S.L.A. Marshall - Controversy After Death

Controversy After Death

Certain professional soldiers have publicly cast doubt on Marshall's research methodology.

Professor Roger J. Spiller (Deputy Director of the Combat Studies Institute, US Army Command and General Staff College) demonstrated in his 1988 article "S.L.A. Marshall and the Ratio of Fire" (RUSI Journal, Winter 1988, pages 63–71) that Marshall had not actually conducted the research upon which he based his ratio of fire theory. "The 'systematic collection of data' appears to have been an invention." This revelation called into question the authenticity of some of Marshall's other books, and lent academic weight to doubts about his integrity that had been raised in military circles even decades earlier.

The controversial figure Col. David Hackworth, writing in his 1989 memoir About Face, described at length his initial elation at an assignment with a man he idolized, and how that elation turned to bitter disillusionment after seeing Marshall's character and methods firsthand. Hackworth described Marshall as a "voyeur warrior" for whom "the truth never got in the way of a good story," and went so far as to say "Veterans of many of the actions he 'documented' in his books have complained bitterly over the years of his inaccuracy or blatant bias".

Marshall's grandson, journalist John Douglas Marshall, has explored his grandfather's posthumous reputation in a series of articles in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and later in a book, Reconciliation Road: A Family Odyssey of War and Honor. After a review of the general's archives and other memorabilia, as well as interviews with many of his contemporaries and associates, the younger Marshall concludes that the body of his grandfather's work still has value.