Our vision of Old West gunplay was formed by Western movies rather than the Old West itself. The very term “Gunslinger” was an early-20th century concoction. Clay Allison, however, was the real deal.
The archetypal image of the flinty-eyed Western gunfighter, his fingers twitching over the butt of a Colt revolver, came to define an era. As is so often the case with archetypes, however, reality bore little similarity to the embellished tales from the pulp novels of the day. An exception, however, was the shootist, Clay Allison.
Soldier, Rancher, Gunfighter, Psychopath
Clay Allison’s remarkable life was hard, brutish, and relatively short. His father died when he was five.
Robert Clay Allison was born in September 1841 in Waynesboro, Tennessee, the fourth of nine children. Clay’s father Jeremiah Scotland Allison was a bi-vocational Presbyterian minister who also raised sheep and cattle. Clay worked on the family farm until the outbreak of the American Civil War.
This scan is taken from a person who suffered a skull fracture after a fall on ice. Balance of probability Clay Allison’s childhood traumatic brain injury left him with some lasting behavioral deficits.
Growing up on a mid-19th century Tennessee farm was hard. Clay was afflicted with a congenital club foot and at some point had received a mighty blow to the head. This injury left him with a visible divot in his skull and some fascinating personality traits.
The human brain is the most amazing machine. When you hold a fresh one for real it is remarkably insubstantial, kind of like really thick Jell-O.
The human brain is the most complex mechanism in the known universe. A typical adult brain weighs about three pounds and is predominantly fat. The brain generates about 23 watts of power and consumes about one-fifth of the body’s total blood and oxygen. The brain is comprised of some 100 billion neurons and features 100,000 miles of blood vessels. This remarkable device can reason, scheme, love, create and survive.
Despite generations of intensive study we still don’t really understand exactly how the human brain works. My Neuroanatomy text in med school was titled “Fundamental Neuroscience.” If ever there was an oxymoron it is that.
The normal function of the brain is characterized by a yin and yang of impulses and inhibitions that are even today poorly understood. When everything is operating correctly you get a normal well-adjusted productive citizen. Let some of those inhibitory functions be traumatically damaged, however, and you get Clay Allison.
Allison’s Exploits
Despite one odd false start, Clay Allison spent most of the American Civil War riding with the Confederate Cavalry General and founder of the KKK Nathan Bedford Forrest.
In October 1861 Allison enlisted into the Confederate Army with CPT WH Jackson’s artillery battery. Three months later he was discharged. His discharge papers stated, “Emotional or physical excitement produces paroxysmal of a mixed character, partly epileptic and partly maniacal,” whatever that actually means. However, less than a year later Allison signed on with the 9th Tennessee Cavalry under Nathan Bedford Forrest. Allison rode with Forrest until the end of the war.
Clay Allison adopted his dapper facial hair from his former commander in the Confederate Army.
Inspired by Forrest, Allison grew a similar Van Dyke beard that he wore for years. After surrendering to the Federals at Gainesville, Alabama, Allison was convicted of spying and sentenced to death. The night before sentence was to be served he purportedly killed a guard and escaped.
Clay Allison was a plank holder in the post-Civil War KKK.
What followed was a most remarkable life of action, adventure, and wanton gunplay. Upon returning to civilian life, Allison joined the local Ku Klux Klan. Back home on his family farm in Tennessee Allison confronted a Union corporal from the 3rd Illinois Cavalry who had paid a call with mischievous intent. Allison retrieved a long gun and calmly cut the man down.
Settling Squabbles
A disagreement over a ferry fee resulted in a fearsome beating and some lasting bad blood. The Allison clan subsequently commandeered the ferry and fled.
Allison got into a disagreement over the fee for portage across the Red River in Texas and beat the ferryman, one Zachary Colbert, senseless as a result. Nine years later he met the ferryman’s nephew, a gunfighter of some renown named Chunk Colbert, with bloody results. Hold that thought.
By all accounts, Clay Allison was a nightmare with a Bowie knife.
During a stint in Texas, Allison got into a disagreement with a neighbor named Johnson over usage rights to a local watering hole. Allison dug a grave and entered the hole along with Johnson and a brace of Bowie knives. The winner retained access to the water. The loser retained access to the hole. The club-footed, brain-damaged Clay Allison lived to fight another day.
Vigilante justice was part and parcel to life in the untamed American West.
Allison had a fairly binary view of frontier justice, and he didn’t manage liquor well. In 1870 a ne’er-do-well named Charles Kennedy was jailed for robbing and killing overnight guests at his rural cabin. Allison felt that the wheels of justice were turning too slowly so he gathered some buddies, broke into the jail, and appropriated the hapless Kennedy. Allison then proceeded to lash the man to his horse and drag him back and forth along the main street until his body was a lifeless bloody pulp. Still not satisfied, Allison severed the man’s head and carried it in a sack 29 miles to the town of Cimarron. There he staked Kennedy’s head on a fence outside what later became the St. James Hotel.
Allison suffered numerous physical afflictions during his time. An accidental discharge that struck him in the foot left him partially crippled.
Allison accidentally shot himself in the foot while trying to steal a dozen government mules. Though he recovered from the injury it left him with a noticeable permanent limp.
In my experience, throwing a knife effectively is incredibly hard. Clay Allison had some mad knife-throwing skills.
Just in case anybody thought of denigrating the man over his physical shortcomings, Allison was legendarily accomplished with both a knife and a handgun. On two different occasions Allison, while drunk, threw his Bowie knife and pinned men to the wall by their shirts. The first was a county clerk named John Lee. The second was a local attorney named Melvin Mills. In both cases, the men were otherwise unharmed.
The Art of the Gunfight
Old West watering holes such as this were the center of social life in rugged frontier towns.
By 1874, Clay Allison had a reputation. Chunk Colbert, the nephew of the ferryman mentioned earlier, purportedly had six kills to his credit when he came looking to make Allison his seventh. The two men met in a local saloon and spent most of a day together drinking and gambling on horse races.
This is all that remains of the old Clifton House today.
That evening Colbert invited Allison to join him at an overnight stage stop called Clifton House on the Canadian River. Prior to this fateful meal, the local sheriff had accidentally shot and killed a Clifton House waiter while trying unsuccessfully to apprehend Chunk Colbert.
The gunfight between Clay Allison and Chunk Colbert was widely publicized.
Both men were wary, but by all accounts, they enjoyed an expansive meal together. Upon taking their seats Colbert set his hogleg in his lap, while Allison laid his Peacemaker on the table alongside his plate. The meal complete, Colbert thumbed back his hammer to kill Allison. However, Mr. Murphy is seldom far from enterprises of this sort. Colbert’s muzzle caught on something underneath the table, and his shot went wide. Allison raised his roscoe and shot Colbert through the head at contact range.
Allison was relatively philosophical about having shot a man in the forehead across a dinner table.
Friends later asked Allison why he ever accepted an invitation to dinner from a man so clearly bent upon killing him. Allison responded, “Because I didn’t want to send a man to hell on an empty stomach.”
The Gun
The .45-caliber Model 1873 Colt Peacemaker was a remarkably efficient close-combat tool.
The Colt Model 1873 Peacemaker attained a larger-than-life reputation in the hands of gunfighters like Clay Allison. Lots of companies made sidearms during this tumultuous period in lots of different calibers. However, it was the Colt .45 that came to define the genre. The many splendored motivations behind this rarefied reputation were fully deserved.
The concept of the revolver actually dates back to 16th century China. However, Samuel Colt perfected the idea into an efficient mankiller.
Sam Colt devised his revolver action during a voyage as a young seaman on the brig Corvo. Intrigued by the action of the ship’s capstan, young Sam adapted the same mechanism into a rotating handgun action and changed the world.
The gracefully curving butt of the Peacemaker looks like it should be remarkably inefficient. The opposite is actually the case.
It’s tough to quantify the secret sauce that Sam Colt used to make his eponymous revolver so awesome.
The sensual arching grip of the Colt Peacemaker, shown here on the right, is markedly more comfortable, to me at least, than that of a modern combat pistol like this HK VP9.
The gracefully curved butt looks so antiseptic and mechanical, yet it fits my own hand better than that of any modern plastic pistol. The single action requires a little attention, but through six rounds I can run mine almost as well as I might a Glock.
The Rest of the Story
Clay Allison was notorious for stripping down to his birthday suit for drunken forays into town to foment chaos.
Clay Allison shot his way into and out of trouble on several occasions after he executed Chunk Colbert over a meal. He also had a fascinating habit of getting liquored up and riding into town wearing nothing but his gunbelt. In November of 1875, he arrived in Cimarron in just such a state to celebrate his shooting of Francisco “Pancho” Griego. Allison performed some kind of war dance at the scene of the recent killing with a red ribbon tied prominently around his manhood.
Wyatt Earp (right) and Bat Masterson purportedly had a run-in with Clay Allison in Dodge City, but the details have been lost to history.
Allison also played a major role in the Colfax County War that claimed some 200 lives. In 1876 he reacted to a negative editorial in the local paper by blowing up the newspaper office with a substantial black powder charge and throwing the printing press into the nearby Cimarron River. Allison shot and killed a Deputy Sheriff named Charles Faber but later beat the rap in court. Allison was said to have faced down Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson in Dodge City in 1878, but the details are disputed.
Clay Allison did not suffer foolishness well.
In 1886 Allison developed an abscessed tooth, but the dentist got nervous in the presence of such a notorious gunfighter and extracted the wrong molar. Enraged, Allison enlisted the assistance of another dentist to remove the diseased tooth before returning and pulling a molar from the first practitioner in retribution.
These two stones adorn Clay Allison’s grave to this day.
In 1887 at age 45 Clay Allison was driving a wagon loaded with supplies to his new ranch in Pecos, Texas. A grain sack shifted, and Allison lurched to prevent its falling. The inveterate gunman lost his balance and tumbled out of the wagon. The horses reared and the wagon wheel rolled across his head and neck, crushing his skull and nearly decapitating him. Clay Allison, legendary gunfighter and originator of the term “Shootist,” was laid to rest in the Pecos Cemetery the following day. A crowd of hundreds arrived to pay their respects.
Despite his untimely and ignominious death, Clay Allison became the stuff of legend in Old Western lore.
Bill Longley was known for a ruthless nature, skill with a gun, a quick temper, and an unpredictable disposition.
William Preston Longley (1851–1878), a.k.a. Bloody Bill, Wild Bill, Rattling Bill, Bill Black, Bill Henry, and Bill Jackson, claimed to have murdered 32 people in the Old West, including his childhood friend Wilson Anderson.
I’ve written about a bunch of “Bills” in this column, including Bill Jordan, Curly Bill Brocius, William Collins, William H. Anderson, Billy Dixon, and Bill Doolin. Some were law abiding; some were outlaws. Well, Bill Longley may have been the bloodiest Bill of ’em all—and he certainly did not honor the law.
William Preston Longley was born on October 6, 1851, on Mill Creek in Austin County, Texas. He was raised on a farm and learned to shoot at a young age. By 1867 he had dropped out of school and taken up a “wild” life of drinking, carousing, and running with unsavory types.
In December 1868, at the age of 17, Bill committed his first confirmed murder, by shooting a former slave who was traveling on horseback with two other former slaves along the Camino Real approximately one mile from the Longley family farm. When Longley and his buddies confronted the travelers, one tried to flee, whereupon Bill shot him—several times.
Bill then roamed around Texas, gambling, robbing settlers, stealing horses, and killing. His murder victims to that point included at least two more freed slaves. By March 1870, a $1,000 reward was posted for him and his partners in crime.
He drifted north, joining Company B of the U.S. 2nd Cavalry Regiment. That didn’t last, and he deserted just two weeks later. He was captured, court-martialed, sentenced to two years at hard labor, and imprisoned. However, he was released back to his unit after four months, and due to his sharp-shooting skills, he was assigned to regular hunting parties. Not surprisingly, he deserted again in 1872.
In February 1873, he was accused of killing another freedman in Bastrop County, Texas. He was released from custody, perhaps in exchange for a bribe from a family member.
In March 1875, at the age of 24, “Bloody Bill” murdered his childhood friend Wilson Anderson with a shotgun, most likely at the urging of Bill’s uncle who blamed Anderson for the death of a son. Reportedly, Anderson was plowing a field when Bill fired two blasts from a double-barreled shotgun into him.
Subsequently, Bill fled from place to place, using many aliases (including Wild Bill, Rattling Bill, Bill Black, Bill Henry, and Bill Jackson) to avoid arrest. Over the years he killed a hunting buddy named George Thomas, a fellow outlaw named Shroyer (supposedly in a stand-up gunfight), a trail boss named Rector, a horse thief named McClelland, a card player named Charlie Stuart, a farmer named Sawyer, and a preacher named William R. Lay, who was milking a cow at the time. By his own account, there were several more.
Bill Longley was eventually arrested without incident in June 1877. He was tried and convicted for the murder of Wilson Anderson and received a sentence of death. He was hanged on October 11, 1878.
Numerous myths and legends about Longley have surfaced, but most cannot be verified. Many of them stem from tall tales told by Longley while he was imprisoned. He wrote to many newspapers telling of his exploits, and he was granted many interviews with reporters. Longley liked attention, and according to one source, so many reporters visited him in jail the sheriff eventually had to ban such visits.
Another such myth was a story of being captured and lynched in 1869 alongside a known horse thief by the name of Tom Johnson. Allegedly, Bill survived the hanging because a shot from one of the departing lynch mob, who had been shooting at the dangling “corpses,” severed his rope.
Two more outrageous examples that Longley liked to spout involved his supposed killing of a black militiaman in 1866 for insulting Longley’s father and that he killed eight black people in 1867 in Lexington to avenge the loss of a horseracing bet. Neither crime can be confirmed, but apparently, in addition to being just plain mean, he liked to boast about killing people.
On May 2, 1945, he was assigned to a rifle company of the 5th Marines during the invasion of Okinawa. That day, the 5th Marines were pushing uphill towards a ridge against determined Japanese resistance. The slope was strewn with Marine casualties, and Corpsman Bush moved unceasingly among them rendering aid despite the withering fire all around him.
When the attack passed over the crest of the ridge, he moved up to the top of the slope to aid a wounded Marine officer. A Japanese counterattack swept over the ridge just as he began administering blood plasma to his patient.
As the Japanese approached, Corpsman Bush gallantly held up the plasma bottle with one hand and fired a pistol at the Japanese with the other. Then he grabbed a carbine and killed six advancing Japanese. He suffered several serious wounds himself, including the loss of an eye.
He remained guarding his “officer patient” until the enemy were repulsed. Then, according to the official citation, he “valiantly refus[ed] medical treatment for himself until his officer patient had been evacuated…”
50 years since the U.S. ground war began, there’s a push to remember the 134 Canadians killed
Vancouver’s Rob McSorley is one of at least 134 Canadians killed in action fighting for U.S. forces during the Vietnam War. (L Company Ranger 75th Infantry Archives)
At only 17 years old, B.C.’s Rob McSorley knew he wanted to go to war, and it didn’t matter if it wasn’t in a Canadian uniform.
Now, 45 years after his death in the jungles of Vietnam, his sister is finally learning how much he mattered to the American soldiers with whom he served.
June-Ann Davies says in 1968, her brother was tired of school at Templeton Secondary in East Vancouver, and decided joining the military would cure his boredom.
The war in Vietnam was still raging and Canada wasn’t officially participating, but McSorley was determined to be at the heart of it.
“I think he wanted adventure, which he could get out of the U.S. military as opposed to the Canadian military,” said Davies, who now lives in Kamloops, B.C.
McSorley’s parents tried to reason with him: He wasn’t an American, and it was actually illegal for him to fight in a war that didn’t formally involve Canada.
But McSorley was going to Vietnam, with or without their support.
“When they were putting up a bit of a fight, that’s when he said, ‘Well, you either sign the papers, or I’m going anyways and I’ll lie about my age,’ ” Davies recalled.
Canadian Rob McSorley, left, is pictured in March 1970 with two members of his U.S. Army Ranger regiment after a dangerous reconnaissance mission. McSorley was killed in action only weeks after this photo was taken. (L Company Ranger 75th Infantry Archives)
His parents grudgingly signed the forms, and McSorley travelled just across the B.C. border to Blaine, Wash., to enlist in the U.S. army, which was accepting anyone who came through the door.
Two years later, what was supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime ended suddenly. McSorley was shot by North Vietnamese soldiers.
Davies still remembers being in bed when the doorbell rang at their Vancouver home, and a telegram delivered the news about her older brother.
“It was awful. Terrible. Yeah, it was the worst day,” she said.
“He only just started his life when it ended. Because he’d just turned 19 two weeks before.”
McSorley is remembered as a brave soldier within his unit of the L-Company Rangers. (Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund)
According to Davies, her family felt isolated after her brother’s death. No one they knew in Canada had relatives who had joined the U.S. military, let alone gone to Vietnam.
“Afterwards, my parents didn’t say a lot about it, other than to say that my brother was a hero,” Davies said.
20,000 Canadians enlisted; at least 134 killed
McSorley was certainly not the only young Canadian to fight and die in the conflict.
Canada never officially joined the fight with U.S. forces in Vietnam, and eventually harboured tens of thousands of American draft dodgers and deserters.
But much more quietly, a steady stream of young Canadians was crossing the border in the opposite direction.
An estimated 12,000 Canadians served in combat roles in Vietnam. Pictured in a 1968 CBC News story are three Canadians: Ron Payne of Galt, Ont., Richard Dextraze of Montreal and Arthur Fisher of Niagara Falls, Ont. The men served in the same U.S. marines unit. (CBC)
The Canadian Vietnam Veterans Association estimates that about 20,000 Canadians enlisted, although other historians think that number may have been as high as 40,000.
Canadian Ron Parkes was with one of the first U.S. battalions to join ground operations in the Vietnam War in 1965. (Ron Parkes/CVVA)
The association believes 12,000 Canadians actually served in combat roles in Vietnam.
Some were dual citizens who may have been living or working in the U.S., but many other Canadians volunteered, driven by a conviction to fight communism, or by a love of adrenalin.
By the end of the conflict, it’s believed at least 134 Canadians had died or been declared missing in action.
To put that number in perspective, 158 Canadian soldiers were killed during the mission in Afghanistan.
Many Canadians came home from Vietnam with their lives completely changed.
“I’m proud of my service,” said Canadian Ron Parkes, who enlisted in the U.S. military during the Cuban missile crisis.
The Winnipeg veteran was deployed to Vietnam in the summer of 1965, serving with one of the first American brigades to join the ground war.
Today, Parkes is president of the Canadian Vietnam Veterans Association, which he co-founded in 1986.
Struggle for recognition by the legion
According to Parkes, Canadian Vietnam veterans were ignored or forgotten for years after the war.
“When I came back and brought up the subject, it was always ‘Who cares? We weren’t there. We weren’t in it,’ ” Parkes said.
“When I went down to the Royal Canadian Legion, they wouldn’t accept us, our service. So for many years they just forgot about it.”
The government of Canada has never formally acknowledged the citizens who were killed or declared missing in action in Vietnam, but according to Parkes, in 1994, the Royal Canadian Legion officially recognized Canadian Vietnam veterans for regular membership.
“It’s been a long struggle to get the word out, but we’ve persevered and accomplished quite a few things now,” Parkes said.
Canadian names still being added to memorial
The name of every Canadian who died fighting for the U.S. in the war is listed on the expansive Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Canadian Rob McSorley’s name is on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., alongside the 58,000 U.S. servicemen killed in the controversial war. (Patti Jette/CBC)
Some, like McSorley, are officially on record as being from Canada.
The ‘North Wall’ Canadian Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Windsor, Ont., in 1995. (Don Davies)
Other Canadians aren’t remembered that way at all — listed only as being from the American towns or cities where they enlisted.
In 1995, some American veterans took up the cause for their Canadian colleagues and privately funded a memorial that was built in Windsor, Ont.
“The North Wall” Canadian Vietnam Veterans Memorial now lists the names of 138 Canadians who died in the war, but the number still grows today.
It includes 134 Canadians who were killed in action for the U.S. military, and four other Canadians who died in Vietnam while serving with the International Control Commission, the three-country body charged with supervising the 1954 partition into South Vietnam and North Vietnam.
“The main thing is to remember those that made the supreme sacrifice,” Parkes said.
‘Without Rob… I would be gone too.’
American Bruce Bowland says he never thought much about the idea that some men in the U.S. military were actually Canadian volunteers.
Bowland was only 19 years old when he was deployed to join the fight in Vietnam.
American Bruce Bowland, second from left, was 19 when he was deployed to Vietnam. His closest friend, Canadian Rob McSorley, was killed during a mission the two were on in April 1970. (John Burford)
That’s where he met and became fast friends with Sgt. McSorley from Vancouver, who at age 18 was actually younger than Bowland, but had already fought in a number of battles.”Rob told me he was a Canadian and he enlisted in the American army so that he could go to Vietnam,” Bowland told CBC News from his home in Gainesville, Fla.
“And I told him, ‘You’re crazy,’ ” Bowland laughed. “He was a gung-ho guy, man, a great man.”
Colleagues say B.C.’s Rob McSorley was a fearless soldier who died protecting other members of his unit on April 8, 1970. (L Company Ranger 75th Infantry Archives)
McSorley’s U.S. Army Rangers unit was sent into what was known as “Mission Grasshopper” in the A Shau Valley, when they were suddenly caught in a battle with North Vietnamese soldiers.
“[Rob] said ‘Wow, this is really cool. I feel like John Wayne!’ ” Bowland recalled.
“That’s the type of guy he was. He knew his job, he did his job, and you knew he always had your back.”
It was on that same mission on April 8, 1970, that Bowland was planning to “walk point,” leading his team toward the jungle to make sure it was safe.
But he says McSorley wanted to be the leader that day, so he took the spot from Bowland, telling him he was a more experienced soldier.
The young Canadian was checking the bush for signs of the enemy when he stumbled upon a group of North Vietnamese soldiers.
They opened fire on each other, but McSorley’s gun jammed. He was sprayed with bullets and fatally wounded.
Bowland says his life was only spared because the enemy had their sights trained on his Canadian friend.
“Without Rob sacrificing his life for me, I would be gone, too. I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have a son and two daughters. I wouldn’t have a grandson,” Bowland said.
“Rob gave up a lot of things, and I often wonder what his life would have been like if he would have come back and got married and had children. But he sacrificed his whole life for us, and I’ll never, ever, ever forget that.”
June-Ann Davies of Kamloops, B.C., lost McSorley, her brother, in the Vietnam War. Her husband, Don, has thoroughly researched McSorley’s experience in Vietnam, hearing directly from the men who were there when he was killed. (Chris Corday/CBC)
‘He didn’t want to be a bystander’
In Kamloops, McSorley’s sister June-Ann Davies and her husband, Don, have spent many years learning about her brother’s service in Vietnam.
Don Davies has spent many long nights researching the war stories of a brother-in-law he was never able to meet.
“I’ve got heavy into it, finding out about him, and I do find it very emotional. Even though we didn’t meet face-to-face, I feel I know him as a man,” said Davies, holding back tears.
“He did what he thought was the right thing to do, and he didn’t want to be a bystander. And that’s Rob and everything I’ve heard about him.”
Over the last decade, June-Ann and Don Davies have made contact with Bowland and a number of the Rangers who fought alongside McSorley.
June-Ann Davies says their stories about her brother have changed her life.
“Even after all these years, it’s still emotional, but it’s also healing.”
The human brain is the most amazing machine. When you hold a fresh one for real it is remarkably insubstantial, kind of like really thick Jell-O.
