page_title: Mark W. Clark
section_title: World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Mark W. Clark / Biography / World War II
caption_attribution_description: English: Left to right: Alfred Gruenther, Donald W. Brann, Mark W. Clark, and Guy Garrod
context_page_description: Mark Wayne Clark KBE 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 United States 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 U.S. Army Chief of Staff, General George 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 in its capture of Rome in June 1944.
  Clark has been heavily criticized for ignoring the orders of his superior officer, British General Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander, and allowing the German 10th Army to slip away, in his drive to take Rome, the capital of Italy, a strategically unimportant city. The German 10th Army then joined with the rest of the German army group at the Trasimene Line.
  In March 1945, Clark, at the age of 48, became the youngest American officer ever to be promoted to the rank of four star general.
  General of the Army Dwight D.
context_section_description: In January 1942, a month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequent American entry into World War II, Clark was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff of Army Ground Forces, commanded by Lieutenant General Lesley J. McNair, and in May 1942, became its Chief of Staff as staff officers were rapidly moved to newly created commands by General Gage Michael Miller.
  On April 17, 1942 Clark was promoted to the two-star rank of major general. Just 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. It was while in England that 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 (the professional head of the British Army), and Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery, then commander of the South Eastern Command. After a cross-channel invasion was ruled out for 1942, attention was turned to planning for an Allied invasion of French North Africa, given the codename of Operation Gymnast, later Operation Torch. In October, Clark was assigned to the Mediterranean Theater of Operations (MTO) as deputy to Eisenhower, who was now the Supreme Allied Commander in the theater. In doing so he relinquished command of II Corps. Clark's duty was to prepare for Operation Torch. Clark also made a covert visit to French North Africa (see Operation Flagpole) to meet with pro-Allied officers of the Vichy French forces.
  Eisenhower greatly appreciated Clark's contributions. Clark, at the age of 46, was promoted to lieutenant general on November 11, 1942, three days after the Torch landings. He was the youngest three-star general in the U.S. Army. On January 5, 1943, the United States created its first field army overseas, the Fifth Army, with Clark as its CG, although neither Clark nor Fifth Army would see service in the fighting in North Africa. Many officers, most notably Major General George S. Patton, Jr., who was both older and senior to Clark, and was then commanding I Armored Corps, came to resent him, believing he had advanced too quickly. Patton, in particular, believed Clark was "too damned slick" and believed Clark was much too concerned with himself. In the presence of senior commanders Patton and Clark were friendly, although Patton, in his journal, wrote "I think that if you treat a skunk nicely, he will not piss on you--as often", referring to Clark after both he and General George Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff, visited Patton's headquarters as the latter explained his plans for the upcoming invasion of Sicily. Clark, for his part, claimed he found it difficult to command men who had been his senior, and he proved reluctant to remove those commanders if they failed in battle. The Fifth Army's initial mission was preparing to keep a surveillance on Spanish Morocco.
  On September 9, 1943, the Fifth Army, composed of the U.S. VI Corps, under Major General Ernest J. Dawley—who was a decade older than Clark and about whom Clark had doubts—and the British X Corps, under Lieutenant General Sir Richard L. McCreery—to whom Clark would later scornfully refer as a "feather duster"—under Clark's command landed at Salerno (codenamed Operation Avalanche). The invasion, despite good initial progress, was nearly defeated over the next few days by numerous German counterattacks and Major General Dawley, the VI Corps commander, was sacked and replaced by Major General John P. Lucas, who himself was later sacked and replaced after his perceive
caption: From left to right, Alfred Gruenther, Donald W. Brann, Mark W. Clark, and Guy Garrod.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "5126", "Image ImageLength": "4152", "Image BitsPerSample": "8", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "1", "Image Make": "Sinar", "Image Model": "54H", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "1", "Image XResolution": "500", "Image YResolution": "500", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2014:05:04 22:19:20", "Image Artist": "Library of Congress", "Image ExifOffset": "308", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "446", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6558", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4720", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3210"}