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"If I ask for 50 . . ." A TIME correspondent recorded one of Clay's crucial days last week: in his vine-covered house at 43 Im Dol (in Dahlem, a pleasant Berlin suburb), the general got up at 6:30, breakfasted at 7:20 (passing out crackers to his Scotty George and Spaniel Sambo), reached the big walnut desk in his office at 8. After an hour of reading top-secret reports, teletype news, intelligence reports on everything down to a brawl between a U.S. soldier and a German civilian, he went into the grey granite courtyard to greet Washington visitors—Lieut. General Albert C. Wedemeyer, the U.S. Army's chief of operational planning, and Under Secretary of the Army William H. Draper Jr. Back in his office, for 2½ hours, Clay and a platoon of experts told his visitors what he would need to hold Berlin.
Then came a review of Clay's personal Negro color guard, a half-hour lunch, a 15-minute summary of Germany's steel problem to a U.S. mission of steel experts, then two hours of routine work. He kept his telephone humming—a call to tough, taciturn Air Force General Curtis LeMay in Frankfurt for the latest on Operation Vittles ("If I ever call him for one plane for a VIP [Very Important Person], he refuses, but if I ask him for 50 for Berlin food they're on the runway in a couple of hours"); a call to Deputy Commander Lieut. General Clarence Huebner* ("What about the quartermaster side of the food lift? Are there any bottlenecks? Enough trucks on hand?").
On his ten-button intercom phone he summoned advisers for short talks. He was often crisp and curt. Though he listened to all, he usually made his own, quick decisions. Throughout the day, he kept drinking cup after cup of coffee, smoked two packs of cigarettes.
Finally he had a talk with the State Department's Robert Murphy, Clay's political adviser—this afternoon they were too busy for their customary brief gin rummy session. At the end of his twelve-hour day, he went home for dinner and more talks with visiting generals, then returned to his office at 11 p.m. to get off his last cable to the War Department.
In his three years in Germany, Clay has not missed a single day's work.
The man of whom Jimmy Byrnes once said that he could run anything—General Motors or General Eisenhower's Army—was born (1897) in Marietta, Ga., the son of a U.S. Senator and a great-greatnephew of Statesman Henry ("I'd rather be right") Clay. He worked briefly as a Senate page in Washington, went to West Point, became an engineer, married a charming New Jersey blonde, sent two sons to West Point. When World War II broke out, he was a captain of engineers who had built some good dams. As Director of Matériel for the Army Service Forces, he gave proof of a miraculous memory and an ability to read about six times as fast as the next major general. Called to Europe by Eisenhower soon after Dday, he broke the Cherbourg supply bottleneck, then served under War Mobilizer Byrnes until Eisenhower called him back as his deputy in Germany. Said Clay at the time: "This is an experiment in international cooperation. It can work because it has got to work."