George William Edward Clark was born on 14 September 1914 at Perth in Western Australia to George William and Beatrice Adelaide (née Clegg). Around this time his father, a former Royal Scot, enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force and served with the 16th Infantry Battalion during the First World War. Following his return home, the Clark family relocated to Sydney and settled in the suburb of Cremorne. It was here on the city’s North Shore that their son became known as a talented swimmer and started working as a process engraver.

Clark enlisted in the Australian Army on 3 November 1939. His father enlisted four days later but was discharged after five weeks due to his age. Far from deterred, he successfully re-enlisted on 2 January 1940 after falsifying his date of birth by well over a decade on his second set of attestation papers. Then in an uncommon set of circumstances, both father and son were attached to the 6th Australian Division, the former with the 2/1st Infantry Battalion and the latter as a gunner with the 2/1st Field Regiment. The pair embarked together from Sydney on board HMT U5 just eight days later and disembarked in Egypt on 13 February. Father and son subsequently trained in Palestine until August, then moved to Egypt in final preparation for active service and were posted in close proximity for the first major Australian battle of the war at Bardia as well as the Capture of Tobruk in January 1941.

With his father remaining in the Middle East, Clark embarked for Athens on 10 April 1941 as part of Allied reinforcements deployed in support of the Greek Campaign. He spent a week travelling across much of the country following faltering attempts to advance into position, only to turn back and begin a hurried retreat from advancing German forces. He arrived at Kalamata with a small detachment from the 2/1st Field Regiment on 26 April, joining around 20,000 Allied troops assembled near the port and on adjacent beaches. Later that evening he narrowly missed out on embarking, and his evacuation attempts over the next two nights failed. He once again joined the assembly of remaining Allied troops awaiting evacuation on the evening of the 29 April when they were overrun by German forces. Clark along with around 8,000 Allied troops stranded at the port were taken prisoners of war.

After five weeks of internment in Greece, Clark entrained at Corinth on 7 June 1941 bound for a prisoner of war camp in Austria. He spent the following six weeks at several different camps and then developed a serious case of appendicitis, which ruptured and required surgery several days later. Following his release from hospital on 16 August 1941, he was primarily interned at Stalag XVIII-A in Wolfsberg before being transferred to Stalag XVIII-B at Spittal an der Drau in late July 1942. He was transferred once again in September of the same year, on this occasion to Oflag III-C at Hohenfels in southern Germany. Repurposed for enlisted ranks and renamed Stalag 383 in March 1943, he spent the remainder of his internment at this large prisoner of war camp.

With American forces advancing towards Stalag 383 in mid-April 1945, some 2,000 men including Clark were marched out of the camp by German guards without any further instruction. The group spent the night outside the camp, provisioned themselves with Red Cross parcels and proceeded south. After a fortnight on foot they camped at a farm in southern Bavaria with instructions to wait for support from American forces. On 11 May groups of men were driven to an aerodrome on the outskirts of Landshut and flown to England via a two-day stopover at Rheims in France. The men were transported to a Red Cross depot at Eastbourne, where they underwent medical inspections and were granted 14 days leave.

Clark embarked from Liverpool on board the Stirling Castle on 17 June 1945. The night before reaching Sydney, he stayed up with the men throughout the night in anticipation of sighting the Sydney Heads before disembarking at Darling Harbour. After three weeks leave he reported at Ingleburn Camp, but with the formal cessation of the war imminent, stayed in camp for just four days before receiving his discharge on 1 September 1945. His father served in the Middle East until deemed medically unfit for further service in November 1941 and subsequently returned to Australia, but was not discharged until December 1943.

Clark announced his engagement to Norma Edna Hyams in The Sydney Morning Herald on 17 December 1945, and married in April of the following year. The couple began raising a family at Cremorne and subsequently settled in the nearby suburb of Artarmon. Clark returned to his pre-war employment as a process engraver, and remained in the profession for his entire working life.

George William Edward Clark died on 11 August 2005.