A week-old copy of the Detroit Free Press was in my basket. I glanced at the front page and its war news. There was also a story on General Clay’s mother and a photo of her holding up a snapshot of a ten-year-old Wilson Clay. The intense press coverage of Clay had begun two months before, on his promotion and appointment to command the American Expeditionary Force.
Unlike European military officers, most American professional soldiers come from modest origins, and Clay was no exception. The American public found all the elements for a folk hero. Clay was born in 1890 in Davenport, Washington, thirty-five miles west of Spokane, in a three-room clapboard house. Not exactly a log cabin, but close enough for the newspaper photographers who converged on it. The general’s father, Tom Clay, who later owned a state bank, was supposed to have killed a man from Sprague, twenty-five miles southeast, in a war over which town would be Lincoln County seat. Davenport won. Wilson Clay never knew whether the story was true and never got up enough courage to ask his father, but citizens of Davenport never tired of speculating about it in front of the son. The general allowed untrue stories about himself to circulate if they were useful. Perhaps he learned that from his father.
Tom Clay abused his son relentlessly. Wilson spent his first sixteen years learning of his inadequacies and being reminded of his failures. He was the object of cruel jokes and public humiliations and the target of countless backhand cuffs. His mother, loving and weak, was powerless to intercede. The general told me once that he wished he could blame his father’s mean spirit on alcohol or dementia, but, in fact, he said, “My father simply came into this world packed with bile to his eyeballs.” Tom died in the early 1920s. “The bastard choked to death on his own spite.” Actually, it was on a piece of ham. General Clay had said he hoped time would diminish the hateful memories of his father. It hadn’t yet.
Tom Clay’s sourness was the key to his son’s success, I believe. The general’s dogged ambition to outshine his belittling father drove him throughout his life, even after the old man was gone. Other warriors have suffered cruel fathers. The two greats, Alexander and Frederick, come to mind. Perhaps they too tried to exonerate themselves before their fathers. In any event, you can be sure neither Alexander nor Frederick tolerated amateur psychiatrists as aides, and General Clay certainly did not, so I’ll end my speculation.
Tom Clay’s persistence in obtaining for his son a West Point appointment was viewed by Wilson as another form of punishment. A military academy had never crossed the boy’s mind, the general claimed. Tom failed at first and settled for shipping Wilson to the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. General Clay said the year at VMI paid a handsome premium, because it allowed him to enter West Point by certificate, without taking the dreaded entrance examination. During that year, Tom called in favors from local businessmen and politicians, asking them to pressure Henry Wade, the United States senator from Spokane, until, finally, Wade appointed Wilson to the academy. My suggestion one evening that his father’s obtaining a West Point appointment might have been motivated by something other than the desire to be rid of the boy was dismissed out of hand by the general.
It is well known now that Wilson Clay graduated first in the class of 1915. For the next two years he was an assistant commanding officer at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He served in artillery in the Great War. “I didn’t see the enemy much, but I sent my regards often enough.” In 1918, he received the Distinguished Service Cross “basically for not tucking my tail between my legs and running away from my battery one day when I really wanted to.”
Clay was discharged as a colonel of the wartime National Army in 1919, reverting to his Regular Army grade of captain. He was posted to West Point for four years as a lecturer. Then came twelve years of staff assignments and combat schools, during which time he was stuck at the rank of major. In 1933 he was sent to the Philippines for three years, where he made lieutenant colonel.
Clay’s meteoric rise began during the 1939 army maneuvers, where his impressive performance earned him an assignment to Washington as deputy, then chief of operations. He visited the White House more often than any soldier except George Marshall, the chief of staff. By December 7, 1941, Clay was wearing two stars.
President Roosevelt wanted to keep Clay in Washington as assistant to Marshall, perhaps eventually to replace Marshall, but Clay desperately wanted a field command. “I came as close to begging as I ever have,” he once told me. “It would have been an ugly sight, a major general groveling on his knees.”
It is easy, and accurate, to say Wilson Clay thirsted for fame. In his words, “History recalls those in the field. We remember Grant, not Halleck, Lincoln’s chief of staff.”
His appointment to command the AEF in Great Britain was a surprise, and the press concluded it was due largely to his favor with the president and the chief of staff. Clay brushed aside newspaper terms such as “practiced charm” and “Eleanor’s favorite GI.”
Credit the president and George Marshall with more than promoting a crony. Washington bristled with desk-bound generals lusting after that command, but the president must have known that competent peacetime military leaders do not always make skilled warriors; they can prepare for war, but they can’t practice the real thing. And Roosevelt knew of Clay’s talents: Clay understood the qualities and needs of the American soldier, he was skilled at stage management and a genius in administration, and he knew the art of war. The president and the world would soon learn of yet another talent, one the French call le feu sacré, the distinctive characteristic of the warrior, an utter determination to conquer or to perish with glory.
The president and George Marshall were looking for the perfect general, one with Charles XII’s courage, Eugene’s art, Montecuccoli’s foresight, and Turenne’s ability to seize the critical moment. No such person existed. They settled on Wilson Clay. Some now say this was the gravest mistake of Roosevelt’s presidency. Others will always cheer the decision. You will already have guessed that I am a Clay partisan.
He was a lieutenant general all of one month before being promoted again, virtually unprecedented in American military history. The general clearly understood his transition from an obscure staff officer to commander of the American army in Great Britain, from an unknown to a celebrity, and he cherished his new position in the world.
Not that there wasn’t a drawback to fame. He railed, but only to me, about the press when they acquired and published personal letters to family and friends. He asked the judge advocate general to prevent their publication and was told there was no legal means to do so. So he began censoring his own letters, depriving them of substance. He called them “dull whitewash.”
I looked up from my copy of the Free Press. General Clay walked David Lorenzo to the billiard room’s door, a hand on his shoulder, talking into his ear and stabbing the air with a finger, gesturing encouragingly. Clay believed it was his duty to be optimistic with his staff commanders. He conveyed his buoyancy and hope at every meeting. His chief of intelligence, Lorenzo, was the most difficult to convince. Clay always underestimated the enemy’s strength to junior officers, but it was the G2’s job to know better. With a final pat on the back, Clay said goodbye to Lorenzo. He turned back into the room. His face was ashen.