<p>
Major General <em>Harry Clay Hale</em>, United States Army, retired, died at Palo Alto Hospital in California on March 21, 1946, at the age of eighty-four.</p>
<p>
The son of T. Judson Hale and Sarah Pierce Hale, he was born on July 10, 1861, at Knoxville. Illinois. Receiving his appointment to the United States Military Academy in 1879, he entered West Point that year, the youngest in his class. On graduating in 1883 he was commissioned Second Lieutenant of Infantry, and joined the 12th Regiment at Fort Niagara.</p>
<p>
While serving there in 1884 he was given as his first assignment, the somewhat gruesome duty of guarding the temporary tomb of the late President Garfield in Cleveland. In later years he used to describe, with characteristic dry humor, his feeling of importance in this independent command of thirteen men and his post inspections at dead of night among the tombstones.</p>
<p>
Rejoining his regiment, he remained at Fort Niagara until 1886, when the 12th Infantry was sent west. That year he married Elizabeth Smith, the devoted wife who shared his Army life until her death in 1906. They had no children who survived, and Hale, cherishing her memory’, never married again.</p>
<p>
The last chapter of Indian warfare was about to be written. The redmen were not wholly conquered, and sullenly resented confinement to reservations. The massacre of Custer’s command was a lurid memory, and in the Bad Lands of the Dakotas the Sioux still waited.</p>
<p>
On the west bank of the Missouri, just below its junction with the Big Cheyenne in South Dakota, at Fort Bennett, was stationed the company in which Hale was second lieutenant. In the quarters there, lived the few officers’ wives, with Betty Hale among them. Further north was Standing Rock Reservation, the camp of Sitting Bull, medicine man of the Sioux.</p>
<p>
In 1890 word came to the scattered Army posts to be prepared for a general uprising, which actually culminated in the bloody engagement of Wounded Knee, for Sitting Bull had incited his braves to their ghost-dance, the ominous preparation for an outbreak. His arrest was ordered, but the Indian police sent to take him shot him instead. In the running fight that followed several Sioux and police were killed, but the band, numbering about one hundred and fifty, scattered and disappeared into the Bad Lands. Other bodies of Indians had broken from their reservations, and a massing for the war-path was expected at any time. General Nelson A. Miles asked for a detailed report, and in December Hale’s company commander ordered him to go out alone to locate the roving bands.</p>
<p>
Halo realized what might be in store for him if he did find the Sioux, cruel and adept in torture, with their smoldering sullenness now fanned into open hatred by the killing of their medicineman, but he started calmly on his mission. Proceeding westward fifty miles in the bitter Dakota winter, up the Cheyenne and its tributary Cherry Creek, after several days’ scouting he located the camp of Sitting Bull’s band.</p>
<p>
Though he knew the desperate risk that he was taking, Hale rode straight Into the Indian camp, a solitary little figure in Army blue among the painted, armed Sioux. A council followed, with the warriors sitting wrapped in their blankets in a sullen circle in front of their tepees, while Hale urged them by signs and monosyllables to follow him back to Fort Bennett. Finally, through an interpreter he made his promise understood that if they would not join the other hostile bands, but go with him, they would not be made prisoners. They demanded confirmation by his “chief”, and grudgingly agreed to wait there twenty-four hours for it.</p>
<p>
It was then that Hale made his ride that is still remembered in the Army—alone, in the bleak winter night, through the Bad Lands on a borrowed cow-pony, fifty-two miles to Fort Bennett in eight hours. Returning with the company commander, who gave confirmation of Hale’s pledge and then departed, Hale at last prevailed upon the Indians, one hundred and fifty-four all told, to follow him. For three days, quite alone with them, he led the straggling column back over the trail he had ridden. The Indians were still in an ugly mood and suspicious, and Hale knew that one wrong move might cost him a shot in the back, but he got them all safely to Fort Bennett, and then across the frozen Missouri and down to Fort Scully, where he watched over them until the following April. He had become their “Little Black Chief,” and his word was law.</p>
<p>
For this exploit Hale was officially recommended for the Congressional Medal of Honor, but the very feature of his accomplishment that made it remarkable barred the award. Though his life was in imminent danger, with the Indians virtually on the war-path heading for Wounded Knee, no shot had been tired, and the essential element of combat was therefore lacking. He did receive a citation “for conspicuous courage, fortitude, good judgment and tact in dealing with the hostile Sioux Indians at their ghost-dance camp near the mouth of Cherry Creek, South Dakota, which resulted in the surrender and disarmament of a large band of them”. That same intrepid courage combined with sound judgment was typical of Harry Hale’s long Army career.</p>
<p>
In 1891 Hale was promoted to First Lieutenant, 20th Infantry, and made aide-de-camp to General Wesley Merritt. During the Spanish-American War he was promoted to Captain in the Regular Army and Major of the Volunteer Forces, and entering the City of Manila with General Merritt, participated in its surrender. (It caused him great satisfaction when that same city was wrested from the Japanese garrison by Lieutenant General Oscar W. Griswold, his former aide.)</p>
<p>
After a short tour as aide to General MacArthur and again as aide to General Merritt on the Treaty Commission at Paris, Hale returned to the Philippines to command a battalion of the 44th Volunteers. For the next year he led his troops in almost continual action on the islands of Negros and Bohol in the Filipino insurrection. At the close of this campaign he was put in command of Bilibid Prison in Manila, and efficiently handled this rather unsavory assignment until the city was turned over to the administration of Governor General Taft.</p>
<p>
Hale then rejoined the 20th Infantry with his permanent rank of Captain. In command of a battalion in 1901 on Luzon, his main achievement was the capture of Mount Maquiling. Leading the attack, Hale struck an arrow-trap. Though the barb penetrated his side, the poison did not take effect. Reaching the crest he drove the insurrectos from their entrenchments there after a sharp engagement of three hours, utterly routing them. For this action he was cited by the Commanding General of the Philippines.</p>
<p>
While on the original General Staff at Washington from 1903 to 1906, Hale was a member of the board that published the “Small Arms Firing Manual”, used as basic instruction for many years. At the end of this tour he completed a course in the Naval War College, and in 1906 was again ordered to the Philippines, now as Major of the 13th Infantry. At Honolulu he got the crushing news of the death of his wife.</p>
<p>
Detailed to the staff of General Bliss at Mindanoa, Hale completed his Philippine service in 1909. Two years later he got his Lieutenant-colonelcy in the 17th Infantry, and in 1914 he proceeded to the Texas border in command of that regiment and later of the 20th, being made a Colonel in 1915.</p>
<p>
Colonel Hale that year was sent to China to command the 15th Infantry, a picked regiment stationed at Tientsin. Conditions there became intensely serious when Chang T’sun sprang his coup d’état, reseating the Little Emperor on the throne, but by Hale’s tactful diplomacy our government was not Involved in the lighting.</p>
<p>
When the United States entered the World War, Hale was promoted to permanent rank of Brigadier General and ordered home to organize the 84th Division, with temporary rank of Major General. He proceeded to Camp Zachary Taylor in Kentucky, and had started to train his freshly drafted men when he was sent to France on a tour of the front. After observing and absorbing the new technique of combat with characteristic adaptability, General Hale returned as soon as possible to the training of his Division.</p>
<p>
The 84th was composed of troops drafted from Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky, states associated with the life of Abraham Lincoln—a fact which inspired General Hale to name it the “Lincoln Division”, with its shoulder-patch the axe of the “rail-splitter”. Under the driving energy of their commander the raw civilians were moulded into soldiers.</p>
<p>
The efficiency of this training was evident in August, 1918, when the Division started on its way overseas, and at the embarkation-center General Hale got the welcome news that of the group of Divisions then proceeding to France the 84th alone had been selected as the combat unit. They had gone into billets north of Bordeaux and were preparing to take their place in the line when a crushing blow fell. Without warning orders came to tear apart the Division and to send the separate detachments forward as replacements in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, as the result of General Pershing’s decision—a wise one as ultimately proved—to press the advantage of St. Mihiel immediately into the Argonne, without the delay that would be involved in bringing newly-arrived Divisions into the line.</p>
<p>
True soldier to the core, General Hale issued the orders that broke up his superbly trained command, with never a word of complaint that the fulfillment of the high ambition of his career—to take his Division into combat—had at the last moment been denied him. There could be no greater proof of his unselfish devotion to the service. In the ensuing action in the Argonne his men acquitted themselves gallantly, but the 84th never fought as a Division until, reactivated in World War II, it then made its splendid record, and General Hale, in the last year of his life, had the gratification of sending his felicitations to General Bolling.</p>
<p>
General Hale’s next assignment, just after the Armistice, was the unexpected command of the 26th Division. Because of certain changes that had been made there a month earlier, of which General Hale had had no knowledge, the situation was rather tense, and how well he handled it is best told in the History of the 26th Division itself: “There came to the Division a commanding general who, within an hour of his assumption of command, made his presence, authority, good-will, and ideals of discipline plainly felt. This was Major General Harry C. Hale. His position was for the moment a little difficult. And how General Hale, by energy, kindliness, the exaction of firm discipline on every officer and man, and by playing the game hard and squarely, put new interest, vigor and spirit into weary troops, would furnish interesting material to any student of the psychology both of armies and individual soldiers”.</p>
<p>
General Hale brought the 26th home in April, 1919, and then took command of Camp Dix. Reverting to his permanent rank of Brigadier General he was ordered to the Army of Occupation in Germany, commanding a brigade at Andernach. There he was promoted to permanent rank as Major General and returned to the United States in 1921 to command the 1st Division at Camp Dix, temporarily relieving Lieutenant General Bullard as commander of the 2nd Corps Area.</p>
<p>
In 1922 General Hale received the Distinguished Service Medal “for exceptionally meritorious and distinguished services during the World War. By his ceaseless energy and closest personal supervision of the training, discipline and supply of his commands, he displayed rare qualities of leadership, organization, tact and judgment. His brilliant professional attainments, his steadfast devotion to duty, and his loyalty to superiors were reflected in the high standards maintained throughout the Divisions under his command”.</p>
<p>
General Hale took over his last command, that of the 6th Corps Area, in 1922, with headquarters in Chicago. There he promoted the development of the Officers Reserve Corps and the Citizens Military Training Camps, receiving the warm commendation of his old friend. General Pershing; then Chief of Staff.</p>
<p>
In 1924 Knox College at Galesburg, Illinois, his boyhood home, conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. Then, on July 10, 1925, his colorful military career came to an end with his retirement at the age-limit from the Army that he had served so loyally for forty-six years. General Hines wrote to him as Chief of Staff: “In every position in which you have been placed you have exhibited the high qualities that distinguish the thorough officer and gentleman, the wise administrator, the courageous soldier and capable commander”.</p>
<p>
After his retirement General Hale at first spent much time at his new home at Key West, coming north for occasional visits to West Point and with old friends in New York and Washington. His loyalty to the Corps seemed to grow with the years, as did his interest in the Association of Graduates, evidenced by the provisions of his will. Ill health, however, necessitated a complete cessation of activity, and he was hospitalized much of the time in his old age, finally going to the Pacific coast with his nephew. Major General Willis H. Hale. He was buried at Arlington with full honors beside his beloved wife. Gathered there for the last time were officers of his old commands in the Philippines, in China and in France, to pay their final tribute to the steadfast soldier who had been their leader and, above all else.</p>
<p>
</p>