Private First Class Lloyd C. Hawks at Carano, Italy, 1944
Welcome to Beyond the Call, where history, leadership, and heroism come alive. Today’s story explores Private First Class Lloyd C. Hawks at Carano in 1944, a powerful account of courage and responsibility in combat. If you enjoy learning more about military history and extraordinary individuals, you can find more articles, podcasts, and resources at Trackpads dot com. On a winter afternoon in Italy, in a field of mud and shell craters near the village of Carano, his choices under fire would turn a bleak scene of wounded men in no-man’s-land into a story remembered for generations.
The battle around Carano unfolded as part of the struggle to hold the Anzio beachhead, where Allied forces had pushed inland but now faced fierce German counterattacks. Infantry units dug shallow positions into flat, exposed ground broken only by ditches and the torn earth of recent explosions. Machine guns swept the open spaces with long bursts, while mortar rounds crashed in with a rhythm that kept men pressed low in their foxholes. In that environment, even lifting a helmet above the lip of a position could draw fire. It was into this harsh landscape that Hawks and the soldiers of his company settled, knowing that sooner or later someone out there would call for a medic.
The crisis began when two riflemen fell wounded in the open ground between the American and German lines, just yards from enemy positions. Their cries carried back to their comrades, but every attempt to reach them triggered a fresh storm of bullets. A medic who tried to go forward now lay wounded in a shallow ditch partway across the field. Another pair of riflemen had been driven back before they could cover even a fraction of the distance. From the relative shelter of the company’s line, it was painfully clear that anyone who moved across that field might not come back.
Lloyd Cortez Hawks watched all of this with a different burden than an ordinary rifleman. He was a medic, trained and trusted to move toward the wounded when everyone else hugged the ground. Beyond the Call is the Monday feature of Dispatch: U.S. Military History Magazine. In that moment, the men lying out there were not just shapes in the mud but friends and faces he knew. He could hear their voices getting weaker under the hammer of machine guns and exploding mortar rounds. To stay put meant leaving them to die slowly in the open.
Hawks had come a long way from his early life in Becker, Minnesota, where he grew up in a large family and learned to work long days on farms in Minnesota and Michigan. Those years gave him a quiet toughness and a habit of doing the needed job even when it was uncomfortable. As a young man he entered the Army from Minnesota and at first served in other roles, including time with field artillery and even handling mules that pulled guns and supplies over rough ground. Only later did he move into a medical detachment, where he learned how to stop bleeding under pressure, move casualties under fire, and keep his head when others were panicked.
By the time the division reached Italy, Hawks had already seen heavy action in North Africa and Sicily. Each campaign had added more experience and more responsibility. He was no stranger to danger, but more important, he had built a reputation among the infantrymen as someone who would come when called. On the Anzio beachhead, that reputation followed him into the muddy fields and shallow foxholes near Carano. So when the wounded men’s voices rose over the sound of gunfire, it felt less like a choice and more like a promise he had to keep.
Hawks tightened the straps on his aid bag and slipped over the lip of his position, flattening himself against the cold earth. The field between the lines offered almost no cover, just the occasional shell crater or shallow depression. As he crawled, bursts of machine-gun fire stitched the ground around him, kicking up dirt and small stones. Mortar fragments hissed through the air and slapped into the mud close enough to sting his face. He headed first for the ditch where the earlier medic lay wounded, because even on a battlefield a medic knows to care for another aidman who can no longer move.
Reaching the ditch, Hawks slid in beside his fellow medic and went to work in cramped, dangerous space. He checked bleeding, applied bandages, and did what he could to stabilize the man while the firing continued overhead. The smart move at that point would have been to stay in that shallow cover and wait for some future chance to evacuate. He knew, though, that the two riflemen lay farther out with no protection at all and with their lives draining away with each minute. Once he had done what he could for the wounded medic, he prepared himself to leave even that small shelter.
When Hawks crawled back out of the ditch toward the first rifleman, he was moving across roughly fifty yards of exposed ground that the enemy had under direct observation. Partway across, a burst of fire punched through his helmet and knocked it from his head, stunning him and leaving his skull suddenly bare to the sky. As the helmet lay on the ground, more bullets tore through it, leaving it riddled with holes that showed how close death had come. Hawks pressed himself tighter to the earth, gathered his senses, and kept crawling. At last he reached the first casualty and began the familiar work of checking wounds and applying bandages under unbearable conditions.
With the worst bleeding controlled, Hawks gripped the wounded man by his gear and began to drag him toward a shallow fold in the ground that offered a hint of cover. The process was slow and punishing, every pull exposing both men to renewed bursts of fire. Dirt spat into their faces as bullets struck around them, and mortar blasts rocked the earth as he dragged the soldier roughly twenty-five yards to the small depression. There he positioned the man so that the ground itself gave at least some shelter from direct fire. His own breathing was ragged, and his body ached, but the second casualty still lay ahead.
Turning back toward the enemy lines, Hawks crawled once more into the open. This time the German gunners had already seen what he could do, and their fire followed him relentlessly. Reaching the second wounded rifleman, he again began first aid, working as quickly as skill allowed. A burst of machine-gun fire shattered his right hip, sending a surge of pain through his body and pinning him momentarily to the ground. A second burst smashed into his left forearm, leaving it badly broken and nearly useless. Most people would have stopped there, and no one would have blamed him.
Instead, Hawks forced his mind back to the task in front of him. With one good arm and a body that screamed in pain, he finished bandaging the second casualty and prepared him to be moved. Then, bracing himself against the agony in his hip, he began to drag the man back across the same deadly ground. Inch by inch he pulled, using what strength remained to haul the soldier toward the depression where the first wounded man lay. Automatic weapons and mortars still raked the field, but he did not stop until both of his patients were as sheltered as the terrain allowed.
The official Medal of Honor citation later captured these moments in formal words like “conspicuous gallantry” and “intrepidity at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty.” Those phrases can sound distant until they are connected to the picture on the ground. “Above and beyond” meant moving across open fields again and again after other rescuers had already fallen or been driven back. The “hail of machine-gun bullets and flying mortar fragments” was not a figure of speech but a description of fire so close that it tore through a helmet that had just been on his head. The distances mentioned in the citation measured not only yards of ground, but seconds in which the smallest change in aim could have ended his life.
When we ask why it mattered, the answer begins with the two men whose lives he preserved in that muddy field. Without Hawks, they almost certainly would have died where they fell, beyond the reach of ordinary help. Saving them also preserved a little more strength for a rifle company that was already stretched thin on a dangerous beachhead. Just as important, the sight of a medic willing to go into that kind of fire told every soldier watching that they were not forgotten when they were hit. On a front where fear and exhaustion pressed in from every side, that knowledge could harden resolve more than any order from higher headquarters.
Hawks’ story also illuminates a kind of leadership that does not depend on rank. As a medic, he had no authority to issue commands, yet his actions under fire set a standard that others would remember long after the battle. He showed that leadership can take the form of quiet, painful work done because it is right, not because anyone can demand it. His background on farms and his experience in earlier campaigns had taught him to keep moving when every part of his body wanted to stop. In Italy, that habit of mind became the difference between life and death for men who trusted him.
After the war, Lloyd C. Hawks received the Medal of Honor from President Franklin Roosevelt and continued to serve in the United States Army, eventually rising to the rank of sergeant first class. He served through the early years of the Cold War and into the Korean War period, carrying the lessons of his medical service into new assignments and new units. Away from the front, he returned to Park Rapids, Minnesota, and built a life in the community that had sent him to war. His row of decorations, which included multiple other valor awards and Purple Hearts, marked him as one of the most highly decorated medics of his time.
Hawks died of a heart attack in 1953 and was laid to rest in Greenwood Cemetery in Park Rapids. His name lives on in places where new generations of soldiers still seek care, including a troop medical clinic at Fort Stewart, Georgia, that carries his name. In Minnesota and in the broader community of Medal of Honor recipients, his story continues to be told as an example of what a single individual can do when duty, training, and compassion come together under fire. When we remember Private First Class Lloyd C. Hawks, we remember not only a citation, but a man who crawled into danger so that others could live to see home again.
