In answer to an unusual mid-morning summons, 17 reporters trotted upstairs from the Pentagon pressroom to the Secretary of Defense's third-floor office. They found George Catlett Marshall, trim in a blue-grey double-breasted suit and dark tie, smiling genially. He waved them to seats, crossed one leg over the other, and he broke his well-kept secret: "My resignation as Secretary of Defense takes effect at 11 a.m."
It was a year to the day since Harry Truman had booted Louis Johnson out of the Pentagon and summoned Marshall from retirement for the third time (the other two: in 1945, to head the...
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