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In 1962, Wes Clark was admitted to the United States Military Academy and began a 38-year career of public service in the United States Army, where he became a four-star general, a trainer of soldiers, a leader of troops, equally accomplished in war and in peace.

When thousands of Americans launched a campaign in early 2003 to draft General Clark to run for President, he consulted a minister friend, who told him: "The right job for you is where the world's deepest need meets your heart's greatest gladness." General Clark has said: "My heart's greatest gladness has always been answering the call and defending the country."

Wes Clark was born in Chicago in December 1944, the only child of Veneta and Benjamin Kanne. His father -- a prosecutor, democratic politician and World War I veteran -- died when Wes was a young child. He and his mother then moved to Little Rock, where they lived in a rented house with his grandparents while his mother got a job as a secretary in a bank. Using his father's deceased veterans benefits, they bought a small house where Wes grew up and became a star swimmer and top student at Little Rock's Hall High School. In 1954, his mother married Victor Clark, who became Wes's stepfather.

Clark's Distinguished Career

As a 25-year old Army captain in Vietnam, commanding a mechanized infantry company, Clark was on patrol in the jungle, looking for Viet Cong, when he was shot four times. Commanding his troops despite his wounds, he gave a series of orders, and his soldiers quickly overran the enemy positions. His bravery in battle earned him a Silver Star.

Wes returned to the United States to recover from his wounds. One week into his stay at Valley Forge Hospital -- after he was up and out of his wheelchair - his wife Gert got permission to bring him home for a short visit to meet a four-month old boy named Wes - who had been born when his dad was in Vietnam.

At an early age, Wes remembers feeling that the country was in danger - listening to radio reports on the Korean War and hearing the grown ups talk at the barber shop about Nikita Khrushchev's threats. He remembers one cold day in Little Rock pulling a folding chair into the hallway where the floor furnace was, and reading in Reader's Digest about Soviet tanks crushing the revolt in Hungary. In his words, he "wanted to do something to protect the country." At age 17, he entered West Point, where he graduated first in his class and won a personal victory in America's oldest inter-service rivalry - meeting his future wife Gertrude at a dance given for naval midshipmen in New York.

His record at West Point won him a Rhodes scholarship, and in 1966 he headed to England for two years of study at Oxford University. He passed his Oxford exams in two years and left to go to Army Ranger School for 72 days of training before leaving for Vietnam.

The future General spent the next year in company command and military schools, rebuilding his body, and learned that in the Army, the surest reward for success is ever-tougher challenges. General Clark commanded battalions in Colorado and Germany, taking units that had failed inspections and transforming them into outfits receiving top ratings. He was the commanding General of the Army's National Training Center during the Persian Gulf War, and later conducted three emergency deployments to Kuwait as the commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas.

"We lived in 31 houses, apartments and, in one case a house trailer, had 20 jobs, and were always on the road -- and it wasn't the road to riches," Clark said. "But when my eight-year obligation to the Army was over, I decided to stay. To me, there was no greater honor -- no way to be nearer to the heart of what mattered in America -- than to be serving and protecting the country in the United States military."

Over the years, he has won the praise of many highly-placed people. General Barry McCaffrey, who taught with Clark at West Point called him a "national treasure," and "one of the top five most talented people I've met in my life." Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General John Shalikashvili said: "Clark has an infinite capacity for hard work and stress." General Alexander Haig, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, called the Major Wes Clark "an officer of impeccable character." General Colin Powell called then-Lieutenant Colonel Clark an officer of "the rarest potential."

In 1994, General Clark was named director for strategic plans and policy of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was there that General Clark insisted that the Pentagon develop an exit strategy for the 1994 invasion of Haiti. It was an innovative approach, which brought together the UN and the US government, non-military elements.

An American Leader

In 1995, General Clark traveled to the Balkans as the military negotiator with Ambassador Richard Holbrooke in a US effort to end the war in Bosnia, the bloodiest war in Europe since World War II. Shortly after arriving, General Clark was traveling in a convoy on a treacherous mountain road, when an armored personnel carrier went over the edge with three US negotiators inside. General Clark ran to the site, worked his way down the mountainside to the vehicle, which had burst into flames. He called for a fire extinguisher, and pried open the hatch of the vehicle - too late to save his friends. Clark blamed Milosevic. It was a tragic beginning of the American effort to bring peace to the Balkans.

A few months later, General Clark played a vital role in ending the war at the Dayton peace talks. Historian David Halberstam wrote that some observers considered General Clark one of the "quiet heroes" at Dayton - because he worked out a peace plan that would be militarily enforceable, even though he knew it put him at risk in the Pentagon, where almost no one was behind him.

In 1997, after serving as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Southern Command, General Clark was selected for one of the top posts in the military: Supreme Allied Commander of NATO - a position first held by General Eisenhower.

As Supreme Allied Commander, General Clark commanded NATO forces during the war in Kosovo - and won the war in a way few thought possible: with air power alone, without a single allied combat death, while holding together the alliance of 19 nations, and isolating Milosevic from his allies. Milosevic's brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing' that had led to four wars - met its match in Kosovo. His attempt to drive a million Kosovars from their homes was crushed, and the loss led to the end for Milosevic, who was voted out of office and later handed over to be tried for war crimes.

Halberstam summarized General Clark's performance in Kosovo this way: "On the military side, the dominant figure had been Wes Clark. To no small degree, he had broken ranks with the Pentagon because of his belief that America had to act at certain moments to be the nation it believed it was."

In his career as a commander in the Army, Clark attributes his success not just to his ability to fight the enemy, but his ability to fight for his people. "We're in the era of the all-volunteer Army," General Clark has said. "My soldiers were free to go, and I needed them to stay." That's why Wes Clark worked hard as a commander to take care of his soldiers and their families - advocating for better housing, better health care, and better schools for their children. "You can't build a strong Army just with great generals; you have to have great people at every rank. You have to give everyone a chance to be all you can be.' It's true for the United States Army, and it's true for the United States."

"I'm running to bring back the core ideals of our democracy - personal liberty, open debate, and opportunity for all. These ideals have made us great. They will make us greater. They will make us safer and more prosperous. Join me. We can have a new kind of patriotism in America. We can have a new kind of America."

(Source of the above, from the official Clark04 campaign website.)