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Such words buttered no parsnips for George Marshall while the slowness of peacetime promotion held him back. When World War I began he was only a captain. Overseas, in charge of operations of the famed First Division, Infantryman Marshall was upped to lieutenant colonel; later, as colonel and operations chief for the First Army, he moved 500,000 men and 2,700 pieces of artillery into the Argonne offensive without a hitch. It was an action for which George Marshall and many another old grad of the Command and Staff School were peculiarly fitted. As student and instructor, Marshall had studied and lectured on operations based on German maps of the area around Metz. When the First Army moved in, many of its officers knew every road and lane of the area they had studied but never seen before.
When peace, as it must to all U. S. Armies, brought reduction and penury, Infantryman Marshall was dropped back to a majority. He did not get back his colonelcy until 1933. Meanwhile he had served a tour with the Fifteenth Infantry at Tientsin, China, had been aide to General Pershing, instructor for the Illinois National Guard. He became a general officer in 1936—much too late for so good a soldier, many officers thought—and moved into Washington in 1938 as head W. P. D. in the General Staff.
George Marshall has a lot of respect for Army system. He also has a healthy disrespect for red tape, but adds: "When you cut it you've got to be deadly accurate." Convinced that the Army, in plan and theory, is well prepared for the emergency it faces now, he likes to point out that its mobilization and fighting plans have been worked over continuously for the past 20 years by the Army's best brains, have been changed from what he calls "semi-siege warfare" (the type of 1914-18) to a plan for more simplified, offensive tactics resembling those used by the Germans today.
The Big Job. Today General Marshall has a terrific job. Up with the sun, he trots away from his quarters at Fort Meyer, Va. every morning for a half hour on horseback, gets to his office in the Munitions Building between 7:30 and 7:45, finds only one subordinate who regularly beats him to work: greying, kindly Miss Maude A. Young, who has been secretary to every Chief of Staff since Peyton March. With General Bryden riding herd on the detail of the staff, he confers with his four Gs, submits himself to visiting Congressmen and Senators, many another caller, has frequent meetings with State and Treasury Departments and the President. Of late he has often appeared before Senate and House committees, where he talks so fluently and rapidly about Army plans that stenographers have a hard time keeping up with him.
Early to rise, George Marshall also likes to get to bed early, reads himself to sleep. He has no patience with formal military parties, would rather sit and swap stories —of the Philippines, China, Hawaii, the A. E. F.—with Army cronies who consider ii o'clock a late hour. Today the Army and its Chief of Staff often work late perforce, sometimes clear around the clock. George Marshall recognizes the necessity, but deprecates it. "Nobody," says he, "ever has an original thought after 3 p.m."