E N E R a L Marshall's Day Started at Six at Quarters One, Fort Myer
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E N E R A L Marshall’s day started at six at Quarters One, Fort Myer, home of all the Army Chiefs of Staff,save the widower Persh- ing, since Marshall’s old chief Major General J Franklin Bell, had moved into it in 1908 Built in 1899 at a cost of $15,000, the three-story red-brick building stood near the cornel- of Arlington National Cemetery, on Arlington Heights, overlooking the city of Washington In accordance with custom the house had been redecorated for the new Chief of Staff before he moved into it in 1939.1 Only Marshall’s own bedroom, simple in its arrangements, remained much as it had been. His main personal addition to the building had been a pen for chickens since he wanted to indulge his farmer’s instincts by having his own flock. Inasmuch as this was not a normal fixture for the home of the Chief of Staff, he had insisted on paying tlie bill for the material needed The chickens flourished under his care, and some were still there when he moved irom Fort Myer near the end of ig45-to be left under the watchful eye of the new Chief of Staff, General Eisenhower, who dutifully reported on their welfare to his former boss after the latter’s departure for China. When the General rode in the morning, he had one of his two horses brought from nearby government stables and spent thirty to fifty minutes in the saddle before his shower and breakfast. Usually he followed an old practice that extended back at least to Fort Benning days, when he had forsworn tlie company of officers for fear that they would talk business, and had either ridden with some of their wives or alone. In his early tenancy of Fort Myer, before Molly Brown’s marriage, he had sometimes ridden with her or with his goddaughter, Rose Page, but he preferred solitary outings, which allowed him time to think. Breakfast was usually a substantial meal, prepared and cooked by Army personnel under the supervision of Staff Sergeant William Farr, a onetime hotel employee in Savannah, Georgia, where Marshall had spotted him while he was stationed at Fort Screven. The General, Farr 55 56 Organizer of Victory recalled, had a hearty appetite and liked simple food. He ate almost any- thing except shrimp, to which he was so allergic that standing instructions were routinely forwarded to unwary hostesses or banquet arrangers to omit shrimp in planning menus for him. Over breakfast the General glanced at the morning newspapers. In all, he said, “I scanned,nine papers every day.”2 For a long time, the New York Tzmes, which he felt he should read regularly, was not at his break- fast table. Finally he complained to Arthur Krock, head of the paper’s Washington bureau, that there was no early delivery of the paper in the Fort Myer area and that he often lacked time to read it at the office. When soon afterward a vehicle appeared each morning with his paper, the Gen- eral wrote Krock that he hoped that the delivery did not involve “a single truck trip into that neighborhood.” Krock graciously replied that “Even if it required two trucks for the sole purpose of getting the New York Tzmes to you in the early morning it would be worth it to us and, I feel, to the country.” 3 As the war’s demands on him grew, General Marshall usually rose from breakfast and went to his waiting car promptly at 7:15 A.M. In the early days his two regular drivers were Sergeant James Powder and Sergeant George Dumcke. In 1943 Powder, whose services as principal orderly to the General had increased, was relieved of his driving assignment and a WAC chauffeur, Sergeant Marjorie Payne, became the second regular driver. As the sergeant who served Marshall from the beginning to the end of the war, not only as driver and personal orderly, but also as junior aide, James Powder occupies a secure place in any account of Marshall’s war- time service. Six feet four and three-quarter inches tall, then in his early forties, this shrewd bear ot a man was devoted to the General. Powder, who bore a shortened version of a‘name with Polish origins, was de- scended from a great-great-grandfather who had gone to Russia with Na- poleon. The sergeant, burning to equal the record of an older brother in the Navy, entered the Army in 1914 by lying about his age. In the 1930s after services in the Philippines and in various posts in France and‘ the United States, he was assigned to duty in Washington and detailed to drive the Deputy Chief of Staff. General Marshall inherited him on as- suming that position. When the General moved up to the post of Chief of Staff, Powder went along. With the legerdemain that sagacious sergeants command, he picked up information on units to be visited and generally smoothed the details of Marshall’s trips. More than once Marshall offered to make him a captain or a major in the Reserve, but Powder demurred. Since he had left school at the age of twelve, he felt handicapped by lack of formal education, and he turned away the proffered commissions, say- ing that lie did not want his chief to be ashamed of him. In fact Powder could hardly have been expected to exercise greater authority as an officer than he did as Marshall’s orderly-aide. When distinguished generals Marshall and His Staff 57 came to Washington, the Chief of Staff put them in Powder’s keeping, and he managed their affairsas skillfully as he did Marshall’s. On trips Powder took care of the General’s wardrobe, saw that there was an adequate stock of five-and-ten-cent-store spectacles, put copies of the Army’s series of paperback books near his seat on the plane, and placed a candy bar or two by his bedside at night. If the Chief of Staff was unable to sleep, the sergeant doubled as masseur, using his powerful hands or a vibrator to help the General relax. Wise in the ways of repay- ing service on trips abroad, Powder loaded his luggage with inexpensive items difficult to find in wartime and had them available for his chief to distribute. On his return the sergeant brought back souvenirs, which he spread around the Pentagon or in shops where he bought supplies for the Chief of Staff, building a reservoir of goodwill he could draw on later. During his travels Marshall liked Powder to be quartered near him so that he could call on him day or night. Once on a trip to Europe, how- ever, a major, shocked at the notion that Powder should expect to stay in the area reserved for officers, insisted that he go to a distant part of the chateau with the other sergeants of the headquarters The major waved away Powder’s explanation that the General would not like it. At last Powder went quietly and deliberately remained in the room assigned to him until Marshall, wanting something from his luggage, sent the major, stammering and red-faced, to find the sergeant and move his belongings to a room nearer the Chief of Staffs 4 The WAC driver, Sergeant Payne, was assigned to General Marshall in the fall of 1943, when he asked for several members of the Women’s Army Corps to serve on his personal staff. “You have the highest spot of any WAC,” Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby, the Corps’ director, impressed on her in making the assignment., “He will see the WAC through you.” Born in Michigan, daughter of a truck driver, pretty, blonde Marjorie Payne was a beauty-shop operator when she decided to enter the Women’s Army Corps. After learning to drive and maintain trucks, jeeps, and lim- ousines, she came to Washington, where she drove for several War De- partment generals before being assigned to the Chief of Staff. She idolized her boss, finding him stern but kind, flatteringly expecting the same per- formance from her as he would from a male chauffeur. And shk proved her worth. Alternating the driving assignment with George Dumcke, a forty-nine-year-old tough Regular Army sergeant “who was issued, not born,” she asked no quarter. She pleased Marshall by asking if she could use his car from time to time to give rides to wounded veterans, delighting them as she drove the Cadillac grandly through Rock Creek Park. She found that Marshall did not want to attract attention to himself as they drove through traffic. He instructed her to leave the stars off his car and preferred most of the time to use the smaller official car, a Plymouth, or, for personal business, his own Oldsmobile. He took the official Cadil- lac only if he went to the White House or some ceremonial affair, since 58 Organizer of Victory people were likely to recognize him in it. He dreaded halts in traffic as passersby sometimes stuck their heads into the car to speak to him. She remembered that when they had a vapor lock one hot day, the General, not wishing to be peered at by the curious, fled from the car while she tinkered with it. Sometimes when traffic was heavy and she had a plane to meet, she regretted his insistence on remaining inconspicuous. On the way to the airport to greet Eisenhower after the war, Marshall declined as usual to have a motorcycle escort, and the driver had heavy going until she was able to get in behind the Secretary of War’s car.