Early Life and Military Service in World War I
William Archer Hagins was born on August 8, 1888 in Halcyondale, Screven County, Georgia. He trained as a medical doctor before he joined the United States Army as part of the Medical Department. During the American involvement in World War I, 1st Lieutenant Hagins served as a member of the American Expeditionary Force in France, where he served on the Western Front as an Army doctor supporting the Allied Armies against the German Army. After the end of World War I, Hagins remained in the US Army in the Medical Department, where he continued to rise up the officer ranks in the interwar period.
Military Service in World War II
By the start of World War II, Hagins had been promoted to a Colonel, where he was assigned as the Chief Surgeon of the US VII Corps, where he served from 1942 to 1943. In 1943, Colonel Hagins was appointed Chief Surgeon of the US Third Army while it was training in the continental United States, where he remained until his appointment to the Sixth Army. In 1943, Colonel Hagins was appointed Chief Surgeon of the US Sixth Army in the Southwest Pacific Theater of Operations, which he held from the Sixth Army’s formation through the remainder of the war. During his tenure as the Sixth Army’s Chief Surgeon, Hagins participated in the New Guinea campaign and the Invasion of the Philippines, including the landings on Leyte and Luzon. In early 1945, Colonel Hagins was promoted to Brigadier General, becoming one of the first sugeons in the United States Army to attain the rank during World War II. At the end of the war, General Hagins briefly landed in Japan and returned to the United States on board the Iowa-class battleship U.S.S. New Jersey (BB-62) as part of Operation Magic Carpet. Throughout the war, Brigadier General William A. Hagins maintained regular correspondence with his wife, Helen, and his son, William A. Hagins Jr.
Retirement and Death
In 1948, General Hagins retired from the United States Army and returned to his family lands in Bulloch County, Georgia. Brigadier General William A. Hagins died in 1980 at the age of 92. He was buried at Hagins Acres, his private land located near Statesboro in Bulloch County, Georgia.