Early Life
Born in Hopedale, Massachusetts, he was the son of George A. Draper, a wealthy textile machinery manufacturer (Draper looms) and the descendant of a long line of prominent Americans. Wickliffe Draper graduated from Harvard in 1913. When the United States was slow to enter World War I, he enlisted in the British Army. When the U.S. eventually declared war, he transferred to the U.S. Army.
In 1924 Wickliffe P. Draper established the Draper Armor Leadership Award in 1924 as a means to competitively test the leadership of small Cavalry units in the US Army. The test was oriented to the platoon level of Horse Cavalry. The first Cavalry Leadership Test for small units was held at Fort Riley, Kansas--then home of the Cavalry School. In 1928, LTC Draper established a trust fund of $35,000 to perpetuate the award.
In 1927, he participated in the French mission of Captain Augiéras to the southern Sahara that discovered the remains of “Asselar Man”, an extinct human believed to belong to the Holocene or Recent Epoch. Some scholars consider it the oldest known skeleton of a black African. For this, the French Société de Géographie awarded him its 1928 Gold Medal, and in Britain he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. After the war, he traveled and went on numerous safaris. His large New York City apartment was reportedly filled with mounted trophies.
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