REFERENCE: 4458 Va Cou
Appointed to the Military Academy at West Point in 1880 and graduated in
1885. Appointed Second lieutenant in the 1oth Cavalry and stationed at
Fort grant, Arizona.
Lieutenant Clarke was in command of Company K, of the 10th Cavalry, in an
engagement with the Apache Indians under Geronimo May 14, 1886 and was
complimented in his commanding officer's report for his gallantry in this
his first engagement.
The Baltimore Sun and the Richmond State quote the following account of
the gallant act of Lieutenant Clarke:
"A correspondent writes to Harper'seekly concerning an act of bravery
which, he says, 'under any nation under the sun but the United States
would be fitly rewarded." He says, 'Troop K, of the United States 10th
Cavalry, a regiment of colored men but with white officers, while
scouting in the Sierra Pinitas or Little Pine Mountains, in sonora,
Mexico, came upon a band of hostile Apaches, strongly posted upon an open
plateau. In the resulting skirmish one man was killed and another
seriously wounded. As Corporal Scott, the wounded man, fell to the
ground, Lieut. Powhatan H. Clarke, the second in command, rushed forward
through a heavy fire, took the Corporal in his arms and carried him out
of the line of battle to a place of comparitive safety. Germany, France,
England or any foreign nation rewards its heroes with crosses, ribbons
and stars, but our republic in its Puritan simplicity, thinks an
honorable mention in orders ample sufficient, and seldom grants that. I
have not the slightest desire to see any order of nobility instituted in
the United States, but so long as war lasts and brave deeds are told in
song and story, so long will such decorations as are mentioned above
improve the morale and increase the espirit of an army, whether that army
belongs to a foreign power or our own republic.' This exploit of a
Southern soldier risking his own life to save that of a colored comrade,
apart from its merit as an act of bravery, is a conspicuous illustration
of a phase of Southern character which some Northern people have not yet
learned to appreciate. p. 427, Virginia Cousins