Richard Marshall (general) - Between The Wars

Between The Wars

Upon returning to the U.S. after the war, Marshall was assigned to the postwar Quartermaster Corps. He oversaw construction of Fitzsimons Hospital, Denver, Colorado. He was Quartermaster at Ft. Benning, Georgia 1924, then attended Quartermaster School in 1926, graduated in 1927 and was assigned to Ft. Monmouth, NJ.

In 1929 he was sent to the Philippines and assigned as Quartermaster of the Harbor Defenses of Manila and Subic Bays. He took up residence on Corregidor Island at Fort Mills where he had under his direction the start of construction of the West end of the Malinta Hill Tunnel. In World War II this same Tunnel became General MacArthur's Command Post on Corregidor.

Marshall returned to the U.S. in 1932, attending Command and Staff School at Ft. Leavenworth, Ks, followed by the Army Industrial College, Washington, D.C. He graduated in 1935 and after summer maneuvers with the First Army entered the Army War College, graduating 1936. He was then placed in charge of the Water Transportation Branch.

He married Nell B. Mutter. They had two children, Richard J. Marshall, Jr., who died on 2 March 1943 in World War II, and Harriette Marshall Olsen, who married John E. Olson, who survived the Bataan Death March. After Nell died in 1934, he married Isabel Crum in Montgomery, Alabama on 28 December 1935. From the marriage, he gained a stepdaughter, Dorothy, and step son, Lieutenant Kenneth Roscoe Lummus, who died on 28 March 1943.

In 1939, upon the request of General Douglas MacArthur, Marshall was assigned to duty again in the Philippines. A vacancy had occurred through the return of Col. Dwight D. Eisenhower to duty in the U.S. The officers on this duty were assisting Gen. MacArthur in advising the Philippine Commonwealth Government in forming and training an army for the defense of the Islands after Independence which was to be granted in 1946. He was on this duty in July 1941 when Gen. MacArthur was recalled to active duty. He was detailed to General Staff with troops and Deputy Chief of his Command, the United States Army Forces in the Far East. In October, 1941 he was promoted to temporary Colonel.