Leonard Francis Clark (January 6, 1907, United States – May 4, 1957, Venezuela) was an American explorer, writer, and OSS colonel. He attended the University of California, Berkeley. During the Second World War he joined the army and then the

Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branc ...

. He flew in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

behind Japanese lines, organized guerrilla activity and espionage in China and Mongolia. He attained the rank of colonel. After the war he organized mostly one-man expeditions in Borneo, Mexico, the Celebes,

Sumatra Sumatra is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 (182,812 mi.2), not including adjacent i ...

, China, Tibet, India,

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, Central America, South America, and Burma. He died on a diamond-mining expedition in Venezuela. Leonard Clark was the writer of a number of successful books about his expeditions.

Works

*''A Wanderer Till I Die'' *''The Marching Wind'' *''The Rivers Ran East'' *''Yucatan Adventure''

Sources

Leonard Clark
author profile on '' GoodReads''
Leonard Clark
author profile on ''Classic Travel Books'' People of the Office of Strategic Services 1907 births 1957 deaths American explorers American travel writers University of California, Berkeley alumni 20th-century American non-fiction writers Deaths in Venezuela United States Army personnel of World War II Place of birth missing {{US-explorer-stub