Allan Appel Photos
Detective Clark.
Rob Clark was only 5 or 6 when, on a hot day in Bethany in a house without air conditioning, he saw his great uncle Howard Clock shirtless. For the first time he noticed a hole in his back big as a thumb.
Clark asked how he got that wound, all the details.
Clark knew his uncle had been in the Battle of the Bulge in World War Two and in a tank unit. But the men of Clock’s generation rarely talked about their war experiences. So that’s all Clark knew.
It stayed that way until the late 1990s, when, after Sgt. Howard Clock died, Clark got access to his great uncle’s attic.
Clark — who became a cop and served in the war in Iraq — began a search for answers about the wound. He learned a German sniper had caused it on Christmas eve as Clock’s unit was leaving the besieged town of Bastogne.
He also obtained a detailed knowledge about the Battle of the Bulge, and even a chat with Clock’s battalion commander, age 99 and living in Florida.
A New Generation’s VFW
Clark plans to share that story — complete with a morning-after-battle report, insignia, and other war memorabilia — with his fellow veterans when he makes a presentation on Thursday, the day before Veterans Day, to New Haven’s Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 12150.
Clark, now a New Haven police detective in the financial crimes investigation unit, is one of a handful of veterans of younger vets — mainly vets with service in Iraq and Afghanistan — who about a year and half ago decided to form Post 12150. The previous New Haven VFW post had more or less ceased operating and conducting activities and lost its charter.
“This new post is different,” Clark said: Most of the 50 or so members are what he termed “global war on terror vets.” Clark himself saw service not only in Iraq, where he was a civil affairs officer, but also in Kosovo before that.
While Korean and Vietnam War vets are welcome, of course, Clark said the new post is relatively young. Members include local students, many of whom live in the surrounding towns but may come to work in New Haven. Most are tech savvy and pull together for events and activities using social media.
Clark said he and the group’s other founders, including Det, Ryan McFarland, Officer Eric Aviles, and Charles Pickett, a teacher at the Sound School, were eager to mark their post with a signature of the men and women who have served since the attack on the World Trade Center.
Clark’s presentation Thursday will take place at the the clubhouse of the Knights of St. Patrick on State Street, one of several venues where the group has gathered since its founding.
A plaque in his uncle’s attic gave Clark the first clues: that his great uncle was in General George Patton’s Fourth Armored Division, Eighth Tank Battalion. He went online and found a Belgian site with info about the Battle of the Bulge.
That led him to an official “morning report” that identified Clock’s company, Company A.
And there was more: the date of the wound, Dec. 4, and evidence that he was “dropped from assigned” due to being “SWA,” or seriously wounded in action.
Eventually Clark located Clock’s then battalion commander Albin Irzyk, now 99 years old and living with his wife in Florida.
Clark was on the trail. He found and read Irzyk’s book about the battalion’s role in relieving the seige of Bastogne, which the 101st Airborne was holding onto. A detective, after all, also with an interest in geneology [he traces his Clarks back to the founding of New Haven and Milford], Clark , now armed with the company his great uncle had been part of, called up Irzyk.
The commander did not personally remember Clock but told Clark that “if he was wounded on the 24, he was a warrior.”
With the book and other research, he learned that Irzyk organized a column to relieve Bastogne before the major battle ensued. Clock’s company was in the column. They drove to within six miles of Bastogne, without resistance.
Then, when Patton heard they were out there, they were recalled.
On the way back, Clock’s tank came under fire. At some point he got out of the tank, a sniper shot him. The bullet luckily went through him without hitting heart or lung. An inch either way, and he likely would have been killed, said Clark.
Thus, after decades of wondering, the mystery of the whole in his great uncle’s back was solved.
“I want to make sure they [vets] talk to their family members. I had to do all this because nobody asked my great uncle. I want to present this [story] by way of educating the members. You have to ask,” Clark said.
“If it weren’t for the morning report, I’d never have known his company and the date he was wounded. I’d have lost the whole story. I could never have placed him in that task force that went to Bastogne. It never would have happened.”
It comes full circle ‘round as well, said Clark. Roll the clock forward 59 years from the Battle of the Bulge, and Clark himself was serving in Mosul in April 2013, at the start of the Iraq War with the 404th Civil Affairs Battalion attached to the Tenth Special Forces.
“I was relieved by elements of the 101st,” said Clark, which was, of course, the same and famous unit that held Bastogne and which Clark’s great uncle was trying to help relieve when he was wounded.
As to the German sniper, Clark said that Clock’s tank crew eventually killed the German soldier and gave his Luger to Clock.
“My cousin has it. I’ve never seen it,” said Clark.
But Clark has the story.
