Brigadier General James Hobson Stratton (7 June 1898 − 16 March 1984) was a United States Army officer who served in both World War I and World War II. Between the wars he was involved in the construction of the Conchas Dam and the John Martin Reservoir. During World War II he was the Chief of Engineering in the Office of Chief of Engineers and the Assistant Chief of Staff (G-4) of Communications Zone in the European Theater of Operations, United States Army (ETOUSA), the staff officer responsible for logistics planning. After the war he became a partner in Tippetts-Abbett-McCarthy-Stratton, a consulting engineering firm in New York, and directed the construction of the Tarbela Dam in Pakistan, the world's largest embankment dam, and the design of the Eisenhower Tunnel, the highest tunnel in the United States.
Early life
James Hobson Stratton was born in Stonington, Connecticut, on 7 June 1898, the son of William Stratton and his wife Emma Symington, a pair of immigrants from Northern Ireland. When he was a boy, the family moved to Paterson, New Jersey, where he attended public schools. After graduating from high school he worked in New York City by day and attended evening classes at Columbia University. His education was interrupted when the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, and he enlisted in the New Jersey National Guard. He was accidentally shot in the chest by one of his fellow soldiers, which he would later claim was the closest he came to a shot fired in anger in his whole career. He sat the competitive examination to the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point, New York, which he entered on 14 June 1918.
Between the wars
On 14 June 1920, Stratton graduated, ranked 51st in the West Point class of 1920 (the course having been shortened to two years on account of the war), and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the field artillery on 2 July. He never joined a field artillery unit, for during the summer break after graduation he managed to transfer to the Corps of Engineers, in which he was commissioned as a first lieutenant on 11 September 1920. He attended the Engineer Officer Basic Course at the United States Army Engineer School at Camp A. A. Humphreys in Virginia from 15 September 1920 to 27 January 1921, and was then assigned to the 5th Engineers at Camp Meade, Maryland. On 15 June 1921, he entered the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he was a member of Theta Xi fraternity, and from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Civil Engineering degree on 16 June 1922.
Stratton was posted to Camp Devens, Massachusetts, for duty with the Citizens' Military Training Camp, and then to 13th Engineers at Fort Humphreys, where he was reduced in rank to second lieutenant on 15 December 1922. On 6 December 1924 he went to Panama Canal Zone as assistant to the Supply Officer for the Military Survey of Panama, and then supply officer of the 11th Engineers. He was promoted to first lieutenant again on 4 April 1925. He returned to the United States in December 1927, and became an instructor with the 104th Engineers, a unit of the New Jersey National Guard.
In November 1931, Stratton joined the 8th Engineer Squadron at Fort McIntosh, Texas. There, he met and married Julia Selby Bryant in 1932. They had a son, William R. Stratton, and two daughters, Terry and Julia. He also had a daughter, Patricia, from his first marriage to Janice (Brotzmann) Bergen. In 1933, he moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, as assistant district engineer, where he worked on flood control projects on the Mississippi River, and then to Tucumcari, New Mexico, where he worked on the Conchas Dam. He was promoted to captain on 1 August 1935. Further duty followed as assistant to the district engineers in Boston, Massachusetts, and Denison, Texas, before returning to the Conchas Dam as district engineer on 4 November 1939. He then became the district engineer in Caddoa, Colorado, where he was in charge of the John Martin Reservoir project.