Brigadier Gen. Crandell Clayton was a character who first appeared in the episode, Yankee Doodle Doctor (Season 1, episode #6) which aired in the series first season. The character, played by actor Herb Voland, would appear in six more episodes.
He is the third in a long line of Generals who oversee the 4077th M*A*S*H, succeeding Brigadier General Hammond and General Barker. Clayton lasts from partway through season 1 to early in season 2, before being replaced by Major General Maynard Mitchell. Despite the modest length of his tenure, this makes General Clayton one of the longest-serving generals on the show.
About General Clayton[]
Unlike many of the other big brass who visit the 4077th, General Clayton was less an antagonist than a friend to Henry Blake, who still would get nervous upon the visits of the General, and an admirer of the skill of the surgeons, at least, Trapper and Hawkeye. Also to be notably mentioned, was his possible past liaisons with "Hotlips" - - at least, as it was intimated at in the episode "Yankee Doodle Doctor" in Season 1.
In "For the Good of the Outfit" in Season 2, when Hawkeye and Trapper discover that a nearby village has been shelled by U.S. forces, they pursue the issue further by contacting the General, who visits the camp, in still trying to look at the situation from their point of view, he asks them, in trying to get them to back down from their report on the incident "Hey, even I'm getting pressure from above...you don't want to give the Army a black eye, do you? Let's play ball...Shall we?" Afterwards, he helps make sure that the Army rebuilds the village.
Clayton admires the skill of the surgeons and the personnel at the 4077th, and in the episode Yankee Doodle Doctor (Season 1, episode #6) he recommends that Army filmmaker Lieutenant Duane William Bricker (Ed Flanders) go to the 4077th to make his documentary about the work of the MASH units. However, when Trapper and Hawkeye destroy Bricker's film and produce their own show, complete with low-brow comedy sketches where they clown around as a poorman's Marx Brothers imitation, General Clayton is quite amused, and has them send a copy of the gag film, which also has a serious commentary by Hawkeye at film's end, to him, but with instructions to "keep the end part (of the original film), but burn everything else!"