Mark Wayne Clark

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Clark, Gen Mark Wayne (1896-1984), ambitious commander of the US Fifth Army. Clark was a first-class planner and organizer of the forces under his command, but his defining characteristics were conceit and vanity. A soldier's son and West Point graduate, he saw service during WW I as a battalion commander. He was appointed deputy to Eisenhower for the TORCH landing in November 1943 and was appointed commander of Fifth Army in January 1944, to plan and execute the Allied invasion of Italy. He directed his army at Salerno in September 1944 and then through the bitter battles of Cassino and Anzio, entering Rome on 4 June 1944, in defiance of orders from Alexander first to encircle the German Tenth Army. His desire to grab headlines by entering Rome (before D-Day relegated the Italian theatre to a backwater) gave the Germans time to retreat to the Gothic Line and prolong the war in Italy, but in December 1944, he succeeded Alexander as C-in-C, Fifteenth Army Group and was promoted full general in March 1945.

After the war he commanded occupying forces in Austria and in May 1952 he was called to command UN forces in the later, stalemated stage of the Korean war, which ended with the armistice of July 1953 which is now approaching its half-century. From 1954 to 1966 he was commandant of The Citadel, a military academy in Charleston, South Carolina. Even by the standards of his profession, his memoirs are remarkably self-serving.

— Peter Caddick-Adams

A third‐generation soldier, Clark was born in Madison Barracks, New York, the son of an army colonel. Graduating from West Point in 1917, Clark became an infantry captain and was wounded in France. During the interwar period he served at various military posts, and graduated from the Command and General Staff School and the Army War College.

In World War II, General Clark played a major role in preparing the invasion of North Africa, including leading a successful secret mission by submarine to gain the cooperation of Vichy French officials. Such collaboration drew criticism, but it was defended as military expediency, and resistance to the invasion in November 1942 proved minimal.

Clark then trained and led the U.S. Fifth Army in the invasion and conquest of Italy in 1943–45. The Allied campaign up the mountainous Italian Peninsula was arduous, and its tactics drew some serious criticism. As U.S. commander and, after December 1944, Allied commander in Italy, Clark bore much of the controversy, including that over the Battle of Anzio, the bombing of the abbey on Monte Cassino, and the bloody defeat of the 36th (Texas) Division, which lost 2,100 men in 24 hours attempting to cross the Rapido River.

In June 1944, Clark led his forces into Rome. Some postwar critics, including Dan Kurzman in The Race for Rome (1975), argued that Clark's desire to be the first to seize an Axis capital took precedence over the more important objective of cutting off and entrapping retreating German forces. The Germans built a new line that held until April 1945.

After the war, Clark as a four‐star general, commanded U.S. occupation forces in Austria (1945–47). During the Korean War, he succeeded Matthew B. Ridgway in April 1952 in command of United Nations forces. In July 1953, he signed the armistice and initiated the difficult prisoner exchange.

Retiring from the army, Clark served as president of The Citadel Military College of South Carolina (1953–65). Thereafter, he championed continued Conscription and expanded U.S. military effort during the Vietnam War.

Mark Clark's military career was frequently embroiled in dispute, in part due to his readiness to take controversial positions in difficult circumstances. Additionally, although an individual of undeniable courage and commitment, Clark lacked the personal aura of the other top U.S. Army commanders of World War II.

Bibliography

• Mark W. Clark, Calculated Risk, 1950.
• Mark W. Clark, From the Danube to the Yalu, 1954.
• Martin Blumenson, Mark Clark, 1984

Clark, Mark Wayne (1896-1984) U.S. army officer. Clark was born in New York and graduated from West Point in April 1917. During World War I he was wounded as an infantry battalion commander. At the beginning of World War II he served as chief of staff of Army Ground Forces under Gen. Lesley J. McNair, helping to organize the expanding American army. In November 1942 he was made a lieutenant general and deputy commander of Allied forces in North Africa under Dwight D. Eisenhower. Clark soon moved on to take over the 5th Army, which he landed at Salerno, Italy, in September 1943. He commanded that organization through the difficult campaign up the Italian boot, until being promoted to take command of 15th Army Group in December 1944. After accepting German surrender in Italy as a full general in May 1945 he became Allied High Commissioner for Austria, gaining valuable experience negotiating with Communists that would prove very useful when he succeeded Matthew B. Ridgway as supreme commander of United Nations forces in Korea in May 1952. Clark held that post until an armistice was signed in July 1953, and retired from the army in October that year, moving on to become president of The Citadel.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

The American army officer Mark Wayne Clark (1896-1984) held important commands in Europe and Asia and became one of America's leading anti-Communist propagandists.

Mark Clark was born in Madison Barracks, N.Y., on May 1, 1896. After graduating from the U.S. Military Academy in 1917, he fought during World War I as an infantry officer in France, where he was wounded and decorated. He attended the Army's postgraduate schools between the wars and was widely known as a competent, ambitious officer.

In June 1942 Clark became Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's deputy for the invasion of French North Africa that began on Nov. 8, 1942. The next day Clark - whose code name, "Eagle," fitted both his personality and his appearance, since he had a thin but prominent nose - flew into Algiers, where he worked out an armistice with the French. The basis of the deal was American recognition of the French fascist Adm. Jean Darlan as governor of French North Africa. The "Darlan deal" brought a storm of abuse on Clark's and Eisenhower's heads; placing a fascist in charge of the first territory occupied by the Americans in World War II appeared to make a mockery of the principles for which the Allies claimed to be fighting. After Darlan's assassination on Dec. 24, 1942, the indignation faded.

Much to his annoyance, Clark did not hold a combat command in either the Tunisian or Sicilian campaigns. Instead, Eisenhower had him train the U.S. 5th Army for the invasion of Italy that would begin on Sept. 8, 1943.

At the outset Clark's forces just managed to cling to their first beachhead at Salerno south of Naples, and the Italian campaign that followed was one of endless frustration. Clark and the British forces on his right flank were always short of supplies and manpower, and progress up the Italian peninsula was painfully slow. Not until June 5, 1944, did Clark drive the Germans from Rome, a feat almost ignored by the world since the Normandy invasion began the next day. During the remainder of 1944 and the first 4 months of 1945, Clark's troops crept up the peninsula, forgotten by most of the world. For a man of Clark's ambition and keen desire for publicity, it was a trying time.

After the German surrender Clark became commander in chief of the American occupation forces in Austria. He quickly adopted an attitude of extreme hostility toward his Soviet counterparts on the Allied Control Commission for Austria. He was impatient with what he called the "cream puff and feather duster approach to communism" and advocated a get-tough policy with the Russians. He loudly protested against what he considered to be the "appeasement" of the Soviet Union by the United States.

In 1947 Clark served as deputy secretary of state, meeting with the Council of Foreign Ministers to negotiate a peace treaty for Austria. No progress was made at the talks, and late in the year Clark returned to the United States to take command of the 6th Army. Two years later he became chief of Army Field Forces, which made him responsible for the training of the Army. In the spring of 1952 he became commander in chief of the United Nations command in Korea, as well as commanding general of the U.S. Army Forces in the Far East. By the time Clark took over in Korea there was a virtual stalemate on the battlefront, and his major concerns were a prisoner-of-war mutiny and the armistice negotiations. On the military front his tactic was to inflict maximum casualties on the Chinese enemy. Fourteen months after he arrived, he signed the armistice agreement and fighting ended. Clark was unhappy with the outcome of the Korean War. He had hoped the United Nations would be able to defeat the North Koreans and Chinese and reunify Korea under Syngman Rhee.

Clark left the Army in 1954 to become president of the Citadel Military College of South Carolina, a position he held until his retirement in 1966. He remained a prominent anti-Communist, especially sensitive to what he considered a serious threat of communism from within the United States. He died on April 17, 1984.

Further Reading

Clark wrote two volumes of memoirs: Calculated Risk (1950), a full and sprightly account of his World War II career, and From the Danube to the Yalu (1954), in which he describes his dealings with the Communists from 1946 to 1953. Kenneth G. Crawford, Report on North Africa (1943), and Alan Moorehead, The End in Africa (1943), provide information on the North African campaign. For general background on the war in Italy see Pietro Badoglio, Italy in the Second World War: Memories and Documents (trans. 1948), and Chester G. Starr, ed., From Salerno to the Alps: A History of the Fifth Army (1948).