Clarke, EF

Captain Eric Fitzgerald Clarke

Eric was born on April 1st 1894, the eldest of four sons of Frederick Clarke, Comptroller-General of H.M. Customs, and his wife Josephine. Two of his three brothers, as well as a cousin, would go on to follow in his footsteps by attending Dulwich. Whilst at the College he served as an Editor of The Alleynian for two years and also won both the Doughty Memorial Prize for Literature, and the Anstie Memorial Reading Prize, later to be won by his younger brother. After leaving he went on to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he had earned a Classical Scholarship, and went on to become a member of the University’s Officer Training Corps.
As a result of this membership he was given a commission on the outbreak of war, with the 3rd Battalion, London Regiment, with whom he went to Malta and Khartoum. Eric was promoted to Lieutenant in March 1915, and during this period served as editor of the regimental newspaper, also having some of his writings appear in Punch magazine. In September the regiment went to Gallipoli, where he was to be wounded at Suvla Bay, returning to Egypt to recover. The next month he was promoted once more, to Captain, and shortly afterwards was attached to the 13th Battalion, where he served as acting Major, and was for a time in command of the battalion. On 9 April 1917 he was in France, and was leading ‘A’ Company into battle at Neuville Vitasse near Arras when he was hit in the head by a machine gun and killed, less than ten days after his 23rd birthday. His younger brother Gerald, a fellow OA, would go on to fall the following year.