John Harold Kilmore
Captain
442nd Regimental Combat Team
2nd Battalion, Headquarters Company
John Harold Kilmore was born on December 24, 1907, in Baltimore, Maryland. He was the son of Michael Hart and Lillie Bertha (Miller) Kilmore, who were originally from York County, Pennsylvania. John had two older sisters, Lillian Miller and Jessie Elizabeth. In 1910, the family was living at 604 Biddle Street in Baltimore. Father Michael was employed as a lineman. By 1920, they were at the same address and Michael was an electrician for the railroad.
John graduated from the Army-Navy Preparatory School at 200 East 21st Street. In 1930, John was employed as an engineer’s assistant by the Bureau of Plans and Surveys of the City of Baltimore. At the time, he was living with his sister Lillian and her husband Edward H. Brandt at 2208 Barclay Street.
He then attended St. Johns College in Annapolis, where he was Vice President of his junior class. While there, he was on the baseball, lacrosse, basketball, and football teams and was considered an outstanding athlete. He was captain and quarterback of the 1933 football team, prior to graduating in 1934. He was also a member of the ROTC while in college, and went into the Maryland National Guard upon graduation. The following year, on March 11, 1935, he was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant. At the end of the year he joined the Baltimore City Fire Department, where he played on their football and baseball teams.
In early 1940, John Kilmore married Pauline Elizabeth Farrella, known as Polly. She was born on May 20, 1913, in Yatesboro, Pennsylvania, to Russel and Mary (Agnello) Farrella. Her parents had immigrated from Italy, and moved to Baltimore from Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1928. Newlyweds Howard and Polly lived at 4408 Sedgwick Road, Baltimore, the house he purchased in early 1939.
After his Maryland Reserves unit was called up for service in March 1942, he entered as a Private and went on leave from the Fire Department. Kilmore was sent to Fort Benning, Georgia, for training. He was the Fire Marshal at Fort Lee, Virginia, in 1943, when he was transferred to the newly activated 442nd RCT. Once at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, Captain Kilmore was assigned to Headquarters Company.
After over a year of basic and specialty training and field maneuvers, Kilmore and the 442nd left Camp Shelby on April 22, 1944, by train for Camp Patrick Henry, Virginia. They shipped out to Europe on May 2, 1944, from nearby Hampton Roads in a convoy of over 100 ships.
Once they arrived in the Mediterranean, the ship that carried 2nd Battalion (exception: E Company was on a different ship) left the convoy and headed for port in Oran, Algeria. After offloading cargo, they rejoined the regiment at Naples, Italy, on June 17. The rest of the 442nd had arrived on May 28 and was by then in bivouac at nearby Bagnoli. Second Battalion followed the same route. They then went by LSTs to Anzio and were trucked around Rome to a larger bivouac near Civitavecchia, about fifty miles north.
On June 26, 1944, the 442nd RCT moved forward to the front lines for their first combat engagement. After driving the enemy north to the Arno River, the Combat Team was pulled from the lines and sent to Naples for shipment to France, to fight in the Rhineland-Vosges Campaign. They arrived at Marseilles on September 29 after a 2-day voyage, and bivouacked at nearby Septèmes prior to traveling over 500 miles north by truck or rail boxcars to the Vosges.
On September 20, Capt. Kilmore was transferred from Headquarters Company to the 2nd Battalion as the new F Company commander. He replaced the former commander, Capt. Thomas W. Akins, who became the new E Company commander.
Kilmore was in combat for the next month during the bitter fighting to liberate the important rail and road junction of Bruyères, neighboring Biffontaine and Belmont, and the “Rescue of the Lost Battalion,” the 1st Battalion, 141st (Texas) Infantry that had advanced beyond the lines and was surrounded on three sides by the enemy. The weather was cold, wet, snowy, and miserable, as the men fought in the heavily wooded forests still in their summer uniforms. They were subjected to living in foxholes, and incoming artillery raining down on them in “tree bursts.”
After the fierce fighting in the Vosges, the 442nd was now at half strength, and was sent to the south of France. There, they could rebuild to full combat strength while participating in the Rhineland-Maritime Alps Campaign, which was mostly a defensive position guarding the French-Italian border from attack by the German Army in Italy. The 442nd was there from November 23, 1944, until March 15, 1945, when they were relieved and moved in relays to the new staging area at Marseilles. At this same time, Capt. Kilgore was reassigned to Headquarters Company and Robert A. Gopel, the Regimental S-3 officer, became the F Company commander. At some point he worked on the graves registration detail.
On March 20-22, the 442nd (without its 522nd Field Artillery Battalion who were sent to Germany) left France to fight in the Po Valley Campaign for the final push to defeat the Nazis in Italy. They arrived at the Peninsular Base Section in Pisa on March 25 and were assigned to Fifth Army.
The objective of the 442nd was to execute a surprise diversionary attack on the western anchor of the German Gothic Line. This elaborate system of fortifications had been attacked in the fall of 1944, but no one had yet been able to pry the Germans loose from the western end. The Gothic Line in this area was hewn out of solid rock, reinforced with concrete, and constructed to give all-around protection and observation. The Germans were dug into mountain peaks rising almost sheer from the coastal plain, bare of vegetation save for scanty scrub growth.
The Combat Team left their initial staging area and moved to a bivouac at San Martino, near the walled city of Lucca. Starting on April 3, the 442nd conducted a surprise attack on the Germans at Mount Folgorito. By April 6 the 2nd Battalion had gained the ridge of Mount Folgorito and was poised for an attack on Mount Carchio and Mount Belvedere to the north, the peak that looked down on the city of Massa. By noon, F Company had reduced Mount Carchio while the rest of the 2nd Battalion began working on the wide, rolling top of Mount Belvedere, which was defended by the veteran troops of the crack Machine Gun Battalion Kesselring. The enemy battered the 442nd attackers with a steady stream of mortar fire, to no avail, and were defeated.
After these battles, the 442nd moved farther north, finally taking Aulla on April 25, penetrating as far north as Torino. The 442nd’s diversionary attack was relentlessly pursued by the Combat Team, resulting in a complete breakthrough of the Gothic Line in the west. Despite orders from Hitler to fight on, the German forces in Italy surrendered on May 2, 1945, a week before the rest of the German forces in Europe surrendered. Capt. Kilmore was with the 442nd while in occupation at Ghedi Airport guarding and processing German prisoners, the move to Lecco, and the return to the Livorno/Pisa/Florence area on July 12 for further guard duty.
For his military service, Captain John Harold Kilmore was awarded the Bronze Star Medal, American Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with four bronze stars, World War II Victory Medal, Army of Occupation Medal, Distinguished Unit Badge with three oak leaf clusters, and Combat Infantryman Badge. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal on October 5, 2010, along with the other veterans of the 100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team. This is the highest Congressional Civilian Medal.
Left: Pauline Farrella Kilmore, taken in the 1960s
John died at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center (GBMC) after a brief illness at the age of 60 on March 12, 1968. Survivors included his wife and two daughters. He was buried at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens on the upper level of La Pieta of the Veterans Field of Honor Garden Terrace in Timonium, Maryland. Polly died May 20, 2011, and was buried next to her husband. She was survived by one daughter and four grandchildren.
Researched and written by the Sons & Daughters of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in 2024 with assistance from the family.