[8] As Chief of Staff, Marshall, working closely with Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, organized the largest military expansion in U.S. history, and was promoted to five-star rank as General of the Army.

[10] From 15 December 1945 to January 1947, Marshall served as a special envoy to China in an unsuccessful effort to negotiate a coalition government between the Nationalists of Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists of Mao Zedong.

[32][33] After another tour of duty in the Philippines beginning in 1913, Marshall returned in 1916 to serve as aide-de-camp to Major General J. Franklin Bell, the commander of the Western Department and former Army Chief of Staff, at the Presidio of San Francisco.

[6] On the long ocean voyage, his roommate was the division's assistant chief of staff for training, Major Lesley J. McNair;[37] the two formed a personal and professional bond that they maintained for the rest of their careers.

[37] Marshall was the first passenger from the first boat transporting American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) soldiers to set foot in Europe, and one of the first to enter the trenches of the Western Front.

By mid-April 1918 the division, now commanded by Major General Robert Lee Bullard, was deemed to have progressed enough in its training to have its own sector of the Western Front to hold.

[43] Marshall ventured beyond the front lines and far into no-man's land, often under friendly artillery fire and routinely risking discovery and capture by Imperial German Army troops.

[44] As he departed the division headquarters area, his horse stumbled, fell, and rolled over;[44] Marshall's left foot was caught in the stirrup, and he sustained a severe sprain and bruise.

After only a few months at Ft. Moultrie, MacArthur engineered Marshall's abrupt transfer to Chicago, where he served as senior instructor and chief of staff for the Illinois National Guard's 33rd Division from November 1933 to August 1936.

[6] In addition to obtaining a long-sought and significant troop command, traditionally viewed as an indispensable step to the pinnacle of the US Army, Marshall was also responsible for 35 Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps in Oregon and southern Washington.

Marshall's inspections of the CCC camps gave him and his wife Katherine the chance to enjoy the beauty of the American Pacific Northwest and made that assignment what he called "the most instructive service I ever had, and the most interesting.

In that capacity, then-Brigadier General Marshall attended a White House conference at which President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a plan to expand the United States Army Air Corps by 15,000 aircraft per year in preparation for World War II.

During his first week in office, he advised Roosevelt to issue an executive order expanding the Regular Army to 227,000 troops and the National Guard to 235,000 reservists, although the President could not immediately act because the United States Congress still favored isolationism.

[67] Many of the American generals who were given top commands during the war were either picked or recommended by Marshall, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jacob L. Devers, George S. Patton, Terry de la Mesa Allen Sr., Lloyd Fredendall, Lesley J. McNair, Mark Wayne Clark and Omar Bradley.

Without the input of experienced British or Allied combat officers on the nature of modern warfare and enemy tactics, many resorted to formulaic training methods emphasizing static defense and orderly large-scale advances by motorized convoys over improved roads.

[73] By mid-1943, however, after pressure from government and business leaders to preserve manpower for industry and agriculture, he had abandoned this plan in favor of a 90-division Army using individual replacements sent via a circuitous process from training to divisions in combat.

[73] The individual replacement system devised by Marshall and implemented by McNair exacerbated problems with unit cohesion and effective transfer of combat experience to new soldiers and officers.

He was instrumental in advancing the careers of the highly capable generals such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, George S. Patton, Walter Krueger and Mark W. Clark.

During the Arcadia Conference, he convinced the United Kingdom to accept this strategy, including the focus on defeating Germany first and the establishment of international unified commands in control of all Allied forces in a given theatre.

[78] Marshall and his advisors also opposed the Allied invasion of French North Africa after it became clear that Vichy France would offer resistance, concerns over an Axis intervention through Francoist Spain and Gibraltar, and suspicions that the operation was intended to defend European colonial territory with little strategic value to the war.

These reports included criticism of Marshall for delaying sending Lieutenant General Walter Short, the Army commander in Hawaii, important information obtained from intercepted Japanese diplomatic messages.

[84] Marshall also advised President Roosevelt to move part of the United States Pacific Fleet to the Atlantic Ocean to assist Neutrality Patrols, and that the defenses at Oahu made a Japanese attack on the island impossible.

[85] Ten days after the attack, Short and Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, commander of the United States Pacific Fleet at Naval Station Pearl Harbor, were both relieved of their duties.

[101][102][E][F] During his tenure as Secretary of State, Marshall also urged Truman to immediately call for The Netherlands to stop their invasion of Indonesia, a former Dutch colony which had declared independence in 1945.

A secret "eyes only" signal from Marshall to MacArthur on 29 September 1950, declared the Truman administration's commitment: "We want you to feel unhampered strategically and tactically to proceed north of the 38th Parallel".

[109] At the same time, Marshall advised against public pronouncements which might lead to United Nations votes undermining or countermanding the initial mandate to restore the border between North and South Korea.

Following Chinese military intervention in Korea during late November, Marshall and the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought ways to aid MacArthur while avoiding all-out war with China.

[127] His older brother Stuart Bradford Marshall (1875–1956) was a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and became a manager and executive in several metal production corporations, including the American Manganese Manufacturing Company.

[143] His parish priest, Franklin Moss Jr., from St. James Episcopal Church in Leesburg conducted the chapel and graveside services, assisted by former chief chaplain and National Cathedral Canon the Reverend Luther Miller.

It shows Marshall in uniform walking across a bronze bridge, facing east, to greet new friends and allies and was designed by artist Christiane Horn of Wartenberg, Bavaria.