#3-459
Memorandum for General Strong
December 22, 1942 [Washington, D.C.]
Personal and Confidential
On the morning of December 18th I dictated the attached memorandum for your Section.1 I am told that the reply was drafted in the Foreign Liaison Branch the following day, which was Saturday. Attached is a copy of the reply which indicates the amount of time which might be required for its preparation.
Apparently the draft of reply remained in the messenger service on Sunday and did not reach the G-2 front office until yesterday. It then remained in General Kroner's basket awaiting his signature until this morning. So a request from me dictated immediately upon my arrival at the office on December 18th produces the brief attached note for my signature on December 22nd, and then only after I had instituted a telephone inquiry.
I am certain that this is indicative of too much overhead and pursuant to my talk with you yesterday I wish you would make a coldblooded survey of G-2 to see what reductions can be made. It is very difficult for me to come to definite conclusions on the basis of the superficial data I have at my disposal. However, I am convinced that certain things are symptomatic of definite troubles in definite situations and this recent incident, together with others in the past that have accumulated in my mind, lead me to feel that you will secure a more efficient result if you make a considerable reduction in strength.
I am further influenced in this view by my own personal experiences in France which have a definite bearing on this subject. As they amount to a reflection on General Nolan's organization I wish you to see that no eye other than your own reads this memorandum.
I was called away from the First Division to GHQ in July 1918 and given the task the night of my arrival to work out a plan for the reduction of the St. Mihiel salient. The following morning at 8:00 o'clock I was taken through the G-2 Section by General Nolan and Colonel Conger personally.2 They had maps and data stacked on shelves to the ceiling, so much in detail, such as plan directeur maps on a large scale, that as a result they gave me nothing and I left the Section after a two-hour visit without any specific data on which to base a plan. I therefore left Chaumont and visited the headquarters of the 2nd and 8th French Armies and from them obtained the data on which my work was based.
The following winter I was relieved from duty as Chief of Staff of an Army Corps and drawn into GHQ and that evening given a job of preparing plans for the further advance of our 3rd Army into Germany because of the failure of the Germans to carry out the Armistice terms imposed at Spa. Again I visited the G-2 Section the following morning at 8:00 o'clock, this time in company with Colonel Conger only. Again I found a mass of material and again I left that Section with nothing but a pre-war Baedeker on which I did my planning.3
Since then there has been so much talk of the magnificent work of G-2 in the AEF that I fear we are headed the same way so far as our central organization here is concerned. You might say that they were probably under-staffed and therefore could not sufficiently index their data so as to make it readily available. I don't think that was the trouble. During the early period of the AEF that might have been the case; later on I think the trouble clearly was entering into a mass of details that more properly belonged to Army, Corps and Division commanders, and being submerged under this burden of material.
Document Copy Text Source: George C. Marshall Papers, Pentagon Office Collection, Selected Materials, George C. Marshall Research Library, Lexington, Virginia.
Document Format: Typed memorandum.
1. Marshall's memorandum said: "Yesterday I received a beautifully packed present of three bottles of wine, a box of cigarettes, and two jars of caviar from Major General and Mrs. Alexander I. Belyaev, with a card of the Season's greetings. I assume he is the Russian Military Attache. Please draft me an appropriate acknowledgement.” Belyaev was chairman of the Government Purchasing Commission of the Soviet Union to the United States.
2. The officers mentioned were Brigadier General Dennis E. Nolan and Colonel Arthur L. Conger. Concerning the writing of the St. Mihiel operational plan, see Papers of George Catlett Marshall, #1-133 [1: 151–52].
3. For Marshall's plans in February 1919, see ibid., #1-154–#1-156 [1: 175–81].
Recommended Citation: ThePapers of George Catlett Marshall, ed.Larry I. Bland and Sharon Ritenour Stevens (Lexington, Va.: The George C. Marshall Foundation, 1981– ). Electronic version based on The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, vol. 3, “The Right Man for the Job,” December 7, 1941-May 31, 1943 (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), pp. 488–490.