THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARSHALL

Long before he became assistant commandant of the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, George C. Marshall had recognized the need to reform how the school trained officers for future conflicts. After serving as a key planner of American operations in World War I, including the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, he had become an aide to General John J. Pershing, who established boards to evaluate the lessons the various branches of the American Expeditionary Forces learned while fighting in Europe. Once stateside, Marshall went to work, sifting through the boards’ reports and the AEF’s records. As he reviewed the documents, the tragic wastefulness of the American war effort—green recruits thrown into combat with insufficient training—came into focus. Summarizing what he had found for the January 1921 issue of Infantry Journal, Marshall warned, “It is possible that officers who participated only in the last phase of the war may draw somewhat erroneous conclusions from their battle experiences.” Marshall went on to point out that quick thinking and timely action were more important than proper order formats. “Many orders, models in their form, failed to reach the troops in time to affect their actions,” he wrote, “and many apparently crude and fragmentary instructions did reach front-line commanders in time to enable the purpose of the higher command to be carried out on the battlefield.”

“I then and there formed an intense desire to get my hands on Benning.”

Marshall’s conviction was reinforced by his experiences in Tientsin, China, where he served from 1924 to 1927 as the executive officer of the 15th Infantry Regiment. During