The Seventh Annual George S. Prugh Lecture in Military Legal History

• Author: Colonel French L. Maclean
• Pages: 262-274

262 MILITARY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 219

THE SEVENTH ANNUAL GEORGE S. PRUGH LECTURE IN

MILITARY LEGAL HISTORY*

COLONEL FRENCH L. MACLEAN1

It is a high honor to talk to you today. In fact, you’re the first group

of lawyers with whom I have discussed this subject. And I told my

father before I came out east from Illinois that I was going to be talking

to a group of over a hundred military lawyers. He had been a Private

First Class in the Hürtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge in World

War II; he’s not a lawyer either. And when I told him about how many

lawyers I was going to speak with today, he said, “What kind of trouble

have you gotten into this time?”

I am here today to tell you about mysterious murders that happened

seventy years ago, about late night courts-martial, about a secret order on

jury composition. I’m here to tell you about the mysterious hangman

who drove around France wheeling an Army flatbed with a gallows on

the back. I’m here to tell you about a death train moving bodies to a

secret cemetery in the dark of night. That secret cemetery exists to this

* This is an edited transcript of a lecture delivered on April 24, 2013 by Colonel

(Retired) French L. MacLean to the members of the staff and faculty, distinguished

guests, and officers attending the 61st Graduate Course at The Judge Advocate General’s

Legal Center and School, Charlottesville, Va. The chair lecture is named in honor of

Major General George S. Prugh (1920–2006).

1 A native of Peoria, Illinois, French L. MacLean graduated from the U.S. Military

Academy in 1974. Commissioned as an Infantry officer, he served four tours of duty in

Germany, commanded two companies and a battalion, and attended the School for

Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

During Operation Desert Storm, then-Major MacLean fought in Iraq as a battalion

operations officer in a mechanized infantry battalion; twelve years later, in 2003, Colonel

MacLean returned to Iraq as the historian for U.S. Army Fifth Corps during Operation

Iraqi Freedom.

Before retiring from active duty, Colonel MacLean served as the Inspector General

for the U.S. Army, Europe, and as a course director and professor at the National War

College at Fort McNair, Washington, D.C.

A prolific author, French MacLean has authored the acclaimed Custer’s Best: The

Story of Company M, 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn, and ten books on World War II.

The British historian Sir John Keegan wrote that MacLean’s Quiet Flows the Rhine is “a

most valuable study of the German Army in the Second World War”.

The Fifth Field, Colonel MacLean’s study of death penalty courts-martial in World

War II Europe, was published in 2013. The Fifth Field won the Lieutenant General

Richard G. Trefry Award, in the 2013 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished

Writings Awards.