Army Lists

Major-General George Henry Marshall, commanding the Royal Artillery of the forces in South Africa, is indebted to the Boers for the chance of aquiring in the Official Quarterly Army List the crossed swords which indicate that an officer has seen war service. But, although he has had no previous experience of the tented field, General Marshall had a distinct reputation as an artilleryman, and even if his duties in South Africa had been those of a battle-leader, would assuredly have distinguished himself, as Gunners have a knack of doing whenever half-a-chance presents itself.

General Marshall was born in 1843, and entered the Royal Artillery in 1861. After a long and honourable career of regimental duty he became, in 1893, Chief Instructor at the school of Gunnery at Shoeburyness, a post which he held until 1897. In October of the latter year, he was transferred to Aldershot, in command of the Royal Artillery of the District, an appointment which is never given to any but Gunner officers possessing peculiar qualifications, among which up-to-dateness must necessarily be prominent. With not far off a hundred guns under his command he was enabled to carry out some striking demonstrations of that concentration of fire from a number of massed batteries, which is the essence of modern artillery tactics on a large scale.