Albert Lea, Minnesota is a prosperous, serene market center named for an 1831 USMA graduate. There, on 23 January 1894, joy came to DeWitt Clinton and Anna Hibbs Armstrong with the birth of their son Clare Hibbs Armstrong. And there the boy and his sister Dorothy, who was to marry Lester D. Flory, USMA 1919, grew up in an intensely American atmosphere. One generation earlier it had been frontier, where buffalo teemed and Sioux still massacred settlers. Four Armstrong great-uncles not long out of an Ohio college, each trained as a surveyor and a lawyer too, had pioneered the region.
Through youth and cadet days, Clare bore the nickname “Army.” Thereafter he was called “Strong,” which well describes his character. Surely West Point helped shape that character, but the prime influence was his vital, civic-minded father. Bank president, Presbyterian elder, city councilman, and at age 44 the head of the Minnesota bankers’ association, he was also a keen sportsman. He taught his son field sports, and he emphasized straight shooting, in more ways than one. His was a powerful example of both personal integrity and concern for others.
Other family influences helped reinforce. Strong’s mother, a DAR founder, had studied music at Edinburgh University. Grandfather Hibbs, a lawyer and banker, was of Quaker stock but had fought throughout the Civil War. Uncle Frank Hibbs, an Annapolis graduate, was a distinguished ship builder; he told of taking President Teddy Roosevelt for a submarine dive, at midnight, to evade a Secret Service ban.
Strong’s youth was crowded with sports. By hunting and fishing he helped supply the family table, and thus earned his modest pocket money. He grew adept at canoeing, riding, iceboating, skiing, and motorcycling; at school he competed in hockey, track, and football. When time came for college, his father found appointments to both the military and naval academies. Remembering Uncle Frank’s complaint about long sea duty away from family, Strong chose West Point.
At the Academy Strong struggled at first with mathematics. But at plebe Christmas his education took a new turn. Along with several classmates, he learned that it was not traditional for plebes, just before Christmas reveille, to douse each first classman still in barracks with a bucket of cold water! The plebes who had been persuaded otherwise by prankish yearlings had a month’s seclusion to ponder all this.
The cadet years passed swiftly, highlighted by athletics. A poignant interlude occurred yearling fall when Strong went home to bury his beloved father, victim of a tragic automobile accident. Comforting his mother and sister, he perceived that of the many Armstrongs who had helped bring civilized prosperity to southern Minnesota, no male descendants remained but himself. Should he return to take up the reins, or stay a soldier? If ever he regretted his firm decision, it never showed.
During first class year Strong met a petite and lovely Georgia girl, Mary Dennard Coombs. When war was declared and the class graduated in April, Strong at once went south to the Georgia plantation, met the family, talked fast, and won out. Married on 1 May 1917, they went together to his first post.
Rapid expansion of the Army made Strong a captain almost at once, so with a rifle company of the 17th Infantry began his zestful career in command of troops. As the division prepared to embark early for France, it was devastated by influenza. Half of Strong’s company died. He himself was in the hospital, desperately ill, surrounded by death. But he found his clothes, dragged himself home, and was nursed back to health by Mary. The decimated division was rebuilt and trained anew, but as it prepared again to embark, the Armistice was signed.
Still commanding a company, Strong got Puerto Rican troops and was moved to Panama. Presently, intrigued by the challenge of defense against aircraft, he transferred to coast artillery. Three years in the Canal Zone were followed by five as A Company tac at West Point. A happy time for Strong and Mary, with their three young children, it was also a professionally stimulating period. His bond to the Long Gray Line grew stronger.
After a school year at Fort Monroe came a long boat ride to the Philippines, for duty in Manila and on Corregidor. Strong moved to the 6th Coast Artillery at San Francisco just after his Philippine Scout battery won, in January 1932, the coveted E for gunnery excellence. That summer his battery of the 6th won another E. Taking a detachment up to Fort Worden, Washington for service practice on another set of guns, Strong earned a probably unprecedented third E in one calendar year. Relentless attention to detail in target acquisition and gunnery technique, coupled with inspiring leadership, had yielded results which foreshadowed historic success in World War II combat.
In early 1933, Strong, now a major, was sent to Medford, Oregon to activate and command one of the nation’s largest Civilian Conservation Corps districts. His three dozen camps built numberless bridges, firebreaks, cabins, and the like in southern Oregon and northern California. Mainly, however, they gave formerly unemployed men new self-respect and fine health. Next came a year’s intensive schooling at Leavenworth, and duty at the War Department.
While in the Philippines, Mary had undergone major surgery for cancer, which in time recurred. Her friends, who were legion, marveled at her buoyant courage. In the summer of 1938 she succumbed at Walter Reed, widely mourned.
That fall, Strong returned to West Point, becoming senior instructor in coast artillery. Still another generation of cadets thus experienced his energetic example, while learning anti-aircraft defense. With World War II looming, the Army expanded. Here, too, Strong did his part: son Clare Hibbs Jr. was USMA 1941, daughter Elizabeth Ann married Richard L. Hennessy USMA 1942, and son DeWitt Clinton III was USMA January 1943. In May 1942 Strong took command of the 86th AAA Regiment in California. Early in 1943 he was given a star and command of the 50th AAA Brigade. A year later he took his brigade to operational deployment in England, and then entered Normandy with Patton’s Third Army.
While Strong was commanding the AA defenses of Paris, Montgomery suddenly seized, intact, the enormous port facilities of Antwerp, Belgium. Through Antwerp, if the port could be kept operating, could flow vast tonnages for most of the Allied forces on the Continent. Of course the Germans would try to destroy the port with their V-weapons, the flying bombs. So now to Strong came the greatest challenge an American anti-aircraft leader has faced. He was assigned to defend the vital port against German missile attack. Under Field Marshal Montgomery he commanded a secret organization called “Antwerp X.” Its troops were Strong’s own brigade, another US brigade, and a British brigade which included a Free Pole regiment - a total of some 22,000 gunners.
To anti-aircraft experts, what Strong did is an epic. The massing of his fire let him destroy incoming missiles at an extremely high rate. Montgomery had told him to strive toward a goal of knocking down half. Strong’s gunners began at a 60% rate, got steadily better, and in the final weeks were destroying 98%. Hence the Antwerp port operated without interruption, supplying over 80% of the Allied combat forces. Yet, of 4,883 V-l missiles launched, 2,394 would have hit the port area if not engaged. In fact, only 211 penetrated the defenses during the entire 5-month attack. Few people ever heard about this great success, because Antwerp X and its mission were kept secret until 29 April 1945. And the story then drowned in the flood of dramatic news of final German defeat, to which Antwerp X had silently contributed so much.
Montgomery understood, however. He wrote Strong that Antwerp X had “profoundly influenced the success” and made it logistically possible; he congratulated Strong for “hard thinking and hard fighting.” European governments understood as well. From Britain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands came decorations of knighthood rank. The people of the city his troops had saved made him a Freeman of Antwerp, a distinction shared only with Churchill, Eisenhower, and Montgomery. Strong would joke that the only real effect was free streetcar rides. To be with him even briefly in postwar Antwerp, however, was to see at once how deeply he was admired and how widely recognized.
Strong loved to command troops, which he did for 23 of his 36 years of service. His experienced understanding of the soldier was a decisive factor at Antwerp. Men who were there attribute the historic success to his leadership and unflagging energy. Along with his knowledge of gunnery, these traits led to refinements that wrung the last drop of accuracy from guns and fire control systems.
After combat Strong helped record its lessons with the Theater General Board, and there Patton pinned on Strong the DSM. Then followed four years as attaché to Belgium. When the Korean War began, the need to strengthen Europe and the strategic reserve obliged creating and training AAA units in quantity. Strong was therefore called home to command Camp (now Fort) Stewart, Georgia and its AAA training center.
Retired physically in 1953, Strong nevertheless continued to hunt enthusiastically. He traveled as well, sometimes for fun and sometimes while consulting for US and Belgian firms. Gradually he shifted his base to Mallorca, in the Balearic Islands of Spain. There he met Catherine Hays Taylor, a widow from Ligonier, Pennsylvania. They married and joyfully shared fourteen active years, looking in each year on both sets of their descendants, on whatever continents. Despite the medical incidents which were recurring more frequently, Strong bagged his auerhahn in the Alps and his black bear in the Himalayas. By 12 July 1969, however, the burden of these incidents overcame even Strong’s powerful will. He was buried at the West Point that he had revered so deeply, whence not only he and both sons, but three grandsons as well, have graduated.
Strong enjoyed to the hilt whatever he did, but perhaps most of all he liked to bring joy and pride to others. His faith in the unbounded capacity of the human spirit was profound. So evident was his trust in people that most of those around him exerted themselves to merit that trust. Thus he left a mark on the US Army that echoes down the years.
His children