Historian in April 1944, and by subsequent orders, named Chief Historian of Theater and of the Armies of Occupation.

Relieved from active duty in May 1946, General Marshall was recalled frequently to active duty with the General Staff of the Department of the Army during the period 1946-50. During 1950-51, he was assigned to Korea as infantry-artillery operations analyst, which entailed duty with infantry line regiments. He has also served as lecturer at the Command and General Staff College, National War College, Army War College, Air University, the Infantry School, and the Armor School. He returned to Korea in 1953 in the capacity of war correspondent.

Decorations and awards: Legion of Merit; Bronze Star Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster; World War I Victory Medal; Army of Occupation of Germany Medal; Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal; European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal; Korean Service Medal; United Nations Service Medal; Combat Infantryman Badge; French Legion of Honor, Croix de Guerre with Palm, and Ordre d'Armee; Belgian Order d'Leopold with Palms, and Ardennes Medal; Italian Croci di Guerra, and Fatique de Guerra; Ethiopian Combat Medal.

Civil affiliations: Member, Army Historical Advisory Committee; Army Public Relations Committee; Michigan Civil Defense Committee; Board of Trustees, Detroit Chapter, American Red Cross; U.S. Chamber of Commerce (National Defense Committee); Sons of the American Revolution; American Legion; Veterans of Foreign Wars; Board of Advisers, Association of the U.S. Army.

Civilian occupation: Editorial writer and military critic, Detroit News; his books include: "Blitzkrieg," "Island Victory," "The Mobility of One Man," "The Armed Forces Officer," "Armies on Wheels," "Critique of Weapons and Tactics in Korea," "Tactics in Defense Against Atomic Attack," "Pork Chop Hill." "The River and the Gauntlet," "Bastogne," "Men Against Fire," "Makin," and "Hill 440." He is also the author of numerous official military texts and manuals and is a contributor to national publications on military subjects.

MARSHALL STATEMENT

Senator STENNIS. All right, if the subcommittee members are ready, General Marshall will proceed with his statement.

TESTIMONY OF BRIG. GEN. S. L. A. MARSHALL, U.S. ARMY RESERVE (RETIRED)

General MARSHALL. Mr. Chairman and Senators, it would be better if I did not repeat in my direct statement anything that I have said in the printed statement, and I would try to limit myself to those things in my experience which would give you some idea of why I have arrived at my viewpoints and why I feel that my data are very germane to this investigation.

Senator STENNIS. General, pardon me, just a moment.

We have learned by experience here. We think it is better for you to read your statement.

General MARSHALL. You want me to read it, sir?

Senator STENNIS. Yes, I really want you to. It won't take long, and that will serve as the launching pad, so to speak, for your testi

mony.

General MARSHALL. All right, but I will have to go into some other matters that are collateral in order to amplify it.

Senator STENNIS. We understand that fully, of course.

General MARSHALL. I am well aware that I was called here mainly because, while I respect wholly Colonel Mayer's patriotism and professional attainments, I do not agree with his broad conclusions and have

The issue is much too important that my personal opinions or those of any other person should concern you or have any influence on the national policy. There is a great body of data on this subject. It should be carefully reviewed and out of that review, the correct answers will come forth.

I cannot imagine anything worse for this country than an unjustified lamenting, a beating of breasts about failure and weakness in the American character or a mistaken evangelism which pleads for the saving of that which has not yet been lost. If I were today convinced that American youth of military age were as derelict and characterless as the worst pessimists have proclaimed it, though I might say so here, I would be loath to suggest how this story might be put before the country to serve a constructive end. It promotes a limitless danger.

A great nation may not be told: "You are weak. Your young people were proved unfit for war. There is no hope for you but to start anew," without blighting its own power while renouncing pretension to greatness. Yet words of this kind have been spoken and reiterated ever since the Korean conflict.

Something should be said of my own credentials and experience. I am a writer and operations analyst. My whole life has been devoted to these activities. In World War I, I was in combat 6 months in France as an engineer sergeant and infantry second lieutenant. I didn't learn very much.

From 1922 onward, I have applied myself unremittingly to the study of war, and more specifically, to the analysis of the human equation in combat, with particular emphasis on Americans, though I have also worked with foreign troop bodies. Either as a soldier or war correspondent, I have gone to 13 wars and some smaller actions; as a soldier, I have had 15 campaigns wherein I worked forward of regimental headquarters in line outfits.

It is of record that I have dealt with a greater number of American troops in combat than anyone at any time. Finally, I have worked with POW's of many nations over the years. This line of work has continued until now.

Recently, I have been with U.N. forces in the Congo, the Israeli Army, and the Defense Forces in West Germany, making a study in depth at the request of Minister Strauss. Still more recently, I have been with the Canadian Army, witnessing its new programs, and have visited special forces and the 82d Division at Fort Bragg.

In World War II, I was first combat historian of the Central Pacific theater for 10 months, then chief historian of the European theater for 2 years. The titles are somewhat misleading. While in the Pacific, I pioneered the system which we used to evaluate our forward firepower and the effectiveness of our tactics. There was no way to apply it except to be with fighting troops. Then, having learned by that experience that the subject we know least about is the quality of the American fighter, I stayed with troops, and left the administrative load to my subordinates.

In that war, more than 600 rifle companies, tank outfits, and artillery batteries, in or fresh out of combat, passed through my hands that I might evaluate their effectiveness. My data is based only on opera

tions with which I was personally identified. It includes every unit which hit Normandy on D-Day.

In Korea, I was called first as infantry operations analyst for the Eighth Army, doing that work in 1950-51. The battle in the North which we lost was my first laboratory, my initial work being to determine the combat methodology of the Communist Chinese, next to report wherein our own system was weak and how it might be improved. I went to Korea for a second tour in 1953. The fight was still on. My ticket read that I was a correspondent. But immediately that I arrived, Gen. Mark W. Clark called me to a military job-to supervise censorship at Operation Little Switch, advise and assist in the interrogations of returning prisoners and help guide certain high-level decisions contingent on that operation.

Thereafter I was given a second military job-analyzing our patroling and establishing a new school so that we could regularize it across the front and keep the patrols accountable. Between these two tours, I covered the fighting operations of another 200 or so companies mainly Americans soldiers and marines, but also Ethiopians, ROK's, Turks, and the British.

Looking back over 45 years of it, the memory I most prize is the American soldier on that long retreat out of North Korea. That was in December 1950.

The shattered rifle companies among which I moved had been cut to 15 or 20 men by death and wounds; that means that 150 men had been killed in the average company during the preceding 5 days.

It was my task to determine how they and the nonsurvivors had acquitted themselves. We kept at the work. Then when I had learned what I needed to know, invariably some private or sergeant would speak up saying, "Now, Colonel, we have a question for you. What's wrong with the country, with MacArthur, with this command? Hasn't anybody got any guts any more? We can whip these s.o.b.'s. Why don't they turn us around?"

While I had no answer for them, I was aware that I was hearing from the average American soldier in Korea. Yet in the years that followed, I heard this man and his comrades vilified as weaklings unworthy of their country, simply because the more luckless of their number, taken prisoner, thrown into a situation for which they were in no way prepared, did not all acquit themselves like Nathan Hale. This is a perversion of history, and I deny emphatically that the record has any such sinister significance.

It would be intolerable to defend, on the score of ignorance, illness, or cowardice, the treasonable and depraved conduct of the worst actors among them. Certainly many were derelict without excuse, craven with reason. But it is less tolerable and a crime against ourselves that, because a relatively few under trial were found griev iously wanting, all who suffered with them should be slandered, the great Army with which they fought should be besmirched and we should be asked to look askance at a whole generation of young Americans. Yet this canard is recurrent in our literature.

On getting this call, I did not have time to prepare graphs and research statistics. I must recall from memory the general impressions deriving from the body of data; some years have passed since I did

POW's in Korea almost exactly equals the figure which the FBI says is shiftless, mean, and lawbreaking within our society.

Military service and prison camp rigor-will not make a silk purse of a sow's ear. More Americans were decorated for courageous and steadfast conduct in the Korean camps than ever were investigated under suspicion that they criminally had disgraced the uniform. I am not speaking here of the boy who merely attended indoctrination classes and let himself be dragooned into marching in a peace parade or was too inclined to hobnob with his captors for the sake of currying favor, though he spilled no military secrets. Such marginal misbehavior as these things constitute are not the way of the ideal American soldier. But they are not high crimes, and while they cannot be condoned under our military code, what they signify deserves better understanding than we yet have given it.

Men are not alike. They vary greatly in their ability to withstand torture, starvation, mortal terror, chronic illness, cold, and going unloved. I know how easy it is to gain credit for extraordinary endurance when in fact one is not even tried. Each of us has some of that natural strength of body and spirit with which the Creator endowed us; the most fortunate of us was fortified for living by the love, resolution, and teaching of our parents, professors, and the Samaritans met on life's journey.

Our profiles come of the space others grant us. This is true of men everywhere. But we know that the services have to take people as they come. It is too late then for the transforming of character, as Colonel Mayer well pointed out yesterday.

The remarkable thing is that so many make a normal adjustment to military disciplines, when so little has been demanded of them earlier, and still less given of ideal teaching, example in leading the strong life, and loving tenderness. Yet at least these disciplines are positive, and supported by tradition and law, they become readily acceptable to the individual, because the choice is one of conforming or bucking the rhythm of the crowd.

Yet what the man comes to do by the numbers as a soldier, airman, or marine is not transferable to his POW situation, because, of a sudden, he is left without moral props. The forms of organization are swept clean. There is no authority on which to lean except that of the enemy. He must either rise to greater heights of manhood as a prisoner under the sword of adversity than he reached as a warrior under fire, or become a deadweight on every volunteer who is trying to create a new unity out of the most terrible of conditions.

Can we count it remarkable that the greater number is not capable of meeting the emergency as reborn rugged individualists? If the ordeal of prison camp could do this for the mass-make men transcend their own natures-it would be the most helpful of all universities. Without a methodology by which a new leadership will assert itself, whereby a new discipline has a chance to restore the vitality of human organization, the weak must inevitably relapse into stagnant pools, lost and hopeless. Under sustained, inordinate pressure, the truly strong among us may see mainly a challenge to their own fortitude. But here we are not speaking of the majority of men-Americans or

tions with which I was personally identified. It includes every unit which hit Normandy on D-Day.

In Korea, I was called first as infantry operations analyst for the Eighth Army, doing that work in 1950-51. The battle in the North which we lost was my first laboratory, my initial work being to determine the combat methodology of the Communist Chinese, next to report wherein our own system was weak and how it might be improved. I went to Korea for a second tour in 1953. The fight was still on. My ticket read that I was a correspondent. But immediately that I arrived, Gen. Mark W. Clark called me to a military job to supervise censorship at Operation Little Switch, advise and assist in the interrogations of returning prisoners and help guide certain high-level decisions contingent on that operation.

Thereafter I was given a second military job-analyzing our patroling and establishing a new school so that we could regularize it across the front and keep the patrols accountable. Between these two tours, I covered the fighting operations of another 200 or so companies mainly Americans soldiers and marines, but also Ethiopians, ROK's, Turks, and the British.

Looking back over 45 years of it, the memory I most prize is the American soldier on that long retreat out of North Korea. That was in December 1950.

The shattered rifle companies among which I moved had been cut to 15 or 20 men by death and wounds; that means that 150 men had been killed in the average company during the preceding 5 days.

It was my task to determine how they and the nonsurvivors had acquitted themselves. We kept at the work. Then when I had learned what I needed to know, invariably some private or sergeant would speak up saying, "Now, Colonel, we have a question for you. What's wrong with the country, with MacArthur, with this command? Hasn't anybody got any guts any more? We can whip these s.o.b.'s. Why don't they turn us around?"

While I had no answer for them, I was aware that I was hearing from the average American soldier in Korea. Yet in the years that followed, I heard this man and his comrades vilified as weaklings unworthy of their country, simply because the more luckless of their number, taken prisoner, thrown into a situation for which they were in no way prepared, did not all acquit themselves like Nathan Hale. This is a perversion of history, and I deny emphatically that the record has any such sinister significance.

It would be intolerable to defend, on the score of ignorance, illness. or cowardice, the treasonable and depraved conduct of the worst actors among them. Certainly many were derelict without excuse. craven with reason. But it is less tolerable and a crime against ourselves that, because a relatively few under trial were found grieriously wanting, all who suffered with them should be slandered, the great Army with which they fought should be besmirched and we should be asked to look askance at a whole generation of young Americans. Yet this canard is recurrent in our literature.

On getting this call, I did not have time to prepare graphs and research statistics. I must recall from memory the general impressions deriving from the body of data; some years have passed since I did