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When Dennis Nolan died in New York City, on February 24th, of this year, there passed to The Long Grey Line one of the last of a distinguished generation of graduates pre-eminent in the transition of the Army from the small Regular establishment of the Spanish-American War era to the then unprecedented National Army of World War I. During more than one half of his active service General Nolan was, in a variety of important policy-making positions, a directly important force in the development of the victorious armies that fought at St. Mihiel and in the Argonne; and of the greater armies of World War II and the Korean conflict. For, prior to World War I, in addition to distinguished combat service as a company and squadron commander in Cuba and the Philippines, he played an important role in the preparation of the National Defense Act of 1916; and during that war he organized and directed the military intelligence activities of Pershing's armies in Europe. As the first professional General Staff intelligence officer he was truly the father of our present military intelligence system. Following our first European conflict he was successively; Assistant Chief of Staff. G-2, War Department General Staff; a brigade commander; a division commander; Assistant Chief of Staff, G-4 of the Army; Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army; the Commanding General of two Corps Areas; and the first peacetime commander of the illustrious First Army.</p>
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<em>Dennis Edward Nolan</em> was born in Akron, New York, on April 22, 1872, the eldest son of Martin and Honora Cunningham Nolan, who had come to America in 1861, from County Clare, in Ireland. He received his grammar school and high school education in Akron, and entered West Point in September 1892, by virtue of winning a competitive entrance examination. He graduated 51 in the Class of 1896, which at graduation numbered 73 members, among whom were his later associates on the General Staff and in the American Expeditionary Forces; Charles McK. Saltzman, LeRoy Eltinge, Johnson Hagood and Merch B. Stewart; and E. R. Stuart, his roommate, later Professor of Drawing, USMA; and George T. Summerlin, who resigned from the Army to follow a notable diplomatic career.</p>
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During his cadet days Nolan played football three times against Navy, winning his letter in football in 1893, 1894 and 1895; and his baseball letter in 1895 and 1896. During his First Class year he was a cadet lieutenant. He returned to West Point in 1901 as an instructor in History and Military Law, and as an assistant football coach. He became head coach in 1902.</p>
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Because Regular vacancies did not exist for his class on graduation Nolan was commissioned an additional second lieutenant of Infantry, and remained in that category until he was assigned to the 1st Infantry in August 1896.</p>
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During the Spanish-American War Nolan won two brevet promotions; to first lieutenant and to captain; and two Silver Stars for gallantry in action at El Caney and at the siege of Santiago, in Cuba. In the Philippine Insurrection he commanded a squadron of volunteer cavalry for two years. It was during this service that he first came to the attention of his later chiefs, General Pershing and General Harbord.</p>
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With the organization of the nation’s first War Department General Staff in 1903 Nolan was one of the few captains selected for that body, which included such distinguished officers as Brigadier General Tasker H. Bliss, Colonel Enoch H. Crowder, Major George W. Goethals and Captain Peyton C. March. Tours in the Philippines and Alaska followed his relief from general staff duty in 1906. In 1915 he returned for a second detail in Washington and was one of the principal officers charged with the preparation and the presentation to the Congress of the important National Defense Act of 1916.</p>
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With our entry into World War I General Pershing selected Nolan as one of the original members of the General Staff, American Expeditionary Forces, which sailed for France on the S.S. “Baltic” in June 1917. A year later Nolan became a brigadier general, and continued a general officer for the remainder of his active service—eighteen years.</p>
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Except for ten days during which he commanded the 55th Infantry Brigade of the 28th Division in the Meuse-Argonne battle, Nolan was Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, G.H.Q., A.E.F., from the organization of that headquarters until its demobilization. For his services as Commanding General 55th Infantry Brigade he received the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism in repulsing a German tank attack at Apremont; and for his services as Chief of Intelligence at Pershing’s headquarters he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, and was decorated by France (Commander of the Legion of Honor and Croix de Guerre with Palm), by England (Commander of the Order of the Bath), by Belgium (Commander of the Order of the Crown), and by Panama (Order of La Solidaridad).</p>
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Following his return to the United States in 1919, Nolan served briefly as an instructor at the Army War College; and for a year as Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, WDGS. Upon his promotion to brigadier general Regular Army he was assigned to command the Artillery Brigade of the 2d Division. In June 1922 he became Commanding General 2d Division and served as such until December 1923, when he returned to Washington as Assistant Chief of Staff, G-4, WDGS. From September 1924 to March 1926 he was Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army. He received his promotion to major general in 1925.</p>
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In March 1926 General Nolan was named Chief of the U.S. Army Mission at the Preparatory Disarmament Conference, at Geneva, Switzerland. He remained in Switzerland for a year. For his services in Geneva he was made a Grand Officer of the Order of the Crown by Italy; and a Grand Officer of the National Order of Merit by Chile. Following his return from Switzerland General Nolan commanded the Fifth Corps Area for four years, and the Second Corps Area for five years. For his last two years at Second Corps Area headquarters he was also Commanding General First Army. On April 30, 1936 he retired for age, being at that time the second-ranking officer of the Army.</p>
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From his retirement until his death General Nolan lived in New York City. Immediately following his retirement he became Chief of the Department of States Participation in the New York World’s Fair. In 1940, when the Fair’s activities terminated he was appointed the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Citizens’ Budget Commission of New York City, an organization for studying and analysing the financial resources of the city. He remained Chairman of the Commission until 1951, and thereafter served, until his death, as a member of the Board of Trustees and as a member of the Commission’s executive committee. At various times General Nolan served as an officer and member of the Board of Trustees of the Association of Graduates, and at the time of his death was an Honorary Trustee.</p>
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General Nolan married Julia Grant Sharp, in San Francisco, on August 21, 1901. They had two children; Dennis Edward, who died at the age of ten; and Ellen Nolan Young, who resides with Mrs. Nolan, in New York. Colonel Daniel A. Nolan, Jr., USMA 1939, is the son of General Nolan’s brother.</p>
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As a Staff Officer Dennis Nolan has had few equals in our Army. When he became Pershing’s Chief of Intelligence our intelligence organization was ineffectual and amateurish. By the time of the Meuse-Argonne battle it was the equal of that of any of our more experienced allies. He never lost his interest in the development of military intelligence, and he was always greatly admired, not only by his military associates, but also by a group not generally given to adulation of military celebrities—the professional journalists who had formed the nucleus of the World War I “Stars and Stripes”, which was organized and published under his direction. Each year until his retirement he gave a dinner for his old friends of the press; Edward James, of “the New York Times”; Alexander Woollcott and Harold Ross, of “The New Yorker”; Walter Lippman, Frederick Palmer, George Patullo, Mark Watson, and many others whose names are well known in American journalism. These associates of his World War I days admired him for his honesty in his dealings with them; and they loved him for the paternal protection that he gave them in a military world that most of them scorned and mistrusted.</p>
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On August 10th of this year commemorative services were held on Governors Island to pay tribute to the memory of Dennis Nolan. Mrs. Nolan unveiled a bronze tablet, placed in the small park that fronts the house where she and the general spent the last five years of their active service. The Commanding General First Army, Lieutenant General Herron; and a former Army Commander, Lieutenant General Crittenberger, the present President of the Association of Graduates, spoke briefly of General Nolan’s career; and an order was published designating the area of the ceremony as Nolan Park. This is a fitting memorial to a great soldier who will be long remembered for the efficient military intelligence service which he organized and perfected; and for his association with the First Army, in which he won a Distinguished Service Cross in 1918, and of which he was the outstanding peace-time commander in its training for its victories of World War II.</p>
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<em>—C. V. A.</em></p>
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