author
A career artillery officer and military instructor, he wrote a practical early-20th-century guide to help soldiers prepare for Coast Artillery gunnery exams. His work reflects a hands-on effort to make technical military knowledge clearer and more useful.
Born in 1873, Harold E. Cloke — Harold Edward Cloke — is credited by Project Gutenberg as the author of The Gunner's Examiner and is listed there with the dates 1873–1949.
The Gunner's Examiner, first published in 1908, was written as a practical manual for enlisted men in the Coast Artillery Corps preparing for first- and second-class gunner examinations. In the book's introduction, Cloke explains that he wanted to gather scattered technical material into a clearer, more manageable form for students of gunnery.
That makes him an especially interesting figure for readers of military history: not just someone connected to artillery, but someone who tried to turn demanding specialist knowledge into a usable working guide. His surviving reputation today rests mainly on that clear, instructional contribution.