[2] When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and the United States were drawn into the war, Hall had just returned to the U.S. from his travels and had enrolled at Yale University.

[1] In his letter he volunteered to parachute into northern Italy, in the area west of Cortina d'Ampezzo, around the Falzarego Pass, with tools, supplies and explosives.

From there he would either single-handedly or with the help of local resistance attack the minor roads and passes in the region leading up to the Brenner to disrupt Axis supply routes.

Hall briefly returned to Algiers for a parachuting course before embarking with his team to the Italian mountains for language and survival skills training.

The group consisted of Captain Lloyd G. Smith, its commander, First Lieutenant Joseph Lukitsch, Hall, radio operator Stanley Sbeig, a Navy specialist, and Technician third grade Victor Malaspino.

[1] Apart from sabotage Hall was also engaged in contacting local Italian partisan groups, organising supply drop offs and gaining intelligence on the Alpine Fortress, a German fortification project.

[1] During negotiations in Switzerland between high ranking SS officials and U.S. representatives, Operation Sunrise, the latter demanded for Hall to be exchanged or freed as a token of good will, but he was already dead at this point.

When OSS officers entered the camp at the end of the war they managed to identify Hall's grave, giving him a proper military burial.

[8] Captain Roderick Stephen Hall was posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit,[1] "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services in Italy from 2 August 1944 to 27 January 1945".