Mason Mathews Patrick was born on December 13, 1863 in Lewisburg, Greenbrier County, West Virginia, United States. He was the son of Alfred Spicer Patrick and his wife, Virginia Mathews. His father, a descendant of Mathew Patrick, who came from Ireland to Massachusetts about 1720, was a surgeon in the Confederate Army.
Mason Patrick attended both public and private schools at Lewisburg and himself taught school for some two years before winning an appointment to the United States Military Academy in 1882. At West Point he proved an excellent student, graduating second out of seventy-seven in the class of 1886.
On graduating, Mason Mathews Patrick was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers, and over the next three decades he performed a wide variety of duties. For three years he was stationed at Willetts Point (later Fort Totten), Long Island, serving as company commander and completing the postgraduate course for engineering officers. In 1889 he rendered yeoman service in aiding the survivors of the Johnstown, Pa. , flood. He twice served three-year tours of duty (1892 - 1895, 1903 - 1906) teaching military engineering at West Point. In 1901 he was made assistant to the Chief of Engineers in Washington. In the fall of 1906 Patrick went to Cuba as commander of the 2nd Battalion of Engineers, a part of the Army of Pacification. He became chief engineer of this army a few months later and was assigned to the staff of the commanding general in Cuba. While on this assignment Patrick was responsible for mapping the entire island and for building many miles of hard-surface roads.
From 1909 to 1916 Mason Mathews Patrick was in charge of river and harbor work, first in Virginia and then in Michigan. In mid-1916 Patrick organized and commanded the 16t Regiment of Engineers at San Antonio, Texas, serving with it on the Mexican border during the crisis arising out of Pancho Villa's raid into New Mexico. When the United States entered the First World War, Patrick (then a colonel) went to France as commanding officer of the 16t Engineers. He was promoted to the temporary rank of brigadier general shortly after his arrival and became chief engineer and then commanding general of the lines of communication. In his next post, as director of construction and forestry operations, he had charge of all engineering construction of the American Expeditionary Forces in France. In May 1918 the tough, crusty, moustachioed Patrick, now a major general, was handed the most important assignment of his career when his West Point classmate Gen. John J. Pershing asked him to take command of all Air Service units in the A. E. F.
Internal jealousies and organizational confusion had plagued America's infant air arm for months. It was apparent that what was needed was a "square-jawed will and a strong hand able to apply discipline and see that the several units cooperated according to a given plan, on a given date, in a given way and no other way". General Pershing reasoned that Patrick would be able to stand above the ambitious young air officers, almost all of whom, including William ("Billy") Mitchell and Benjamin D. Foulois, were under forty. The appointment of Patrick, a nonflying officer, to head the Air Service may have dampened strategic air thinking, but it did bring order out of confusion. Largely because of his managerial skill, the American Air Service provided effective observation, pursuit, and tactical bombing support for Pershing's land forces in the St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne campaigns. By the end of the war American air strength in the A. E. F. had increased to 45 combat squadrons and 23 balloon companies manned by approximately 60, 000 officers and men. Patrick returned to the United States in July 1919 and took up duties with the Corps of Engineers, but two years later, in October 1921, he was appointed chief of the army's Air Service.
Realizing the need for greater rapport with the young aviators under his command, Patrick, although nearly sixty years old, learned to fly. In his six-year tenure he sought both to advertise air power to the American people and to improve the status of the air arm within the armed forces. In addition to reorganizing the experimental flight program at Wright Field, Ohio, and establishing the Air Corps Training Center at San Antonio, Texas, he promoted such newsworthy events as the first flight around the world by army pilots in 1924 and goodwill flights to the various Central and South American capitals. Patrick's chief assistant from 1921 to 1926 was the irrepressible Billy Mitchell, who had already begun to agitate publicly for an independent air force. Unlike the impatient Mitchell (on whose court-martial board he served in 1925), General Patrick, although convinced of the importance of air power, chose the moderate approach to gaining a degree of autonomy for the Air Service.
In his testimony before the various investigation boards in 1924 and 1925 he urged the creation of an Air Corps directly responsible to the Secretary of War, as he put it, he wanted a "status in the Army similar to that of the Marine Corps in the Navy Department. " The Air Corps Act of 1926 incorporated some of his recommendations but fell far short of setting up the semiautonomous force the aviators desired. Patrick retired from the army in December 1927 but continued to lead an active life. His book The United States in the Air was published in 1928, and over the next few years he wrote several articles and gave many lectures on problems of air traffic. Although Patrick was a Democrat, President Hoover appointed him public utilities commissioner for the District of Columbia in 1929, a post he held for four years.
Mason Mathews Patrick died at Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, D. C. , early in 1942 of arteriosclerotic heart disease and cancer, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Mason Mathews Patrick was a member of a Protestant church.
Mason Mathews Patrick was a member of the Democratic party.
On November 11, 1902, Mason Mathews Patrick married Grace Webster Cooley of Plainfield, New Jersey. They had an adopted son, Bream Cooley.
