Frank Allen Pattillo (May 30 1892-March 29 1963) was a U.S. Army Captain in World War I who earned the Distinguished Service Cross and Purple Heart with three oak leaf clusters for bravery in combat. Pattillo was elected as an Army/Navy member of The Lambs in 1930 when he was a colonel in the U.S. Army.
Pattillo was born in Forsyth, Georgia, to Rev. Charles Evans Pattillo and Elizabeth Cook Allen. Pattillo was working as a school teacher in Gainesville, Florida, when he joined the Army in 1917. He earned a commission and was sent to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for training.
He was a lieutenant with the 38th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Division, American Expeditionary Forces. His regiment was almost immediately put into battle, and he was gassed at the Second Battle of the Marne in the summer of 1918 at Château-Thierry. He earned his first wound stripe, and recovered and returned to his regiment.
He was wounded a second time, at Fismes, when shrapnel struck his hands. During the Meuse–Argonne offensive he was leading his company north of Montfaucon when the twenty six year old earned the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism. He personally led his company in an attack and exposed himself to enemy machine gun fire, in order to advance his poorly-trained forward units. He was wounded twice, but refused to be evacuated, and urged his men forward from where he fell.
Post-war he stayed in the Army. He returned to education and taught military science at Gulf Coast Military Academy in Gulfport, Mississippi. He was the superintendent of the New York Military Academy in Cornwall-on-Hudson, where he retired in the 1950s. Pattillo was married to Margaret Davis.
Pattillo died of heart disease on March 29, 1963 in Dauphin Island, Alabama. He is interred in Pine Crest Cemetery in Mobile.
–Researched and written by Shepherd Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, 2025.