Bringing Up the Rear; A Memoir

xiii, [1], 310 pages. Illustrations. Index. Bookplate inside front flyleaf. Slight soiling to fore-edge. DJ soiled, small tears and small pieces missing at DJ spine. Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall (July 18, 1900 - December 17, 1977) was a chief U.S. Army combat historian during World War II and the Korean War. Known professionally as S. L. A. Marshall, and nicknamed "Slam" (the combination of all four of his initials), he authored some 30 books about warfare, including Pork Chop Hill: The American Fighting Man in Action, which was made into a film of the same name. During World War II, Marshall became an official Army combat historian, and came to know many of the war's best-known Allied commanders. Marshall's work on infantry combat effectiveness in World War II, titled Men Against Fire, is his best-known and most controversial work S. L. A. Marshall was the Army's chief military historian during World War II. In this memoir he discusses his experiences in World War I, World War II, Korea, the Middle East, and Vietnam. He conducted hundreds of interviews of both enlisted men and officers regarding their combat experiences, and was an early proponent of oral history techniques. In particular, Marshall favored the group interview, where he would gather surviving members of a front line unit together and debrief them on their combat experiences of a day or two before. S. L. A. Marshall's style is forthright, humorous, conversational. He puts his military career in perspective and minces no words. He left his manuscript completed but unpolished and his widow, Cate Marshall, who typed many of his previous works for him, helped smooth the book into shape. The result forms the capstone of an active, productive, exciting life and offers the reader a treasury of heretofore untold anecdotes. …