Monday, August 20, 2007

Russell J. Hill, 88, a well-known war correspondent during World War II who later became a reporter for Radio Free Europe, died July 31 of prostate cancer at the Medford Leas retirement community in Medford, N.J., where he lived.

After serving as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune and writing several books about his wartime experiences, Mr. Hill spent more than 30 years with Radio Free Europe as a reporter and correspondent in Europe and Washington.

He joined Radio Free Europe in 1952 and spent 11 years as a reporter based in Vienna, Berlin, Munich and Bonn, Germany. In 1963, he moved to Washington, where he remained a senior correspondent until his retirement in 1983.

Mr. Hill was born in New York and was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Columbia University in 1939. He was awarded a scholarship to Cambridge University in England but abandoned his studies to report from Berlin during the early stages of World War II. He was soon expelled from Germany.

He covered front-line action in the Balkans and North Africa, which he recounted in the books "Desert War" and "Desert Conquest." He accompanied Allied forces in Italy and France and was wounded during a battle in Germany. He witnessed the end of the war in Prague.

He remained in Europe after the war and wrote about the emerging Cold War in his book "Struggle for Germany."

Mr. Hill was a member of the American Contract Bridge League, competed in many bridge tournaments and reached the level of life master.

In the early 1970s, he helped organize a recycling center in Northern Virginia. He moved to New Jersey in 1983.

Survivors include his wife of 59 years, Mary Catherine "Kay" Hill of Medford; four sons, Philip Hill of Berlin, Alan Hill of Gaithersburg, Ralph Hill of Amherst, Mass., and KC Hill of Bern, Switzerland; a sister; and nine grandchildren.

-- Matt Schudel