He came to France with General Pershing as a major in the adjutant-general's office, where he served for some time before he was sent to a regiment. He seemed to be out of place at a desk. It was like asking taciturn Mars--and I suppose that Mars was taciturn--to do drawn work. Sandy of complexion, sturdily built, he had that suggestive quiet strength, militarized by army service, which we associate with Western sheriffs who do not talk before they shoot. Without his having said a word, you understood, by the very way in which he was taciturn, that if you were in a tight place you would like to have him along. I used to think that if a section of the floor had been blown up in front of his desk while he was signing a paper, the shock of the explosion would not have interfered with the legibility of his signature. There was something in his manner which soldiers would respect. They, too, saw that he would be a good companion in a tight place. When someone had a troublous problem on hand, he would say: "Let me have it. I'll take care of it." He took care of it promptly too, once he had the paper in his strong hands. Whether as a major or as a corps commander, he was quick to appreciate that a subordinate was preoccupied with unimportant things, and he had seen enough red tape in the old adjutant-general's office to know how to amputate it without too much hemorrhage. In common with Summerall he too had the endurance which no amount of work seems to faze, and that clarity of thought and readiness of decision which thrive on crises. He, too, went among his troops, impressing them with his cool, unchanging personality, his bull-dog tenacity, and his implacably aggressive spirit.