Hoedown in Dawson

Everybody in Dawson, Ga. (pop. 4,670) knew that 29-year-old Erle Cocke Jr. had come out of World War II a major with a chestful of medals, that he had been stabbed by a Gestapo agent, shot twice and captured by the Germans three times, and had finally been thrust before a firing squad and left for dead.

Ever since big, likable Erle Cocke Jr. was elected national commander of the American Legion, his home town had been making plans to throw Erle the biggest hoedown in history. Last week, enough brass bands were on hand to blast the hickory nuts off every scaly bark tree in Terrell County.

A whole passel of notables, headed by Defense Secretary George Marshall, Treasury Secretary John W. Snyder, four state governors, 15 generals, two admirals and seven former American Legion commanders, jammed into Dawson to pay their respects to big Erle and watch a two-mile-long parade which included everything from fancy-gaited horses to drum majorettes who, on a chilly afternoon, wore more goose pimples than clothes.

Afterwards, more than 12,000 people heard stern-faced Old Soldier George Marshall describe Erle as a "young man of great promise, a clean, fine young man of exceptional character." Marshall went on to read the crowd a lesson from Erle:

"He, more than any of us . . . has reason to hate and despise the Nazi regime of Germany. And yet he sinks his personal feelings in recognizing not only the gravity of the present crisis but the compelling necessity it imposes of allowing Germany, we hope a new Germany, we pray a genuinely democratic Germany, to contribute to the defense of Western Europe."

That night, at a big dinner for Erle at Fort Benning, General Marshall pointed another moral. He said that this nation had to have an enduring system of national defense instead of a "feast & famine" military program. While he was Secretary of State in 1947, Marshall recalled, the country had only one and a third infantry divisions, yet people were urging him to "pour it on the Soviets and give them hell." What the country needed, he said, was a system "that will not collapse at every change of the wind and temperature, a system that will keep us prepared . . ." What he did not say, though it was also true, was that such a system, in part at least, was the business of the military, which had done a lot of wavering up & down about its needs.

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