The Last Commander Falls

Mark Wayne Clark: 1896-1984

Rangy, brash and big-beaked, he was the "American eagle" to an admiring Winston Churchill. Though he took part in three wars, Mark Wayne Clark won his greatest renown as the World War II soldier who led the first army in history to fight all the way up the Italian boot from toe to top. In 1943, at 46, he was the nation's youngest three-star general when he was picked by Dwight Eisenhower to organize the U.S. Fifth Army in Africa. At his death last week of cancer in Charleston, S.C., General Clark, 87, was the last of the great wartime commanders.

Churchill had dubbed the Mediterranean "the soft underbelly of the Axis." Clark noted drily, "It was not so soft." The Italian campaign was the war's most grueling, taking 20 long months and some 300,000 Allied casualties. The forces under Clark faced a German army that for most of the bitter struggle was greatly superior in manpower, ammunition and equipment. The Allies were pitted as well against cruel weather and the narrow, mountainous Italian peninsula, whose terrain precluded sweeping armored advances. Clark had to fight equally frustrating vagaries of politics and strategy. Despite his bitter protest, many of his battle-seasoned troops were diverted after D-day to the invasion of Southern France, virtually halting Clark's advance. Many historians think it plausible that had he been allowed to drive to the Balkans, the Soviets would never have achieved their ensuing hegemony over Eastern Europe.

A West Pointer and third-generation soldier, Clark was wounded as a captain in France during World War I but did not see action again until the landing in Salerno in September 1943. He first piqued the nation's imagination a year earlier, when he was smuggled into Algeria by submarine on a mostly successful cloak-and-dagger mission to win French support for the imminent Allied invasion of North Africa. Known for his humor and daring, Clark was nearly killed on several occasions while leading his troops; he once personally spearheaded an attack on 18 German tanks. His polyglot force included 26 nationalities, as well as the first black American combat troops and a heroic Japanese-American contingent. Clark was a commander who cared about his men, tending to often tiny details of morale or special needs.

He seldom held his tongue when he disagreed with superiors. Eisenhower, a friend from West Point who knew him by his middle name, frequently had to soothe him: "Now, Wayne, keep your shirt on." Clark was often mired in controversy. His attempt to cross the heavily defended Rapido River failed dismally, costing 1,681 casualties in three days. Critics also faulted him for his drive on Rome, contending that he might have destroyed the German army if he had chased the foe instead of the glory of being the first Allied commander to enter the Eternal City. He was blamed as well for the destruction of the famed Benedictine monastery atop Monte Cassino, although he vehemently opposed its bombing.