George Marshall’s memoir of the Great

George Marshall’s memoir of the Great War, written between 1919 and 1923 and discovered in manuscript only after his death, has precisely that quality.

I myself am a World War I buff. I have taught courses in it and in the literature arising out of it. That was really the Great War, in the sense that it represented a fateful turning-point for Europe and the West. And indeed a sense of fatefulness hangs over these memoirs. When the United States entered it, the war had been going on for two years and nine months. The year 1917 had been catastrophic for the Allies. A quarter of a million Frenchmen had lost their lives in futile assaults upon the Hindenburg line, and the French army had mutinied. A quarter of a million British soldiers died that year in the mud of Passchendaele. Both armies were more or less washed up. The Russians were out, and the Italians would shortly be routed at Caporetto. For better or worse—and I would say worse—American entry prevented a stalemate and guaranteed the eventual defeat of the Central Powers. In his clear and quietly moving prose, young Major Marshall takes us from the embarkation of the AEF through the great German offensive of 1918 and the climactic and decisive slaughters of the Meuse-Argonne. Here is the embarkation for France at Hoboken: “About 3 a.m. I was standing at the window of the shipping office with the newly appointed commander of the Port of Embarkation watching the endless column of infantry pouring slowly through the courtyard into the covered docks. Except for the shuffle of their feet there was little noise. It was an impressive and forbidding scene.” It should have been. This was a time of the breaking of nations.

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Jeffrey Hart

Jeffrey Hart is a contributor to National Review.

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George Marshall’s memoir of the Great War, written between 1919 and 1923 and discovered in manuscript only after his death, has precisely that quality.

I myself am a World War I buff. I have taught courses in it and in the literature arising out of it. That was really the Great War, in the sense that it represented a fateful turning-point for Europe and the West. And indeed a sense of fatefulness hangs over these memoirs. When the United States entered it, the war had been going on for two years and nine months. The year 1917 had been catastrophic for the Allies. A quarter of a million Frenchmen had lost their lives in futile assaults upon the Hindenburg line, and the French army had mutinied. A quarter of a million British soldiers died that year in the mud of Passchendaele. Both armies were more or less washed up. The Russians were out, and the Italians would shortly be routed at Caporetto. For better or worse—and I would say worse—American entry prevented a stalemate and guaranteed the eventual defeat of the Central Powers. In his clear and quietly moving prose, young Major Marshall takes us from the embarkation of the AEF through the great German offensive of 1918 and the climactic and decisive slaughters of the Meuse-Argonne. Here is the embarkation for France at Hoboken: “About 3 a.m. I was standing at the window of the shipping office with the newly appointed commander of the Port of Embarkation watching the endless column of infantry pouring slowly through the courtyard into the covered docks. Except for the shuffle of their feet there was little noise. It was an impressive and forbidding scene.” It should have been. This was a time of the breaking of nations.