 He won a Military Merit medal for personal bravery, and his ship received battle stars for downing several German fighter planes.Pattison noted that the only regular paycheck he ever received was from that time when he served as an officer in the United States Navy.At the end of World War II, Abbott Pattison returned to Chicago, and to his art, so that by 1946 he was well-known in art circles as the youthful recipient of both the Logan and Eisendrath awards, and as a recipient of one of the four prizes awarded nationally to sculptors by The Metropolitan Museum.