William Crozier – Major General, United States Army

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William Crozier was born February 19, 1855, at Carrollton, Ohio. He grew up in Kansas. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1876 and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant, 4th U.S. Artillery.

After three years of campaigning against Indians on frontier he returned to West Point as Assistant Professor of Mathematics and was promoted to First Lieutenant in the Ordnance Corps in July 1881. In 1887, he  was assigned to the office of Chief of Ordnance, where he developed an interest in siege and coastal defense guns that led to his invention of a wire-wrapped gun of large caliber and, with General A.R. Buffington, later chief of ordnance, of the Buffington-Crozier disappearing gun carriage, later adopted for coastal guns.

Promoted to Captain in June 1890, he served as Inspector General of the Atlantic and Gulf Coast defenses during the Spanish-American War and, with the Volunteer rank of Major, as Inspector General of Volunteers for several months in 1898.

He was a delegate to the International Peace Conference at The Hague in 1899.  In 1900 he was in the field in the Philippines Insurrection and in Peking Relief Expedition. After few months as an instructor at West Point, November 1901, he was appointed Chief of Ordnance with the rank of Brigadier General. He retained that post until 1918, with brief absence in 1912-13 when he served as president of Army War College. As Chief of Ordnance, he gave particular attention to the use of federal armories as testing grounds not only for new weapons but for new industrial techniques. In his search for efficiency in manufacturing he even consulted Federick W. Taylor, pioneer in efficiency engineering. His work contributed greatly to army's readiness for World War I. His rank as Chief of Ordnance was raised by statute to Major General in October 1917. During the war was a member of Supreme War Council. His opposite number in the British government, with whom he had a close working relationship, was Winston Churchill.

In July 1918, he was promoted to Major General of the line, and became Commander of the Northeastern Department in Boston, and he retired in  January 1919. He died at Washington, D.C., November 10, 1942 and was buried with full military honors in Section 30 of Arlington National Cemetery.

His wife, Mary Williams Crozier, died in August 2, 1955, and was buried with him.

CROZIER, WILLIAM
MAJ GEN US ARMY RET
DATE OF DEATH: 11/10/1942
BURIED AT: SECTION EAST  SITE S-28
ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

CROZIER, MARY WID/O WILLIAM
DATE OF DEATH: 08/02/1955
BURIED AT:
ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY
WIFE OF WILLIAM CROZIER, MAJOR GEN USA

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