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87 7 Marshall’s Men I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding. —Jeremiah 3:15, King James Version The people and the work made Smith’s Benning assignment “most pleasant.” Kay was relaxed, and Truman thoroughly enjoyed his job. Many of their friends, colleagues, and students became the top army leaders during and after World War II, and there was an unexpected bonus. Truman’s already close connection to the German Army was strengthened by an official visit to Prussia and by meeting Captain Adolf von Schell, who was the first German exchange officer assigned to Fort Benning after the Great War. Schell became a lifelong friend of the Smiths. But the most important aspect of the Benning assignment for Smith was his introduction to George C. Marshall. Smith admired Marshall at Benning, and that admiration increased over time. Marshall reciprocated, discovering in Smith personal and professional qualities that made him one of a group called “Marshall’s men,” soldiers who would exercise power and bear great responsibilities in the Second World War. Marshall never published a memoir. He didn’t want to repeat the race to glory and the finger pointing that followed the Great War in a battle of memoirs, which, as a close associate of General of the Armies John J. Pershing, Marshall was in a good position to observe. Fortunately, Forrest C. Pogue has given us a biography of Marshall in four volumes that provides great insight into the man.1 Generals in times of war make decisions of consequence, creating clusters of friends and enemies, cheerleaders and snipers. However, in the century and more that have passed since his commissioning in January 1902, and the sixty years plus since he left public service in September 1951, Marshall’s copybook is strikingly free of blots. Considering the scrutiny of his decisions, the events in which he participated, and his high posts in momentous times, 88 EXPOSING THE THIRD REICH including army chief of staff, secretary of state, and secretary of defense , the absence of ad hominem criticism is remarkable. Professionalism and rectitude defined his career from beginning to end. He personified the Prussian motto “Sein Statt Schein” (“Be, rather than appear to be”). In 1901 Marshall was first captain at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), served with distinction in the Philippines at the beginning of his career, and was first in his 1907 class at Fort Leavenworth, remaining to serve on the faculty there until 1910. Despite the fact that his work brought him to the attention of luminaries before the Great War—Hunter Liggett, who would distinguish himself as first army commander in the Great War in 1918; J. Franklin Bell, commandant , General Service and Staff College (1903–1906); Tasker H. Bliss, chief of staff and later American military representative in the Supreme War Council; Leonard Wood, Medal of Honor recipient, Harvard Medical School graduate, friend of Theodore Roosevelt, and army chief of staff; Henry L. Stimson, secretary of war under Presidents Taft, F. D. Roosevelt, and Truman among them—at thirty -five Marshall was still a lieutenant and would remain one until his promotion to captain on 14 August 1916 after fourteen years as an officer, nine as a first lieutenant. Then-Lieutenant Henry H. (Hap) Arnold, later chief of army air forces in World War II, said of Marshall in a letter to his wife in 1913 that he had just seen a future chief of staff in action.2 Another peer called him “one of the finest tacticians and strategists in the Army . . . with the quickest and best answers to tactical problems of any officer I ever met.”3 These accolades did not prevent him from considering leaving the army. Discouraged by slow promotions and the prospect of a mediocre career, he considered resignation from the army in a 22 November 1915 letter to VMI superintendent and mentor General E. W. Nichols, who replied, “I would advise you to stick to it. If you do, I am sure in time you will be among the high ranking officers in the service.”4 Though his requests for command in the Great War were denied , Marshall distinguished himself as an organizer and staff officer as a colonel. After the war, he reverted to major as the army was severely reduced. Pershing selected him to serve as a kind of personal chief of staff in 1919, a job he did for the next five years...

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