Later Service
Conner was promoted to major general in 1925 and assigned to Washington, D.C. as deputy chief of staff. He was Pershing's candidate for Chief of Staff in 1930, but was passed over in favor of Douglas MacArthur. He retired as commander of First Corps Area and First United States Army on November 4, 1938 after forty-four years of service.
Conner's greatest disappointment was that he never had the opportunity to lead troops in wartime. Like Marshall, Conner was considered too valuable a staff officer to be released into the field. Nevertheless, he served as role model and inspiration to future World War II high commanders like Marshall, Eisenhower, and George S. Patton. Eisenhower considered Conner to be the greatest soldier he ever knew, saying: "In sheer ability and character, he was the outstanding soldier of my time."
Read more about this topic: Fox Conner
Famous quotes containing the word service:
“Night City was like a deranged experiment in Social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you’d break the fragile surface tension of the black market; either way, you were gone ... though heart or lungs or kidneys might survive in the service of some stranger with New Yen for the clinic tanks.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“Service ... is love in action, love “made flesh”; service is the body, the incarnation of love. Love is the impetus, service the act, and creativity the result with many by-products.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 3, ch. 3 (1962)