On May 24, 1997, fifty years after the implementation of the Marshall Plan, the Marshall Museum in Zwyndrecht was opened by the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General G. A. Joulwan (USA). The museum, named after George C. Marshall, contains a collection of over 300 military vehicles. Against a background of various historical scenes from World War II, one can get acquainted with a wide range of vehicles used by the United States of America during this period.

The founder, Jaap de Groot, started a small steel construction company named De Groot Construction in 1948. Since Holland and the other countries in Europe were still recovering from the war, he had a difficult time acquiring the needed equipment. In 1949 he purchased a WWII US Army Ward LaFrance wrecker, which he used to assemble constructions. Until then this had only been done with assembly-masts. The indestructible quality of the wrecker was his way to success. After the Ward LaFrance he purchased bigger cranes like the P&H and also used American Hoist cranes, which have the heaviest lift capacity in the world.

After 40 years with his company he retired in 1988. He left with a lifelong wish to acquire an original wrecker again.

So, he bought one, and another one, and ended up with this transportation museum. It shows how the Allies transported their supplies and guns and how they used their wreckers and repair facilities in the field.

Every vehicle that comes in is completely taken apart, every part overhauled or replaced, then put back together according to the original specifications. While rebuilding the vehicles, Mr. de Groot and his team became more and more impressed by the standardizing of the parts and the manner in which the production of the enormous numbers of vehicles was organized. Through research they found the organizer and with the name of the museum they honor this general and statesman, General George C. Marshall.

(December 31, 1880-October 16, 1959), America's foremost soldier during World War II, served as Chief of Staff from 1939 to 1945, building and directing the largest army in history. A diplomat, he acted as Secretary of State from 1947 to 1949, formulating the Marshall Plan, an unprecedented program of economic and military aid to foreign nations.

Marshall's father owned a prosperous coal business in Pennsylvania, but the boy, deciding to become a soldier, enrolled at the Virginia Military Institute from which he graduated in 1901 as Senior First Captain of the Corps of Cadets. After serving in posts in the Philippines and the United States, Marshall graduated with honors from the Infantry-Cavalry School at Fort Leavenworth in 1907 and from the Army Staff College in 1908. The young officer distinguished himself in a variety of posts in the next nine years, earning an appointment to the General Staff in World War I and sailing to France with the First Division. He achieved fame and promotion for his staff work in the battles of Cantigny, Aisne-Marne, St. Mihiel, and Meuse-Argonne. After acting as Aide-de-camp to General Pershing from 1919 to 1924, Marshall served in China from 1924 to 1927, and then successively as instructor in the Army War College in 1927, as Assistant Commandant of the Infantry School from 1927 to 1932, as Commander of the Eighth Infantry in 1933, as Senior Instructor to the Illinois National Guard from 1933 to 1936, and as Commander, with the rank of Brigadier General, of the Fifth Infantry Brigade from 1936 to 1938. In July, 1938, Marshall accepted a post with the General Staff in Washington, D. C., and in September, 1939, was named Chief of Staff, with the rank of General, by President Roosevelt. He became General of the Army in 1944, the year in which Congress created that five-star rank.

In his position as Chief of Staff, Marshall urged military readiness prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, later became responsible for the building, supplying, and, in part, the deploying of over eight million soldiers. From 1941 he was a member of the policy committee that supervised the atomic studies engaged in by American and British scientists. The war over, Marshall resigned in November 1945.

But Marshall could not resign from public service; his military career ended, he took up a diplomatic career. He had been associated with diplomatic events while Chief of Staff, for he participated in the conference on the Atlantic Charter (1941-1942), and in those in Casablanca (1943), Quebec (1943), Cairo-Teheran (1943), Yalta (1945), Potsdam (1945), and in many others of lesser importance. In late 1945 and in 1946, he represented President Truman on a special mission to China, then torn by civil war. In January 1947 he accepted the Cabinet position of Secretary of State, holding it for two years. In the spring of 1947 he outlined in a speech at Harvard University the plan of economic aid which history has named the Marshall Plan.

For one year during the Korean War General Marshall was Secretary of Defense, a civilian post in the U. S. Cabinet. Having resigned from this post in September 1951, three months before his seventy-first birthday, he retired from public service, thereafter performing those ceremonial duties the public comes to expect of its famous men.