Clarence E Sutton

Clarence was born on the 18th of February 1871, in Urbanna, Virginia, and at the age of fourteen, began attending the Virginia Military Institute. He left the school in 1888 after having to repeat his first year and did not graduate. Eleven years later Clarence enlisted in the US Marine Corps and deployed during the Philippine-American War. The following year, he had reached the rank of Sergeant and deployed to China in support of the Boxer Rebellion. It was his actions there that would later earn him the Medal of Honor. The citation reads:

In action during the battle near Tientsin, China, 13 July 1900. Although under heavy fire from the enemy, Sutton assisted in carrying a wounded officer from the field of battle.

Clarence was with the First US Infantry Regiment during a major skirmish that left Major James Regan wounded and Clarence rescued him, along with Sergeant Alexander Foley and two other Marines. They brought him to a field hospital three miles away and Major Regan’s recommendation for the men reads:

It was with the greatest of difficulty and persistence in their noble work that they got me off the field. They placed me on an improvised litter made of two flannel shirts and two rifles. I was a heavy man and with the greatest of care over the roughest kind of ground, under fire, they carried me to the Marine Hospital in the city, a distance of about three miles....Such men are worthy of all the distinction the Government can confer upon them.

Clarence and Alexander Foley (who I covered on episode 657), as well as the other two Marines, received their Medals of Honor on the 11th of May 1902, while at the Marine garrison in Cavite, Philippine Islands. Clarence left the Marine Corps due to an illness in 1909, after ten years of service and at the rank of First Sergeant. He was married to Ann Eichhorn and they couple had three children. Clarence Edwin Sutton died on the 9th of October 1916, at the age of 45 and he is buried in Arlington National Cemetery: Section 17, Lot 18847.