Filed under: Marines, Officers | Tags: Audie Murphy, Chesty Puller, George Patton, Google tools, John Basilone, Mark Clark, Ngram, Smedley Butler
I must admit to knowing very little about Mark Clark – so little that I learned some things by reading his wikipedia entry. That said, he has been characterized as somewhat distant and self-serving in some things that I’ve read – in particular for his efforts to sieze Rome in early June of 1944 against orders. He is also often criticized for Monte Cassino, Anzio and Salerno.
However, the reason I thought to mention him today is that I was utilizing a new Google tool. It’s their “Ngram” Viewer.
When you enter phrases into the Google Books Ngram Viewer, it displays a graph showing how those phrases have occurred in a corpus of books (e.g., “British English”, “English Fiction”, “French”) over the selected years.
I had entered a collection of officers just to see how they fared: Chesty Puller, Smedley Butler, George Patton, and Mark Clark. While Chesty Puller’s name has never appeared often, his legendary status among Marines always brings him into play. Smedley Butler is slowly fading as he becomes just another General from the past. However, the interesting part for me is how Clark spikes so much higher, including a second spike that is likely related to his Korean War service, but now seems to be slipping as Patton continuesd a steady ascent (though both have dropped in recent years).
Very interesting. I also checked Audie Murphy and John Basilone together.
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