1ST LIEUT. HAROLD A. CLARK
311 W. St. Joseph St., Lansing, Mich.
Lieut. Clark graduated from the Officers’ Training School, at Fort Sheridan, and was assigned to duty in Battery D, 328th Field Artillery, Camp Custer, as second lieutenant. On December 31, 1917, Lieut. Clark was promoted to first lieutenant. At Camp Coetquidan, September 16, 1918, Lieut. Clark was transferred to duty with Battery B. He had received athletic training at the Michigan Agricultural College before entering the army, and possessed considerable physical stamina. The members of Battery B will recall an amusing incident which occurred during our training at Coetquidan. Lieut. Clark was Executive Firing Officer, but on September 19th, Capt. Cherrill having been taken ill, Lieut. Clark being next of rank, became Battery commander, assuming the responsibility of a captain for the interval, carrying on the intensive training which had been outlined for the Battery. One afternoon he took out the B. C. Detail for reconnaissance practice. During the return march to quarters the men insidiously increased the pace thinking they would play a joke on their new commander. Lieut. Clark, who was rather short of stature, found that his men were not marching with him but going away from him. He suddenly gave the command “Halt.” Then he gave a command setting them a pace which brought them in perspiring and ragged, thus revealing to them by inference the firmness of their new commander. Lieut. Clark directed the fire during our eleven days’ fighting, registering and governing the firing by the Battery on the enemy. It was his cool, mathematical mind and precision that rendered our fire so effectual. Lieut. Clark, Lieut. Hazelwood and Lieut. Dolan, under the leadership and command of Captain Cherrill, coordinated to deliver missiles of America’s reprisal. These were the Battery’s fighting officers. He had all the requisites of a high type of artillery officer. While on reconnaissance at Tautecourt he rode within about twenty—five feet of the German trench. He must have believed in fair play, that if he was to observe the enemy the enemy should have an equal right to observe him. Whether the sight of an American officer looking down at them so paralyzed the Boches, we do not know, but they allowed Lieut. Clark to return to his own lines without harm. Impressed by the novelty of the first sounds of the front, the men were rather dilatory in taking up their duties the morning we were to begin our march into the lines from the railhead, at Dongermain. Lieut. Clark impressed upon them their sense of duty and the business of war by saying: “Men, you hear those guns roaring off in the distance. Our fellows are dying up there, and it is our duty to get there. We are no better than they.” This had a most salutory effect on his hearers and expressed the lieutenant’s determination to get his outfit and himself into battle. Page sixty-three |