Charles Clarke (RAF officer)

Air Commodore Charles Henry Clarke, OBE (25 November 1923 – 7 May 2019) was a British Royal Air Force officer. Having served in Bomber Command in the Second World War, he was shot down and interned at Stalag Luft III—this was The Great Escape camp and liked to say he acted as a watcher but as a new arrival to the prison he would not have partaken in any aspect of the preparation for the escape or the escape itself . He remained in the RAF after the war, commanded RAF Stafford, served in Palestine, Aden and Malta, before retiring in 1978. He later campaigned for a memorial to Bomber Command: one was finally erected in 2012 in London.