S.L. A. Marshall

Brigadier General Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall, also known as SLAM (July 18, 1900 – December 17, 1977), was a military journalist and historian. He served with the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I before becoming a journalist specializing in military affairs. In 1940, he published Blitzkrieg: Armies on Wheels, an analysis of the tactics used by the Wehrmacht, and re-entered the U.S. Army as its chief combat historian during World War II and the Korean War. 

He officially retired in 1960 but was an unofficial advisor and historian during the Vietnam War. In total, Marshall wrote over 30 books, including Pork Chop Hill: The American Fighting Man in Action, later made into a film of the same name, as well as The Vietnam Primer, co-authored by Colonel David H. Hackworth. His most famous publication is Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command, which claimed that fewer than 25% of men in combat actually fired their weapons at the enemy. 

While the data used to support this has been challenged, his conclusion that a significant number of soldiers do not fire their weapons in combat has been verified by multiple studies performed by other armies, going back to the 18th century and continuing into the 20th. Why this is so remains contested; Marshall argued that even with their own lives at risk, the resistance of the average individual “...toward killing a fellow man" was such that "he will not...take a life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility and at the vital point, he becomes a conscientious objector". 

Others argue so-called 'low fire' is a function of training and discipline and is a positive attribute. These debates continue since understanding is crucial to overcoming them through training and dealing with actual or potential combat-stress disorders.

Marshall was born in Catskill, New York, on July 18, 1900, the son of Caleb C. and Alice Medora (Beeman) Marshall. He was raised in Colorado and California, where he briefly worked as a child actor for Essanay Studios; his family relocated to El Paso, Texas, where he attended high school.

He was married three times, first to Ruth Elstner, with whom he had a son before divorcing; his second wife, Edith Ives Westervelt, died in 1953, and he had three daughters with his third wife, Catherine Finnerty. Marshall died in El Paso on December 17, 1977, and was buried at Fort Bliss National Cemetery, Section A, Grave 124. The University of Texas at El Paso library has a special collection built around his books and manuscripts.