Mark Clark

Mark Wayne Clark (May 1, 1896 – April 17, 1984) was a United States Army officer who saw service during World War I, World War II, and the Korean War.

He was the youngest four-star general in the US Army during World War II.

Clark gained an early appointment to the USMA in June 1913 at the age of 17, but lost time from frequent illnesses.

Known as "Contraband" by his classmates, because of his ability to smuggle sweets into the barracks, while at West Point, he met and befriended Dwight D. Eisenhower, who lived in the same barracks division and was his company cadet sergeant.

Although Eisenhower was two years senior to him and had graduated as part of the West Point class of 1915, both formed a friendship.

Clark graduated from West Point on April 20, 1917, exactly two weeks after the American entry into World War I, and six weeks before schedule, with a class ranking of 110 in a class of 139, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Infantry Branch.

He graduated alongside young men such as Matthew Ridgway, J. Lawton Collins, (both of whom later became U.S. Army Chief of Staff) Ernest N. Harmon, William W. Eagles, Norman Cota, Laurence B. Keiser, John M. Devine, Albert C. Smith, Frederick A. Irving, Charles H. Gerhardt, Bryant Moore and William K. Harrison.

All of these men would, like Clark himself, rise to high command and become generals.

Like his father, he decided to join the Infantry Branch.

In the rapid expansion of the U.S. Army during the war, he rose quickly in rank, promoted to first lieutenant on May 15 and captain on August 5, 1917.

During World War I, he was a company commander and served in France in 1918, as a 22-year-old captain, where he was seriously wounded by shrapnel.

After the war, the future US Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, noticed Clark's abilities.

In late April 1918, shortly before Clark's 22nd birthday and over a year after his graduation from West Point, he arrived on the Western Front, to join the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF).

Serving in the Vosges mountains, the Commanding Officer (CO) of the regiment's 3rd Battalion, Major R. E. Kingman, fell ill and Clark was promoted to acting battalion commander on June 12, 1918, with O'Daniel taking over command of Clark's company.

Two days later, when Clark's division was relieving a French division in the trenches, he was wounded by German artillery in the right shoulder and upper back, knocking him unconscious; the soldier standing next to him, Private Joseph Kanieski, was killed.

They were two of the first casualties suffered by the 5th Division during the war.

Captain Clark recovered from his injuries within six weeks, but was graded unfit to return to the infantry, being transferred to the Supply Section of the newly formed First Army.

In this position he served with Colonel John L. DeWitt, and supervised the daily provision of food for the men of the First Army, which earned Clark recognition at the higher levels of command.

He stayed in this post until the end of hostilities on November 11, 1918.

He then served with the Third Army in its occupation duties in Germany and returned to the United States in June 1919, just over a year after he was sent overseas.

During the interwar period, Clark served in a variety of staff and training roles.

From 1921 to 1924, he served as an aide in the office of the Assistant Secretary of War.

Arriving with his company at the French port of Brest on 1 May, his 22nd birthday, the next few weeks were spent in training in trench warfare under the tutelage of the French Army and soon afterwards the division was inspected by General John "Blackjack" Pershing, the AEF's Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C).

In 1925, he completed the professional officer's course at the US Army Infantry School and then served as a staff officer with the 30th Infantry Regiment at The Presidio in San Francisco, California.

His next assignment was as a training instructor to the Indiana Army National Guard, in which he was promoted to major on January 14, 1933, more than 15 years after his promotion to captain.

Major Clark served as a deputy commander of the Civilian Conservation Corps district in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1935–1936, between tours at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff School in 1935 and the U.S. Army War College in 1937.

He is known for leading the Fifth Army when it captured Rome in June 1944, around the same time as the Normandy landings.

On March 10, 1945, at the age of 48, Clark became one of the youngest American officers promoted to the rank of four-star general.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, a close friend, considered Clark to be a brilliant staff officer and trainer of men.

Throughout his thirty-six years of military service, Clark was awarded many medals, the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC), the US Army's second-highest decoration, being the most notable.

A legacy of the "Clark Task Force," which he led from 1953 to 1955 to review and to make recommendations on all federal intelligence activities, is the term "intelligence community."

Clark was born in Madison Barracks, Sackets Harbor, New York, but spent much of his youth in Highland Park, Illinois, while his father, Charles Carr Clark, a career infantry officer in the United States Army, was stationed at Fort Sheridan.

His mother, Rebecca "Beckie" Ezekkiels, was the daughter of Romanian Jews; Mark Clark was baptized Episcopalian as a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.

Clark has been heavily criticized for ignoring the orders of his superior officer, British General Sir Harold Alexander, commanding the Allied Armies in Italy (AAI), and for allowing the German 10th Army to slip away, in his drive to take Rome, the capital of Italy but not strategically important.

Clark ordered Lucian Truscott, commanding U.S. VI Corps, to select Operation Turtle (moving towards Rome) rather than Operation Buffalo (moving to cut Route 6 at Valmontone), which Alexander had ordered.

Clark had, however, left Operation Turtle as an option if Operation Buffalo ran into difficulty.

The German 10th Army then joined the rest of the German army group at the Trasimene Line.

Clarke's failure to follow orders and the perceived waste of lives as a result led correspondent Alan Whicker to observe; "if he had been German, Hitler would have had him shot".

He was assigned to the 11th Infantry Regiment, which later became part of the 5th Division when it was activated in December, where he became a company commander in Company 'K' of the 3rd Battalion, 11th Infantry, with First Lieutenant John W. O'Daniel serving as a platoon commander in his company.

During World War II, he commanded the United States Fifth Army, and later the 15th Army Group, in the Italian campaign.