Mark Wayne Clark (1 May 1896 – 17 April 1984) was a United States Army officer who fought in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. He was the youngest four-star general in the U.S. Army during World War II.
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. During World War II, he commanded the United States Fifth Army, and later the 15th Army Group, in the Italian campaign. He is known for leading the Fifth Army when it captured Rome in June 1944, around the same time as the Normandy landings. He was also the head of planning for Operation Torch, the largest seaborne invasion at the time.
On 10 March 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, on May 1, 1896, 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 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 20 April 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.
Clark, like his father, decided to join the Infantry Branch. 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. In the rapid expansion of the U.S. Army during the war, he rose quickly in rank, promoted to first lieutenant on 15 May and captain on 5 August 1917.
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). 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 J. Pershing, the AEF's Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C). 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 12 June 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 11 November 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. 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 14 January 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. Among his classmates there were Matthew Ridgway, Walter Bedell Smith and Geoffrey Keyes, all of whom he would serve with during World War II.
Assigned to Fort Lewis, Washington, Clark was selected by General George C. Marshall, the newly promoted Army Chief of Staff, to instruct at the U.S. Army War College in March 1940, where he received a promotion to lieutenant colonel on 1 July. Clark and Brigadier General Lesley J. McNair, later the commander of Army Ground Forces, selected the thousands of acres of unused land in Louisiana for military maneuvers in the Louisiana Maneuvers. On 4 August 1941, Clark, skipping the rank of colonel, was promoted two grades to the temporary rank of brigadier general as the U.S. Army geared up for entry into World War II, and made Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations and Training (G-3) at General Headquarters, United States Army, in Washington, D.C.
In January 1942, a month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the American entry into World War II, Clark was appointed deputy chief of staff of Army Ground Forces (AGF), commanded by Lieutenant General Lesley J. McNair, and in May 1942 became its chief of staff.
Service in Europe and North Africa
On 17 April 1942, Clark was temporarily promoted to the two-star rank of major general. Two weeks before his 46th birthday he was the youngest major general in the U.S. Army. In June, Clark, along with Major General Dwight Eisenhower, was sent to England as Commanding General (CG) of II Corps, and the next month moved up to CG, Army Forces in the European Theater of Operations (ETO). Along with Eisenhower, he was sent to work out the feasibility of a cross-channel invasion of German-occupied Europe that year, based on the Germany first strategy which had been agreed on by American and British military and political leaders the year before if the United States were to enter the conflict. In England Clark first met the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, who was much impressed by Clark, referring to him as "The American Eagle," along with General Sir Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS, the professional head of the British Army), and Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery, then commander of the South Eastern Command.