Eisenhower in War and Peace

Eisenhower arrived at Fort Dix in mid-December, 1918, with six thousand men and three Renault tanks. From there he was ordered with the remnant of the American tank corps to Fort Benning, Georgia. After discharges, separations, and transfers, only three hundred of the original six thousand remained. The eight-hundred-mile trip from New Jersey to Georgia by low-priority Army troop train took four days and, as Ike recalled, each day seemed like a year: There was no heat in the passenger cars, no electricity, no hot water, and field rations were cooked on camp stoves in the baggage car.

Fort Benning, home of the United States infantry, provided a brief holding pattern for Eisenhower. The infantry had little interest in tanks, and as Ike wrote later, “I had too much time on my hands.”⁴ After several months of indecision, the War Department selected Camp Meade, Maryland, midway between Washington and Baltimore, as the permanent home of the tank corps.

Shortly after Eisenhower arrived at Camp Meade, the War Department announced plans to send a truck convoy across the country from the East Coast to the West Coast. As with most such expeditions the purpose was part publicity and part training, and above all to demonstrate the need for better highways. In 1919 most long-distance travel in the United States was done by rail. There was no highway network, no maps, and drivers often were compelled to navigate by compass. The few vehicular bridges that existed were rickety and ill-constructed; roads were mostly unpaved, little improved since the first settlers moved west in covered wagons, and all but impassable in bad weather. Motor vehicles were uncomfortable, slow and unreliable, prone to breakdowns, and certain to experience one or more tire punctures every hundred miles. A cross-country motor march had never been attempted before, and the Army was not at all certain that it could be done.⁵

To ensure that the lessons of the convoy were disseminated throughout the service, the War Department asked for volunteers from various branches to accompany it. Eisenhower, not yet integrated into the routine at Camp Meade, was among the first to volunteer. “I wanted to go along partly for a lark and partly to learn.”⁶

“Faster than any vehicle in the convoy,” Eisenhower recalled, “we shot off in all directions to find the man who was carrying that message to the telegraph office. We found him, took the story to the commanding officer, and pointed out that if such news reached the Adjutant General, he was unlikely to understand our brand of humor. The commanding officer went along with the gag, crossed out the Indian part of the telegram, [and] thereby a number of us were saved lengthy explanations in original and three or more carbons.”⁸

All along the route the convoy was greeted by well-wishers. In Akron, Ohio, tire manufacturer Harvey Firestone welcomed the troops to his estate and staged a lavish picnic. From Fort Wayne, Indiana, Ike dropped Mamie a postcard with a picture of the convoy. “Dearest, I’m not in this picture—but I thought you’d like to see it. Love you heaps and heaps. Your lover. Ike.”⁹

For Eisenhower, who thirty-seven years later would sign the interstate highway act into law, the firsthand knowledge of the condition of the nation’s roads stayed with him. “When we finally secured the necessary congressional approval, we started the 41,000 miles of super highways that are already proving their worth,” he wrote after the bill had passed. “The old convoy had started me thinking about good two-lane highways, but Germany had made me see the wisdom of broader ribbons across our land.”¹¹

When Eisenhower returned to Camp Meade in the autumn of 1919, he found the AEF tank corps back from Europe. The augmented corps was now commanded by Brigadier General Samuel D. Rockenbach, a hard-bitten Virginian (VMI, 1889) who had led American armor in France, and who was several years senior to Colonel Welborn. Rockenbach integrated the returning troops with those from Camp Colt and formed two brigades: a light brigade (the 304th) equipped with French Renaults, and a heavy brigade (the 305th) deploying new American-made Mark VIIIs that had come off the assembly line too late for service in France. Colonel George Patton, fresh from the battlefield, commanded the light brigade; Eisenhower became executive officer of the heavies and later assumed command. From the beginning, Eisenhower and Patton were a mismatched pair. Patton was monumentally egotistical, flamboyant, and unpredictable. Eisenhower was self-effacing and steady. Yet they formed an enduring friendship that lasted until shortly before Patton’s death in 1945.

Throughout his military career Patton traveled with his own stable of horses (at Leavenworth’s Command and General Staff School he was excused from the course on equitation so he could exercise his mounts), and drove the finest cars. His uniforms and civilian clothes were tailored on London’s Savile Row and his boots came from Ugo Ferrini in Rome. Ike drove a Model T, his uniforms were made in the United States, and he bought his civilian clothes off the rack. Patton’s pistols were custom-made Colt .45s with ivory grips; Eisenhower’s sidearm was standard government issue.

“From the beginning he and I got along famously,” Ike said. “Both of us were students of current military doctrine. Part of our passion was a strong belief in tanks—a belief derided at the time by others.”

Eisenhower and Patton spent many hours together riding and hunting. Both relished sports. Eisenhower coached the Camp Meade football team; Patton led the equestrian and pistol teams.^b When the Eighteenth Amendment mandating Prohibition became law, Ike distilled gin in the bathtub and Patton brewed beer. When they wanted excitement they would arm themselves like modern vigilantes, climb into Patton’s Pierce-Arrow, and drive slowly down dark country roads hoping to be waylaid by bandits. “We wanted to see what a fellow’s face looked like when he’s looking into the other end of a gun,” said Ike.²⁰ But they never encountered any bandits.

Unlike their husbands, who forged an abiding friendship, Mamie Eisenhower and Beatrice Patton were never close. A noted sportswoman who excelled at riding and sailing, Beatrice had been educated in Europe, spoke flawless French, wrote music and poetry, and published two books about Hawaii, one of which was written in French.²¹ She traveled widely, moved easily in society, and was considered a gifted conversationalist. Mamie’s interests were more restricted. She loathed outdoor activity and had little patience for abstract discussion. A more typical Army wife, Mamie dwelled on the surface of popular culture. She enjoyed cards and mah-jongg, hit tunes, Hollywood fashions, and pulp fiction. Mamie and Beatrice lived in different realms, united only in their determination to further their husbands’ careers.

While she was away, Mamie wrote rarely. In desperation, Ike wrote to Mrs. Doud, his mother-in-law:

Mamie did not return to Camp Meade until May 1920, after the Army agreed to convert some abandoned barracks into family quarters. Ike and Patton were assigned adjacent sets. The quarters were rough and required considerable renovation. This time Ikey was left with Mamie’s aunt in Boone, Iowa, until work was complete. “For her trouble and his keep, we paid her $100,” Eisenhower remembered.²⁵

Ikey was three years old in the autumn of 1920 when he finally joined his parents at Camp Meade. Eisenhower doted on the child, determined to be the father David had never been. According to a friend, Ike would lie on the floor pretending to be a kitten, or growl like a bulldog, playing the clown to make him laugh.²⁶ “For a little boy just getting interested in the outside world, few places could have been more exciting than Meade,” said Eisenhower. “Deafening noises of the tanks enthralled him. A football scrimmage was pure delight. And a parade with martial music set him aglow.”²⁷

To help with Ikey and the household chores, the Eisenhowers hired a young woman from the area who seemed both pleasant and efficient. “When she accepted the job, a chain of circumstances began, linking us to a tragedy from which we never recovered,” Ike recalled.²⁸ Unknown to the Eisenhowers, the young woman had just recovered from an attack of scarlet fever. She exhibited no evidence of the disease, yet she still harbored the bacteria.

Just before Christmas, Ikey came down with a fever. He was placed in bed, and the post doctor assumed it was simply the flu. When the temperature did not subside, Ikey was hospitalized. A specialist from nearby Johns Hopkins was consulted, and the verdict was scarlet fever. “We have no cure for this,” said the doctor. “Either they get well or you lose them.”²⁹ Ikey was quarantined. “The doctors did not allow me into his room,” Eisenhower remembered. “But there was a porch on which I was allowed to sit and I could look into the room and wave to him. Occasionally, they would let me come to the door just to speak to Ikey. I haunted the halls of the hospital. Hour after hour, Mamie and I could only hope and pray.”³⁰

Ikey held out for ten days. But the scarlet fever turned into meningitis, and he died in the early morning hours of January 2, 1921. “I have never known such a blow,” Eisenhower wrote long afterward. “I didn’t know what to do. I blamed myself because I had often taken his presence for granted.”

Mamie said, “For a long time, it was as if a shining light had gone out of Ike’s life. Throughout all the years that followed, the memory of those bleak days was a deep inner pain that never seemed to diminish much.”³²

Ikey’s death left a permanent scar. Eisenhower, for the rest of his life, sent Mamie a bouquet of yellow roses every year on Ikey’s birthday. Yellow had been Ikey’s favorite color. But the marriage was no longer the same. The youthful romance was gone. Instead of drawing closer together, each retreated into a private world of sorrow. Eisenhower threw himself into his work and was rarely home.³³ Mamie tried not to think about the child. Ike blamed himself for hiring the maid; Mamie initially blamed herself. Privately they blamed each other.³⁴ “Half a century later,” wrote Julie Nixon Eisenhower, “Mamie was still unwilling to say much about how Ikey’s death changed her relationship with Ike. The pain is too deep. But there is no doubt that the loss of their beloved son closed a chapter in the marriage. It could never again be unblemished first love.”³⁵

On June 2, 1920, Congress passed the National Defense Act of 1920, one of the most far-reaching pieces of legislation in American history.³⁶ The Army’s authorized strength was set at 288,000 (compared to 2.4 million when the war ended). Subsequent legislation reduced that strength still further. By 1922, fewer than 150,000 men remained on active duty. The United States became a third-rate military power. Army appropriations, which hit $9 billion in 1919, dropped to $400 million—a figure that would remain relatively constant until the late 1930s.³⁷ Officers reverted to their permanent peacetime ranks. On June 30, 1920, Eisenhower and Patton became captains again. In August, after the adjutant general sorted things out, they were promoted to major. Patton’s date of rank was set at July 1, 1920; Eisenhower’s one day later—an important distinction. Eisenhower would remain in the grade of major for the next sixteen years; Patton for fourteen. “There was no reason to get excited,” said Lucius D. Clay, who was also demoted. “It happened to everyone.” What was important is that salaries were not reduced. Eisenhower, Patton, and Clay continued to draw the pay and allowances of their previous ranks.³⁸

The National Defense Act also established separate branches for the air service, the chemical corps, and the finance department. The tank corps was abolished and returned to the infantry. During hearings on the bill, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker and the Army’s chief of staff, General Peyton March, advocated retaining the tank corps as an independent branch. But when General Pershing testified a week later, he suggested that it “ought to be placed under the Chief of Infantry as an adjunct of that arm.”³⁹ Not surprisingly, Congress took Pershing’s word. The animosity between Pershing and Wilson’s War Department was palpable (Pershing and March were not on speaking terms) and Pershing—the only person to hold the rank of “General of the Armies”—was considered the nation’s military oracle.⁴⁰ When the tank corps was abolished, Patton decided to return to the cavalry and became executive officer of the 3rd Cavalry at Fort Myer, across the Potomac from Washington. Eisenhower chose to remain with the infantry.

Before Patton left for Fort Myer, he and Beatrice hosted a Sunday dinner party for Brigadier General Fox Conner, to which Ike and Mamie were invited. Conner was already a gray eminence—a military thinker and strategist who wielded vast power under a cloak of general staff anonymity. Many considered him the most influential officer in the Army. During the war he served as Pershing’s chief of operations (Lieutenant Colonel George Marshall was one of his assistants), and had masterminded the first American offensive at Saint-Mihiel, and then the sudden northwestward thrust in the Meuse-Argonne.⁴¹ Currently he was Pershing’s chief of staff in Washington while “Black Jack” marked time until he would succeed March at the Army’s head.^c

Conner had come to Meade that Sunday purposely to meet Eisenhower, whom Patton had recommended effusively.⁴³ After a midday dinner, he asked Patton and Eisenhower to show him their tank park and explain their ideas about the future of the weapon. Patton and Ike were tickled. Conner was the most senior officer thus far to show an interest in armored warfare. (It had been Conner, at AEF headquarters, who originally urged Patton to go into the tank corps.)⁴⁴ As Eisenhower remembered, “General Conner went down to the shops with us, found a chair to sit in, and then began to ask questions. Some could be answered briefly, while others required long explanations. By the time he had finished, it was almost dark and he was ready to go home. He said little except that it was interesting. He thanked us, and that was that.”⁴⁵

The matter was turned over to the inspector general, Brigadier General Eli A. Helmick (USMA, 1888), for further action. Colonel Rockenbach and the III Corps Area commander, Brigadier General H. F. Hodges, attempted to head off the proceedings by delivering oral reprimands to Ike (the money had been repaid), but Helmick was not dissuaded. On November 1, 1921, he wrote the adjutant general: “Major Eisenhower is a graduate of the Military Academy, of six years’ commissioned service. That he should have knowingly attempted to defraud the government in this matter, or, as he contends, that he was ignorant of the laws governing commutation for dependents, are alike inexplicable.”⁴⁷

Helmick had Ike squarely in his sights and was about to pull the trigger. Once again, fortuna intervened. John J. Pershing had succeeded Peyton March as Army chief of staff; Fox Conner was given command of the 20th Infantry Brigade in the Panama Canal Zone, and Conner wanted Ike to be his executive officer. Eisenhower does not mention the pending court-martial in his memoirs (nor did the first generation of biographers), and simply notes that orders came “out of the blue” transferring him to the Canal Zone. “The red tape was torn to pieces.”⁴⁸

What happened was that Helmick was reined in. No one was closer to Pershing than Fox Conner.^e When Conner told Pershing that he wanted Ike in Panama,⁴⁹ Pershing made it happen. Helmick, a classmate of Peyton March’s, recognized the new alignment of forces in the War Department and gave way. On December 14, 1921, he wrote the adjutant general that while Eisenhower’s offenses were “of the gravest character for which he might not only be dismissed from the service but imprisoned,” he did not recommend that Ike be brought to trial, and suggested a formal reprimand be placed in his 201 file instead. The reprimand was administered by Brigadier General J. H. McRae, the assistant chief of staff (and a close friend of Conner’s), and became part of Eisenhower’s permanent Army record.⁵⁰ The bottom line is that Ike avoided trial and was off to the Canal Zone.

Eisenhower served at Camp Meade for almost three years. His efficiency reports were consistently above average, and occasionally superior. Rockenbach called him “a most excellent officer and a valuable assistant.” His final report, dated January 6, 1922, enclosed a copy of General McRae’s reprimand and noted somewhat critically that “having had independence of command for so long a time, his personal views influence his cooperation.” Nevertheless, Ike was described as “an enthusiastic young officer of greatest value to tank organizations.”⁵¹

After a rough passage on the Army troopship St. Mihiel, Eisenhower and Mamie arrived in Panama on January 7, 1922. The 20th Infantry Brigade was stationed at Camp Gaillard, near the famous Culebra Cut, toward the Pacific end of the canal. The Eisenhowers were assigned quarters adjacent to the Conners’, among a row of elaborate frame dwellings put up by the French for upper-echelon engineers during Ferdinand de Lesseps’s ill-fated efforts to construct a canal thirty years earlier. Built on stilts with screened verandas on all four sides, the squarish houses resembled substantial seaside cottages on the Carolina coast that had fallen into serious disrepair. The Conners had restored their house (including a tennis court and a swimming pool) to its earlier splendor, and Ike took the dilapidated houses in stride. But Mamie was appalled. “She made no bones about how mad she was that they had been ordered to such a post,” Virginia Conner recalled.⁵²

From the beginning, Mamie, who was in the early stages of pregnancy, hated their ramshackle quarters, Ike’s duty with the brigade, and Panama itself. “The marriage was clearly in danger,” said Mrs. Conner. “They were two young people who were drifting apart. Ike was spending less and less time with Mamie, and there was no warmth between them. They seemed like two people moving in different directions.”⁵³

For his part, Eisenhower considered his service in Panama the “most interesting and constructive of my life.”

Under Conner’s tutelage Eisenhower became a student of military history. Conner had an extraordinary library (the Conners loved books; his nephew Sennet was reputed to possess the finest legal library in Mississippi), which he made available to Eisenhower. Starting with historical novels, he drew Ike in to more serious works of history. Eisenhower studied the Civil War, followed Napoléon’s campaigns, and familiarized himself with Frederick the Great’s victories. From there he moved to the classics: Tacitus, Plato, and Shakespeare. At Conner’s direction, Ike read Clausewitz’s On War three times. “Those German sentences. I tell you, it’s trouble. He’d quiz me. You know Clausewitz has those maxims. He’d make me tell what each one meant.”⁵⁵

He was the man who first remarked to me, “Always take your job seriously, never yourself.” He was the man who taught me that splendid line from the French, “All generalities are false, including this one.” He often quoted Shakespeare at length and he could relate his works to wars under discussion. Our conversations continued throughout the three years I served with him at Camp Gaillard. It is clear now that life with General Conner was a sort of graduate school in military affairs and the humanities, leavened by the comments and discourses of a man who was experienced in his knowledge of men and their conduct.⁵⁷

Eisenhower remained in Denver briefly and then returned to Panama. Mamie stayed another several months. When she returned to Gaillard in the autumn of 1922, she brought a nurse, Katherine Herrick, from Denver General Hospital, to take care of the baby. John Doud paid Ms. Herrick’s salary and expenses, and she remained with the family for the next four years. That autumn, Virginia Conner observed a difference in the Eisenhowers. “After Johnny was born and Mamie felt better, she began to change. I had the delight of seeing a rather callow young woman turn into the person to whom everyone turned. I have seen her, with her gay laugh and personality, smooth out Ike’s occasional irritability.”⁵⁹

But the reconciliation between Ike and Mamie was soon tested. Eisenhower’s round-the-clock commitment to Conner and the 20th Infantry Brigade began to take its toll. Mamie became despondent, and her health deteriorated. “I was down to skin and bones and hollow-eyed,” she later recalled. “My health and vitality seemed to ebb away. I don’t know how I existed.”⁶⁰

Mamie made peace with the Army, and with Ike’s career. The first great crisis of their married life had been weathered. Mamie returned to Panama and committed herself to tough it out. “I knew almost from the day I married Ike that he would be a great soldier,” she said. “Nothing came before his duty. I was forced to match his spirit of personal sacrifice as best I could.”⁶²

Before the season ended Eisenhower received orders for a permanent change of station to Fort Benning, where he was to command the 15th Light Tank Battalion—“the same old tanks I had commanded several years earlier.”⁶⁶ As Ike saw it, his career had stalled. Without attendance at Leavenworth, there was little prospect of high command. Dismayed at the prospect, Eisenhower went to the War Department to plead his case to the chief of infantry, a post still occupied by Major General Charles S. Farnsworth. Ike should have known better. “Carry out your orders,” said Farnsworth, without listening to Eisenhower’s reclama. That was Army tradition. Junior officers, even field-grade officers, had no business questioning their assignments.

The chances are that Eisenhower would have been selected by the infantry to attend Leavenworth, if not in the next class, then in the one thereafter. Three years of superior efficiency ratings in Panama placed him in the top 10 percent of all majors on active duty, and his assignment to command a battalion at Benning (a rarity in the Army of 1924) scarcely suggested he was in official disfavor. But Eisenhower was impatient. Contrary to Fox Conner’s dictum, he appears to have taken himself too seriously. On his way out of the old State, War, and Navy Building on Pennsylvania Avenue he stopped by to see General Conner, whose office was down the hall from Farnsworth’s. There is no record of their conversation, but several days later Ike received a cryptic telegram:

Conner was sympathetic to Ike’s plight, and used his influence to circumvent the chief of infantry. Eisenhower was abruptly transferred to the adjutant general corps and assigned to Fort Logan, Colorado, on recruiting duty—normally a tombstone appointment for officers who had been passed over for promotion. “Had anyone else suggested [such a move] I would have been outraged,” said Ike, “but with my solid belief in Fox Conner I kept my temper.”⁶⁸ For Mamie, the move to Fort Logan could not have been more welcome—a fact that Conner had also considered. Fort Logan is on the outskirts of Denver, roughly seven miles from the Doud home on Lafayette Street, and for the first time in years she and Ike and baby John were able to spend time with her family. Eisenhower went through the motions of a peacetime Army recruiter, and in April 1925, more or less on schedule, orders arrived notifying him that he had been selected by the adjutant general to attend the Command and General Staff School with the class entering in August 1925. “I was ready to fly,” said Eisenhower. “And I needed no airplane.”⁶⁹ ^f

Once he was accepted for Leavenworth, Ike began to worry whether he was qualified. He had not attended the Infantry School at Fort Benning, normally a prerequisite for line officers, and CGSS had the reputation of being hypercompetitive. Leavenworth was the Army’s eye of the needle. Those who did well usually went on to higher command; those who did poorly fell by the wayside. As doubt got the better of him, Eisenhower wrote Fox Conner to ask how he could best prepare for the ordeal.

Conner reassured him. “You may not know it,” he wrote Ike, “but because of your three years’ work in Panama, you are far better trained and ready for Leavenworth than anybody I know. You will feel no sense of inferiority.”⁷⁰ Armed with Conner’s encouragement, Ike asked George Patton for his notes from his year at CGSS—Patton stood 25th of 248 officers in the Class of 1923–24. According to Mamie, “He studied them to tatters.”⁷¹ Eisenhower also obtained copies of lesson plans and problems from previous years and worked through them, checking his answers against the approved solutions. After a month of intense effort, Ike discovered that Conner was right. The work came easily and he enjoyed it.⁷²

Eisenhower reported to Leavenworth in August 1925—one of 245 field-grade officers selected by the War Department to attend an eleven-month course on the problems of military command. Because he was senior to most of his classmates (his date of rank reflected his prior service as a lieutenant colonel), he and Mamie were assigned a spacious four-bedroom apartment in what eventually became the post’s VIP quarters rather than in the cramped accommodations provided for most student families. Mamie flourished in that environment, and although Ike was busy around the clock, the earlier marital tensions disappeared. Mamie had matured since Panama, and as Susan Eisenhower put, “She had now passed muster as a real army wife.”⁷³

The Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth was one of the first postgraduate schools in America to employ the case method, and the curriculum was designed to discover not only who had mastered the material, but who could function and survive under severe stress. In battle, exhausted men are required to think and act under extreme pressure, and Leavenworth replicated that. Classes began at eight-thirty and lasted until noon. Afternoons were devoted to solving hypothetical problems. The problems were the core of the curriculum, and a clear head was essential. “If you are mentally fatigued or too stuffed up with facts and figures, it is almost certain a poor mark will result,” Eisenhower wrote.⁷⁴ “I established a routine that limited my night study to two hours and a half; from seven to nine-thirty. Mamie was charged with the duty of seeing that I got to bed on time.”⁷⁵

Students were encouraged to form study groups and most did. Eisenhower thought group study too cumbersome and time-consuming, and chose instead to work through the problems with an old friend from the 19th Infantry at Fort Sam Houston, Leonard Gerow. Gerow shared Eisenhower’s intensity. He had finished first in his class at the Infantry School, and his wife and Mamie were close friends of long standing. Evening after evening Ike and Gerow met in the upstairs war room Eisenhower had established in his apartment and gamed their way through the next day’s exercise. When the course ended in June 1926, Eisenhower finished first and Gerow second, separated by two-tenths of a percentage point.

Shortly after he graduated from Leavenworth, Eisenhower summarized his impressions for the adjutant general. The essay was subsequently published anonymously in the Infantry Journal.⁷⁷ Ike sought to demystify the Command and General Staff School and provide advice for future students: Use common sense; don’t magnify the importance of insignificant details; don’t worry about bygones; and keep it simple. “Remember that Napoleon’s battle plans are among the simplest that history records.” Focus, common sense, simplicity, and attitude—the recipe for Ike’s success.

^a The fact that Patton did not enter West Point through the competitive process should not belie his academic credentials. In 1903 he took the entrance examination for Princeton and was admitted to the Class of 1907, although he chose to attend VMI instead. Blumenson, 1 Patton Papers 57.

^b Patton finished fifth in the modern pentathlon at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm. The five events included pistol (25 m), swimming (300 m), fencing, mounted steeplechase (5,000 m), and a distance run (4,000 m). The Stockholm Olympics (the Fifth Olympiad) were attended by four thousand athletes, including the first women, representing twenty-eight countries.

^c Because of the animosity between Pershing and March, Secretary Baker, with congressional approval, had retained the AEF headquarters as an independent entity in Washington with Pershing in command. That permitted Pershing to continue on active duty without having to report to March, and it relieved March of the burden of issuing orders to a general who outranked him.

^d The old Army’s concern for a precise accounting of every expenditure paid enormous dividends in World War II and Korea, where there was scarcely an incident of financial malfeasance or excess profits. As a young artillery lieutenant during the Korean conflict, I remember well my battalion executive officer, Major Ejner J. Fulsang, reminding me: “Smith, if you take care of the nickels and dimes, the dollars will take care of themselves.”

^e When Pershing returned to the United States in 1919, and following a round of gala receptions in Washington and New York, he spent three weeks of vacation in isolation with the Conners at the twenty-seven-thousand-acre Adirondack retreat that belonged to Mrs. Conner’s family. Frank E. Vandiver, 2 Black Jack: The Life and Times of John J. Pershing 1044–45 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1977); Gene Smith, Until the Last Trumpet Sounds: The Life of General of the Armies John J. Pershing 233–35 (New York: Wiley, 1998).

^f Eisenhower attended Leavenworth on the adjutant general’s quota, although the record indicates there had been no need for Conner to circumvent the chief of infantry. In January 1925, before Ike’s transfer to the AG corps, the chief of infantry had recommended forty-seven officers to attend the 1925–26 CGSS course. Eisenhower was listed twenty-sixth. Recommendation by the chief of infantry was tantamount to selection. Of course, Eisenhower did not know that, and no one in the chief’s office thought it necessary to inform him. Carlo D’Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life 177–78 (New York: Henry Holt, 2002).

THREE

The Peacetime Army