L/Cpl John K. Clarke
(Marine on left)

Wall Information
Date of Birth	Date of Casualty	Panel	Line
Jan. 22, 1947	Mar. 6, 1967	16E	27

This photo of John (the only one I have) was taken on Hill 65 just prior to Operation DeSoto. Here, John is observing the clean-up of a Vietnamese that had been attacked by a wild boar and had come to us for aid. The Vietnamese is being washed beside the hut that John and I shared with two corpsmen, "Doc" Shaulk and "Doc" Shappee. John was the forward observer for 81mm mortars and I was his radio operator. In a recent phone conversation with Capt. Read Clarke, commander of India Company during Operation DeSoto, he remembered John Clarke as "The type of guy you'd like your daughter to marry." John was from Danbury, Connecticut. Please take a moment and read about John Clarke below. Be forwarned that the following is an account of combat and its results. Some readers may be disturbed by its graphic content.

NOTICE A Memorial Brick in memory of John Clarke has been placed along the pathways in the new Marine Corps Museum's Semper Fidelis Memorial Park in Virginia. The location of the brick and its inscription can be seen by visiting http://www.marineheritage.org/RollHonor_bricks.asp and entering the brick number 9864 into the "Brick No:" field and clicking on "Submit".

Please note that the following is Copyright - 2008 by Mike Pomakis. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced in any form or by any means, in whole or in part, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the expressed written permission from the author or his authorized agent. It is reprinted here from "Vietnam, A Personal Perspective" strictly for descriptive and reference purposes only.

Recon Patrol with John Clarke After Sgt. Markle left India Company, a new forward observer came to take his place. L/Cpl John Clarke was new to India Company but a short-timer in Vietnam. He would be going home soon. He was 20 years old and weighed about 190 lbs. When you work in close contact with a person you get attached to them. Especially if that work is combat. John and I got along great even though we only worked together a short time. On Monday, March 6, 1967, India Company was on a patrol during Operation DeSoto in the province of Quang Ngai that was predicted to result in contact with NVA regulars. John Clarke, who was to go home in three days, was told by the CO that he was "too short" to go on this patrol and was to stay in the rear. John requested to go on this "one last patrol." The CO said it was okay but that he didn't have to if he didn't want to. John went. We had patrolled the area for the morning and were taking a lunch break on the side of a large, grassy hill that overlooked a village below. It was a beautiful day, even by vietnamese standards. I was sitting there, just finishing my C-ration lunch when John Clarke came up to me and said, "If I get the okay from the CO, do you want to go on a recon mission into the village with me?" "Just the two of us?" I asked. "No," John replied, "I'll get a couple more guys." I said I would and off he went. A few minutes later he came back and told me that the CO said it was okay and that he had three other guys that would be going also. He said I should trade my radio and 45 cal. pistol for an M-14 since we shouldn't need the radio and we wanted to travel as light as possible. It didn't take too long for me to convince one of the grunts to trade with me. We left our flak jackets and everything else behind except our weapons and ammunition. The five of us headed for the village in this manner with John the point man. I was the third person in the column with two others behind me. When we got to the village, John steered us clear of the paths and led us through the back yards and gardens of the village grass huts. By doing this we would avoid any booby traps that might be on the paths. There being only 5 of us with the minimum of gear, we were able to proceed through the village very quietly, which was our whole purpose. After a while, John led us back onto the trail through the village and the sides of the trail turned into walls of high bamboo. We continued on very quietly until there was a 15 foot break in the bamboo to John's right. As John stepped into the clearing he looked to his right, through the break in the bamboo. Suddenly he raced ahead a few feet as he pointed to his right. When he stopped running at the beginning of the bamboo wall he already had his rifle set to full automatic and, turning to the right, started spraying the area through the break in the bamboo. Immediately, the guy in front of me ran into the clearing shooting to the right and I did the same. What John had seen when he cleared the bamboo was two enemy bunkers about 50 yards from the trail. The 6 NVA soldiers had been eating their lunch around a fire in front of the bunkers. They had been waiting to hear the company come down the trail and would then get into the bunkers to ambush them. By being so quiet, we had surprised them and caught them off guard. John had killed two or three of them with his first burst. The guy in front of me killed a couple more. As I jumped into the clearing and shot one that was running away, I heard the spoon fly off a hand grenade and something hit the bamboo over my head. The first thing that went through my mind was "You stupid shit! You tripped a booby trap and now your dead." I looked up at the bamboo over my head and didn't see anything. I figured it must have been a dud so I kept firing at the NVA. What had actually happened was the NVA I had shot had thrown a grenade that hit the bamboo over my head and had bounced toward John. The fire fight continued without the NVA getting a shot off. The only thing they had done was throw the one grenade. I looked over at John to see how he was doing and as I did that he looked down at the grenade which was now lying on the trail about a foot to his left. As he looked at it, it exploded. The blast from the grenade lifted him straight up about a foot into the air and spun him around. He landed on the trail like a limp rag doll. We rushed to him but there was nothing we could do there but get him out. His body had shielded the rest of us from the blast. But in doing so, caught the full brunt of the grenade. Half of his body was full of holes. The concussion had him bleeding from the ears, nose and mouth. The fire fight had alerted the main NVA force that we were in the village. It was time for us to get the hell out of there. Each of us grabbed one of John's limbs and started carrying him out as NVA machine gun and rifle fire tried to locate us. We carried with one hand and shot with the other as we fought our way out of the village. At one point I looked down at John and he had stopped bleeding. This meant that his heart had stopped and he was dead. It was decided that to save our own skins, we would hide John's body in some bamboo and come back with the support of the company to retrieve it. By doing that we were able to keep ahead of the NVA and make it out of the village and to safety. We made it back to the company and told the CO what had happened. They had heard the shooting and had already saddled up in preparation to come get us. The company fought its way to where we had hid John's body and we recovered it. When we pulled him from his bamboo hiding place we noticed that he was bleeding again. We carried him out to safety and I called in a Medevac for John and the two WIA we got while getting him out. As the chopper approached I got on the radio to guide him in and told him to come in from the east as the village to the west was very hostile and that they would receive fire from it should they fly over it. With them making their approach from the east, I popped a smoke grenade and guided them into the LZ we had secured. The three wounded were put aboard the chopper and one of our corpsmen went also to work on John while enroute to Da Nang. When the chopper lifted off, it flew directly over the village we had warned him about. This drew a lot of fire from the NVA. The corpsman that was tending to John got shot in the thigh, John got shot again as well as one of the other wounded and the pilot's flak jacket had stopped a round. The chopper also received some minor damage. Word came back to us that the corpsman, even though he was wounded, had kept working on John. When John got shot in the chopper he had died again and the corpsman revived him and kept him alive until the chopper arrived at Da Nang. The damage the chopper had sustained caused it to land with a heavy bounce. That caused John to die again. He was rushed into the operating room and revived a second time. As the surgeons worked on him he died twice more and the last time he couldn't be revived. No Marine that knew John Clarke had a bad thing to say about him. He was liked by all who knew him. I spoke with our Company Commander from that time, Captain Reed Clark (no relation), about a year before he died and he discribed John in the best terms I have ever heard said about a man. In his words "John was the type of guy you'd like your daughter to marry." Amen. You are missed, John.

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