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Memorandum for the President

May 6, 1942 [Washington, D.C.]

Subject: Training Centers for Individuals.

We now have in the United States 242,096 men in training centers being given an eight to thirteen weeks’ basic course of instruction for whatever arm or service they are intended for, including the disciplinary soldierly training common to all.

In addition, we have about 20,707 officer candidates other than Air Corps in camps of instruction.

I would like very much to have you see one of these establishments, because they are going to play a vital part in everything we do, the more so as we commence to suffer heavy attrition in units. Fort Belvoir is the Engineer Training Center and is only forty minutes’ drive from the White House. I have had General Marks, the Commander there, arrange a tentative itinerary which would occupy about an hour and a half at Belvoir. If you could drive down some afternoon after lunch, arriving there by 2:45 o’clock, I think you would have a most interesting afternoon, and a very pleasant drive.¹

Document Copy Text Source: George C. Marshall Papers, Pentagon Office Collection, Selected Materials, George C. Marshall Research Library, Lexington, Virginia.

Document Format: Typed memorandum.

1. Brigadier General Edwin H. Marks (U.S.M.A., 1909) was the commanding general of Fort Belvoir and its Engineer Replacement Training Center. The president did not visit the facility.

Recommended Citation: ThePapers of George Catlett Marshall, ed.Larry I. Bland and Sharon Ritenour Stevens(Lexington, Va.: The George C. Marshall Foundation, 1981- ). Electronic version based on The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, vol. 3, “The Right Man for the Job,” December 7, 1941-May 31, 1943 (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), p. 189.