Samuel Findlay Clark

Samuel Findlay "Fin" Clark , CBE , OStJ , CD (born March 17, 1909 in Winnipeg , Manitoba ; † September 3, 1998 in Victoria , British Columbia ) was a Canadian officer who served as Lieutenant General between 1958 and 1961 as Chief of the General Staff of Army was.

Life

Officer training and World War II

Samuel Findlay "Fin" Clark began to study electrical engineering at the University of Manitoba after attending school , which he graduated in 1932 with a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc. Electrical Engineering). He completed a subsequent postgraduate degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Saskatchewan in 1933 with a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc. Mechanical Engineering). He then joined the army's telecommunications force (Royal Canadian Signals) as a first lieutenant and initially served at the Camp Borden military base until 1937 . He was then as a technical officer in the telecommunications division of the headquarters of the Army of Ottawa added and took over after his promotion to captain in August 1938 a post as Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston , whose commander Brigadier General Harry Crerar was who was Chief of the Army General Staff between 1940 and 1941.

At the outbreak of World War II , Clark was promoted to communications aide of the 1st Corps and in 1940 to the Canadian troops in the United Kingdom and shortly thereafter promoted to major . After his promotion to lieutenant colonel , he was chief telecommunications officer of the 5th Panzer Division and commander of its telecommunications regiment from February 20, 1941 to July 31, 1942. He then served from August 1 to December 30, 1942 as General Staff Officer, First Degree at the Military Headquarters and graduated from Staff College Camberley between December 1942 and May 1943 . During this time he was promoted to colonel and then acted between May 8, 1943 and June 25, 1945 as chief communications officer of the II Corps, which was deployed in north-western Europe until the end of World War II . During this time he was promoted to brigadier general in late January 1944 . He took part in numerous operations and combat operations in France , Belgium , the Netherlands and Germany such as Operation Undergo (September 22 to October 1, 1944), the Battle of the Scheldt Estuary (October 2 to November 8, 1944), the battle in the Reichswald (February 7 to 22, 1945) and Operation Blockbuster (February 26 to March 3, 1945). For his services in northwestern Europe during the World War, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) on March 17, 1945 .

Postwar and NATO Military Committee

After the end of the war, Fin Clark initially stayed in Europe and was Chief Telecommunications Officer of the Canadian Armed Forces in the Netherlands from June 25 to August 31, 1945. After his return he became Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Army in 1945 and held this post until 1948. For his services during the Second World War he was also mentioned in the war report on October 6, 1945 ( Mentioned in dispatches ) and received on March 30 1946 the Officer's Cross of the US Legion of Merit .

After attending the Imperial Defense College (IDC) in London in 1948 , he first served as a military observer in the Military Committee of the Western European Union (WEU) in 1949 and then, after his promotion to Major General in October 1949, from November 1949 to May 1951 as the military representative of Canada in the NATO Military Committee . In this role he dealt with the planning of the defense of Western Europe in the early phase of the Cold War and with the agreement to station the 27th Infantry Brigade in the Federal Republic of Germany as part of the land defense and to deter the Soviet Army . This period was marked by uncertainty among the member states of NATO , which was due, among other things, to contradicting defense plans and the lack of a structure for a high command for joint warfare. At the end of his work in the NATO Military Committee, however, there was at least a small working group that worked out a structure for a new command structure, the Allied Command Europe ACE (Allied Command Europe) , and its new headquarters SHAPE ( Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe ) . First Supreme Allied Commander Europe SACEUR ( Supreme Allied Commander Europe ) became General Dwight D. Eisenhower in April 1951 . He then stayed in London for a short time and was Chairman of the United Chiefs of Staff of the Canadian Army's Liaison Office between May and August 1951.

Promotion to Chief of General Staff of the Canadian Army

After his return to Canada, Major General Clark was quartermaster general of the Army from August 1951 to 1955 and then took over the post of Commanding General ( General Officer Commanding ) of the Army Central Command stationed in Oakville in 1955 .

In August 1958, Samuel Findlay Clark was finally promoted to Lieutenant General , replacing Lieutenant General Howard Graham as Chief of the Army General Staff . He remained in this role until he retired in October 1961, when he was succeeded by Lieutenant General Geoffrey Walsh . During his service as Chief of the Army General Staff, he initiated some reforms to restructure the Army to increase mobility and flexibility and introduced new tactical guidelines due to the possible effects of nuclear weapons, such as the training manual for nuclear warfare published in 1959. The 1960 published regulation The Infantry Brigade Group in Battle also dealt with the tactical orientation of the army in a war characterized by nuclear weapons. Furthermore, he implemented the necessity decided by the government in the spring of 1958 to form a task force for rapid deployment within the framework of the United Nations peacekeeping forces abroad.

After his retirement, Clark became chairman of the National Capital Commission , which oversaw various major projects in Ottawa , such as the construction of the Garden of the Provinces and Territories , which opened on September 25, 1962. Clark, who was married to Leona Blanche Seagram Clark from 1937 until her death in 1990, also became an officer of the Order of Saint John on December 11, 1975 . After his death he was buried in Union Cemetery in Barrie .

Web links

• Entry in generals.dk
• ARMY BIOGRAPHY: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SAMUEL FINDLAY CLARK, CBE, CD on the homepage of the Armed Forces of Canada (archive version)

• Samuel Findlay Clark in the database of Find a Grave (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The commanding officer of the Cadet Company was Major Guy Simonds , who was also Chief of the Army General Staff between 1951 and 1955.
2. ↑ Commanding general of the II. Corps was on January 30, 1944 Lieutenant General Guy Simonds, whom Clark already knew from joint service at the Royal Military College of Canada .
3. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 37038, HMSO, London, April 17, 1945, p. 2063 ( PDF , accessed January 18, 2019, English).
4. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 37340, HMSO, London, November 6, 1945, p. 5456 ( PDF , accessed January 18, 2019, English).
5. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 37686, HMSO, London, August 15, 1946, p. 4105 ( PDF , accessed January 18, 2019, English).
6. ↑ List of commanders of the Army on the Canadian Army homepage
7. ↑ London Gazette . No. 46760, HMSO, London, December 11, 1975, p. 15753 ( PDF , accessed January 18, 2019, English).

predecessor	Office	successor
Howard Graham	Chief of the Army General Staff 1958–1961	Geoffrey Walsh