Cecil Clothier - Early Life and Army Service

Early Life and Army Service

Clothier was born in 1919 in Liverpool to a devout Catholic family. He was educated at Stonyhurst College and won a senior history scholarship to read law at Lincoln College, Oxford. The outbreak of the Second World War cut short his studies and he refused to apply for a post in the Judge Advocate General's office in 1939. This led to a twenty-year long rift with his father, a dentist who had seen dreadful jaw injuries during the First World War. Clothier joined the Royal Signals and served with the 51st (Highland) Division at the Second Battle of El Alamein, where he was responsible for laying communication lines and setting up radio equipment. He undertook deception duties in a radio truck and made transmissions from unmanned positions in English and Scottish accents to confuse the enemy. He discovered that the greatest danger came from enemy aircraft and from a lack of sleep, instanced by an occasion when he woke to discover that he was riding his motorcycle down an embankment into a minefield. Clothier acquired the nickname 'Spike' after a film character. He became a popular pianist in the officers' mess and acquired a love of flying when an American pilot offered a flight and landed on a road by a Sicilian village where they had an impromptu swim. In 1943 Clothier was transferred to Washington, D.C. where he served as a staff officer, sitting on committees dealing with technical developments and radio-frequency allocation. He continued his passion for flying by qualifying as a pilot. He also encountered the actress Mae West who was so impressed with Clothier that she said she would send her son to Oxford University to learn to speak like him. Clothier developed a lasting love of the United States during his time in Washington, D.C. When Clothier left the Army in 1946, he had reached the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.