at the age of seventy. His remains were placed at Hillcrest Abbey Crematory and Mausoleum in St. Louis. His final resting place preserves the memory of a cavalry Private whose most celebrated achievement came not from defeating an enemy soldier, but from risking his own life to rescue a wounded comrade.

Hills’s military legacy is ultimately a story of courage, loyalty, and comradeship. On September 26, 1864, while enemy fire swept the ground near the North Fork of the Shenandoah River, he chose to turn back toward danger. He reached Joel H. Lyman, lifted the severely wounded soldier onto his horse, and carried him away while exposed to Confederate fire. Nearly three decades later, the United States formally recognized that act with the Medal of Honor. William Giles Hills therefore remains remembered as a Private of the 9th New York Cavalry whose willingness to risk his life for another soldier earned him a permanent place among the Medal of Honor recipients of the American Civil War.