page_title: Dudley Clarke
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Dudley Clarke / Early life
context_page_description: Brigadier Dudley Wrangel Clarke, CB, CBE was an officer in the British Army, known as a pioneer of military deception operations during the Second World War. His ideas for combining fictional orders of battle, visual deception and double agents helped define Allied deception strategy during the war, for which he has been referred to as "the greatest British deceiver of WW2". Clarke was also instrumental in the founding of three famous military units, namely the British Commandos, the Special Air Service and the US Rangers.
  Born in Johannesburg and brought up near London, Clarke joined the Royal Artillery as an officer in 1916 but transferred to the Royal Flying Corps after finding he was too young to fight in France. He spent the First World War learning to fly, first in Reading and then Egypt. Clarke returned to the Royal Artillery in 1919 and had a varied career doing intelligence work in the Middle East. In 1936 he was posted to Palestine, where he helped organise the British repression of the 1936 Arab uprising.
context_section_description: Clarke was born in Johannesburg on 27 April 1899. His father, Ernest Clarke, grew up in Kingston upon Hull and moved to South Africa in the late 19th century, where he became embroiled in the Jameson Raid. Ernest managed to avoid prison for his part in the raid and, via a co-conspirator, obtained a job at a gold mining company. Once settled, Ernest married Madeline Gardiner, and a short while later, Dudley was born. During the Second Boer War, the Clarke family was trapped in the siege of Ladysmith. Although an infant at the time of the siege, Clarke later tried to claim a campaign medal. Soon afterwards, the family returned to England, moving to Watford, where Clarke's brother, the screenwriter T. E. B. Clarke, was born in 1907.
  From an early age, Clarke wanted a career in the armed forces. In 1912, he attended Charterhouse School, where he was exposed to the glamorous parties and smart uniforms of the nearby military presence at Aldershot, including the newly formed Royal Flying Corps.
caption: The Queen's South Africa Medal, which Clarke later attempted to claim for his infant presence at the Siege of Ladysmith in 1899
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