Dudley Clarke

Who was Dudley Clarke?

Brigadier Dudley Wrangel Clarke, CB, CBE was an officer in the British Army, known as a pioneer of military deception operations during the Second World War. A theatrical and charismatic individual, Clarke could "charm senior officers brilliantly, but he also got things done". His ideas for combining fictional orders of battle, visual deception and double agents helped define Allied deception strategy during the war, for which he has been referred to as "the greatest British deceiver of WW2". Clarke was also instrumental in the founding of three famous military units, namely the British Commandos, the Special Air Service and the US Rangers.

Born in Johannesburg and brought up near London, Clarke joined the Royal Artillery as an officer in 1916, but transferred to the Royal Flying Corps after finding he was too young to fight in France. He spent the First World War learning to fly, first in Reading and then Egypt. Clarke returned to the Royal Artillery in 1919 and had a varied career doing intelligence work in the Middle East. In 1936 he was posted to Palestine, where he helped organise the British response to the 1936 Arab uprising. Early in the Second World War, Clarke undertook several small intelligence jobs before joining John Dill's staff in England. There he proposed, and helped implement, an idea for commando raids into France – an early form of the British Commandos.