Travers Clarke

Lieutenant General Sir Travers Edwards Clarke GBE KCB KCMG (6 April 1871 – 2 February 1962) was a British Army officer who served in the South African War and the First World War. During the First World War, he held various staff positions; he was Quartermaster-General to the Armies in France from 1917 to 1921, when he became Quartermaster-General to the Forces. From 1923 to 1941 he was the ceremonial colonel of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.

Military career
Clarke attended the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and was commissioned into the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in October 1890. He served with his regiment on the North West Frontier of India and in the Tirah Expedition of 1897-98, and then in the Second Boer War in South Africa from 1900 to 1902. For his service in South Africa, he received the Queen's South Africa Medal with four clasps.

In 1911, he married Mary Jordan, daughter of Sir John Jordan, the British ambassador to China. The couple had one daughter before Mary's death in 1918. He remarried in 1921, to Irene Roe (née Cross), the widow of an officer in the Iniskillings. By his second marriage, he had two sons and a daughter, one of whom was killed on active service in 1944.

He served in World War I as Quartermaster-General for the British Armies in France from 1917. In this role he was responsible for transferring Allied prisoners of war back to the United Kingdom and he strove to ensure they were treated properly and given clothing and blankets as they returned from Germany. After the War he became Quartermaster-General to the Forces; he retired in 1926.

He was also Deputy Chairman of the British Empire Exhibition in 1924.