Mark Wayne Clark

Early Life and Rise Through the Ranks

Mark Wayne Clark was born on 1 May 1896 at Madison Barracks, New York, and graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1917, in the same class as the future president Dwight D. Eisenhower. During the First World War he commanded a company in France as a 22-year-old captain and was severely wounded by shrapnel. In the interwar years he held a series of staff and training assignments. After the outbreak of the Second World War his promotions came rapidly: on 17 April 1942 he was promoted to major general, the youngest in the U.S. Army at the time, and on 11 November 1942 — three days after the Allied Torch landings in North Africa — he was promoted to lieutenant general at age 46, the youngest lieutenant general in U.S. Army history. He had earlier led the planning for Operation Torch, then the largest amphibious invasion ever undertaken.

The Italian Campaign

In January 1943 Clark took command of the newly formed U.S. Fifth Army. On 9 September that year, the Fifth Army landed at Salerno as part of the Allied invasion of mainland Italy. On 22 January 1944, elements of his forces landed at Anzio, and after months of hard fighting captured Rome on 4 June — a milestone that coincided with the eve of the Normandy landings. Military historians, including Carlo D'Este, later criticized Clark's decision after the Anzio breakout to press on for the undefended Italian capital rather than concentrating his forces to destroy the German Tenth Army, calling it 'as militarily stupid as it was insubordinate.' That December he was promoted to command the 15th Army Group, overseeing all Allied forces in the Italian theatre, and on 10 March 1945 he was promoted to four-star general at age 48, the youngest four-star general in U.S. Army history. On 2 May, German forces in Italy surrendered to his command.

Occupying Austria and Austrian Diplomacy

On 5 July 1945, Clark became Commanding General of U.S. Occupation Forces in Austria and U.S. High Commissioner for Austria, in which capacity he represented the Secretary of State in Council of Foreign Ministers negotiations over an Austrian peace treaty, serving until 16 May 1947. He subsequently commanded the Sixth Army, headquartered in San Francisco, from 1947, and became Chief of Army Field Forces in 1949.

Military Career and Assumption of Korean Command

On 12 May 1952, Clark succeeded Matthew Ridgway as Commander in Chief of the United Nations Command, at a point when armistice negotiations had been locked in a prolonged impasse over the prisoner repatriation issue. Clark took a hard line in the negotiations, found Syngman Rhee's unilateral release of prisoners a serious complication, but ultimately guided the talks to a conclusion.

Signing the Armistice

On 27 July 1953, Mark Clark signed the Armistice Agreement at Panmunjom on behalf of the United Nations Command. In his memoirs he wrote that he was the first American commander in history to sign an armistice without victory — a remark that reflected the American ambivalence about the war's outcome: neither a defeat nor a victory, but a limited war ending in stalemate. On 7 October that year he transferred command of the United Nations Command to General John E. Hull and subsequently retired from active service.

Retirement and Later Life

After retiring from active duty, Clark became President of The Citadel, the military college in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1954, serving for twelve years until 1965; during his tenure the college's reputation grew significantly and its Corps of Cadets expanded to the maximum capacity of the barracks. Mark Clark died in Charleston, South Carolina, on 17 April 1984, at the age of 87, and was buried on The Citadel's campus beside Mark Clark Hall, named in his honor.