The former chief of the Disciplinary Branch of the United States Marine Corps, he died on March 24, 1989 at his home in Arlington, Virginia.
The senior surviving descendant to John Marshall, in 1985 he gave an address at the dedication of a statue of the country’s fourth Chief Justice on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.
Born in Markham, Fauquier County, Virginia, on January 27, 1904, he attended Central High School in Washington and graduated from Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington, Virginia, in 1924.
He was commissioned in the Marine Corps and served first seven years at sea on the USS Utah and at the Quantico Marine Base and in the Virgin Islands. Following his graduation from Harvard Law School in 1934, he served three years as legal officer on the staff of the Commandant of the 14th Naval District at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
As World War II threatened, he became intelligence officer of the 1st Marine Brigade and later the 1st Marine Division, which helped develop much of the amphibious landing doctrines so important in the Pacific Theater of World War II. In 1943, he was with the force that retook Kiska in the Aleutian Islands from the Japanese.
Next he served as intelligence officer with the 5th Amphibious Corps and took part in assault and sizure of the islands of Tarawa, Makin, Saipan, Tinian and Guam and the Marshall Islands. After the war, he served with the group that established the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
He retired from the Marine Corps in 1955,working until 1969 for a law firm in Alexandria, Virginia. Was a founding member of the Army-Navy Country Club and a member of many patriotic organizations, including the Jamestown Society, Order of Founders and Patriots of America and the Virginia Society of the Cincinnati.
He is buried in Section 7 of Arlington National Cemetery, next to the gravesite of his brother, Army Major General Richard Jacquline Marshall.
Michael Robert Patterson was born in Arlington and is the son of a former officer of the US Army. So it was no wonder that sooner or later his interests drew him to American history and especially to American military history. Many of his articles can be found on renowned portals like the New York Times, Washingtonpost or Wikipedia.
Reviewed by: Michael Howard