AMERICAN ARMY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4536, 13 February 1942, Page 6

AMERICAN ARMY

ITS KEY MAN GEORGE CATLETT MARSHALL (By D.M.D.) General Georgs Catlett Marshall, Chief of the General Staff and Commanding General of the United States Army’s Field Forces, has not yet been put to the supreme test, as has his distinguished colleague in the Philippines, General MacArthur. Having served with the great soldier who led the American forces in France in 1918, Marshall is known as a “Pershing man.” He is a graduate of Virginia Military Institute, and the seventh American Chief of Staff who did not pass through West Point, the great military academy which has trained soldiers from as far back as 1778. Generals Marshall and MacArthur are two outstanding army men of the day. Throughout the past two years Marshall has been organising the new American army. Flying over more than 28,000 miles, he has inspected army posts not only within the United States but in outlying territories. His winning personality and eager interest have been described as “two attributes of leadership which flatter and inspire.” His work in 1940 was centred in the creation of a small but efficient field force of the regular army, developed to war strength. When Germany overran France, and Nazi threats against America became pronounced, a sudden change in army plans was forced on General Marshall, who faced a position in which, to use his own words, he had “to do in two years what the Germans did in seven.” General Marshall has great faith in the efficiency of his officers in this new army—officers who have the capacity of leadership in modern warfare. Though he has encouraged the establishment of new tank divisions and the extension of the Air Corps, he believes that infantry “still carries the ball” in land fighting. Generally his tireless enthusiasm has evolved from the old army of the United States a wholly new and fighting-fit personnel.