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Marshall award winner named

This year’s George C. Marshall Award, given to the top graduate at the Command and General Staff College, is Maj. Brian Ducote, who received the award Friday in a ceremony at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

Before arriving at Fort Leavenworth to attend CGSC, Ducote commanded B Company, 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, which deployed to Iraq in February 2007 for 15 months as part of the surge of troops that helped quell the insurgency.

On his first deployment to Iraq in 2004, he worked on the staff of the 1st ID’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team in Baqubah, north of Baghdad, and is credited with establishing a regional army training center that became a model for other training facilities in Iraq.

While in Kosovo in 2003, he forwent going to the advanced officers’ course so he could complete that mission and he put it off again when he was deployed to Iraq so he could stay with the brigade’s mission, he told Army Times in an interview in Iraq in 2004.

At the time he said his dream job would be to command a light infantry company, “probably in the Ranger regiment,” Ducote said.

The Marshall Award is named for Gen. George C. Marshall, who graduated first in his class from the Staff College Course in 1908, and is presented to the distinguished graduate in recognition of scholarship and leadership, according to a Fort Leavenworth news release.

The award is a framed M-1911A1 Pistol.

“His tactical proficiency and mastery of Army doctrine was unmatched in the section,” Ducote’s staff group advisor, Mark Wilcox, said in the release. “He is the whole package and a true ‘Pentathlete’ — technically, tactically, academically and physically proficient; civically engaged.”

Ducote, a 1999 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Spanish and Portugese, and computer science engineering.

While attending CGSC, Ducote earned a master of military arts and science degree, which examined the potential of local councils in Iraq as a way to national unity, according to the release.

Ducote was selected to attend the School of Advanced Military Studies and will stay at Fort Leavenworth for another year.