Official website of the
City of Vancouver, Washington

General George C. Marshall and Vancouver

Biography of General Marshall

Born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, on New Year’s Eve, 1880, George Catlett Marshall is America’s most recent exemplar of the citizen-soldier, an enduring tradition begun by George Washington. Steadfast in purpose, upright in character, and modest in claim, Marshall became a General of the Army, the architect of its victory in World War II, and the inspiration for the rebuilding of a shattered postwar world.

The young Marshall attended historic Virginia Military Institute and was named VMI’s First Captain in his senior year. This is more testimony to his character and his sense of duty than to his scholastic achievements. In 1902, soon after graduation and his commissioning as a second lieutenant, Marshall and Elizabeth Carter Coles of Lexington, Virginia, were married.

During World War I, Marshall demonstrated his extraordinary capacity for organization and leadership on the staff of General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force in France. Between World Wars I and II, he served as Pershing’s aide in Washington, D.C., as well as with troops in China, at Fort Benning, Georgia, and at other posts throughout the United States. As the United States reduced its army in the name of disarmament, however, he, like others in his profession, found those years professionally frustrating.

Elizabeth died in 1927 and Marshall’s restrained nature became more evident. His marriage to Katherine Boyce Tupper Brown in 1930 began a happier time. In 1936 she accompanied him to Vancouver, Washington where he served as commander of Vancouver Barracks until 1938.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Marshall Army Chief of Staff on September 1, 1939. That is the day, coincidentally, on which Hitler invaded Poland and began World War II. Marshall served as Chief of Staff until the end of the war in 1945. During that time, he initiated, planned, and implemented the growth of the United States Army from a small, peacetime force of 174,000 to a wartime host of 8.5 million — an army distributed over the entire face of the earth, requiring food, boots, gasoline, weapons, airplanes, medical supplies and strategic direction. Providing these necessities, training the troops, and choosing their generals, were ultimately Marshall’s responsibilities. On the eve of victory in Europe, Winston Churchill said: “...what a joy it must be to [Marshall] to see how the armies he called into being by his own genius have won immortal renown. He is the true 'organizer of victory.’”

The war years were not without personal cost: Marshall had acquired three stepchildren by his marriage to Katherine, and Lt. Allen Tupper Brown, whom Marshall dearly loved, was killed in action at Anzio, Italy, in 1944.

In 1946, after Marshall’s tenure as Army Chief of Staff, President Truman sent him to China in an effort to avert civil war. On Marshall’s return, Truman appointed him Secretary of State in 1947. Marshall used his enormous prestige and credibility to secure passage of the European Recovery Program in 1948, known as the Marshall Plan. Over the next five years, the Plan provided $13 billion in food, machinery, and other aid to Europe’s devastated economies. The Marshall Plan was “...a lifeline to sinking men...The generosity of it was beyond belief,” said British statesman Ernest Bevin. As the army’s victory in the cause of freedom is Marshall’s glory, so the repair of a shattered continent is his legacy.

In 1949, at the age of 69 and in poor health, Marshall nonetheless agreed to serve as president of the American Red Cross. In 1950, at the outset of the Korean conflict, President Truman recalled him to governmental service as Secretary of Defense.

In 1953, Marshall received the Nobel Peace Prize, the only professional soldier ever so honored. The prize recognized the Marshall Plan, which provided an alternative to totalitarianism and gave Europe’s countries the economic strength by which they might choose freedom.

George Marshall died on October 16, 1959. His example lives wherever free people gather. The annual Marshall Lectures in Vancouver, Washington are such gatherings.