Second Lieutenant Jacob L. Devers set out for his first duty assignment as an artillery officer in September 1909. His request for duty in the West was granted when the army assigned him to the 4th Field Artillery Regiment at Vancouver Barracks, Washington (the regiment’s headquarters was at Vancouver Barracks with the 1st Battalion, while the 2nd Battalion was stationed in Wyoming). This journey across the country was the first time Devers had been west of the Adirondack Mountains, let alone the Mississippi River. He took the Pennsylvania Railroad to Chicago, and from there he made his way to Walla Walla, Washington, on the Northern Pacific Railway. He traveled alone and found the trip intriguing, as only an “unsophisticated” young officer could.1 “I learned a lot about tickets and I guarded everything faithfully and carefully. I wouldn’t say that anything unusual passed on that trip. Being young, I had a chance to talk to a lot of people but I don’t remember any incident out of the way, except everything interested me. I didn’t have any trouble with conversation or being busy.”2
The final leg of the trip took him along the Columbia River to Vancouver, Washington, where he arrived without his trunk, which had been lost. He then reported to his regimental commander, Colonel A. B. Dyer. Devers’s assignment to the regiment’s 1st Battalion, commanded by Major Leroy S. Lyon, was to be one of the greatest learning experiences of his life. For the next three years he would hone and demonstrate his leadership skills and learn all he could from the officers and enlisted men around him. He also came to know himself better and to appreciate the qualities and habits of the soldiers and officers of the regular army.
Vancouver Barracks was typical of many army posts across the country. A garrison of roughly 2,000 men occupied the post on the north side of the Columbia River, across from Portland, Oregon. The post commander, Colonel McDonegal, also commanded the 14th Infantry Regiment, the largest unit on post. Army protocol required Devers to make courtesy calls on the officers of the two regiments over the next several weeks. Here, Devers became a member of what soldiers today call the “army family.”
Vancouver Barracks was America’s first permanent military base in Washington State. From 1849 to 1946 it served a variety of roles for the army, and its twenty-one sets of stately officers’ quarters housed or were visited by such men as Ulysses S. Grant (1849), Omar Bradley (1915–1916), and George Marshall (1936–1937). When Devers arrived in 1909, the post included two sets of two-story enlisted barracks, an officers’ row, bachelor living quarters, and several stables. Devers had a private second-floor room with a separate bath and ate his meals in a mess hall on the floor below. The post also had an officers’ club. A second lieutenant’s pay was $142.50 a month, with an additional $16.50 per month for the maintenance of a horse. Most of Devers’s pay was spent on food in the officers’ mess, although he tried to save $25 per month.
Devers found most of the officers friendly, although he felt that many of them, especially the infantry officers, drank too much. But Devers adopted a wise attitude about the issue of drinking: “I didn’t know how to [drink]—that worried me. . . . The way I decided to solve it was just don’t take any drinks.” He did not object to others drinking, as long as it did not get out of hand.3 Fortunately, there were plenty of other activities to occupy a young lieutenant’s time.
Devers considered his battalion commander, Major Lyon, a brilliant officer. An 1891 Academy graduate, Lyon was “small in stature, liked to play poker, had a very straight-laced New England wife, but he had a great sense of humor. He played polo [and] he knew his job well.”4 During his first critical troop assignment, Devers was fortunate to have a battalion commander he respected and who took an active interest in his junior officers’ professional development. Young officers who have such initial positive mentoring tend to make the army their career.
The 1st Battalion was a “pack” artillery unit, in that all its howitzers and equipment were carried by mules. Pack artillery units were designed to fight in mountainous or jungle terrain. Although the area around Vancouver Barracks was relatively flat, Major Lyon’s batteries often “packed out and marched all through the countryside there, in the woods—which were beautiful—[with] magnificent trees.” One of the greatest challenges in this field training was the heavy rain common in the Pacific Northwest. Devers enjoyed the training but later remarked, “You never went out without your raincoat. Your feet swelled just from the moisture. These rain clouds would come from nowhere, [and] the rain would pour down.”5 Devers recalled that when it wasn’t wet, it was dusty.
The soldiers of Devers’s battery were “rough and tough men. . . . The first sergeants were tough! They brought up the rear of the battery and I, being the junior second lieutenant in my battery, brought up the rear of the battery. If the battery was at the end of the battalion, I brought up the end of the battalion—in the rain.” He thought the battery’s first sergeant was hard on the men, sometimes too hard. Like all successful lieutenants, Devers had to learn how to approach senior noncommissioned officers: “I first had to make my good graces with him and keep out of trouble, and then said, I’ll take charge of that.” In this case, Devers was dealing with soldiers who were having trouble keeping up with the column due to blisters and poor physical conditioning. He tried to discourage the men from falling out without physically abusing them. The first sergeant accepted Devers’s approach. “He was a good soldier,” Devers noted. “His methods were just the way of the ‘Old Army,’ but the ‘Old Army’ was changing just about this time.”6
In addition to being tough, the soldiers of Devers’s unit were big men. He recalled, “The enlisted men were all over six feet, practically all of them.” About their abilities he said: “This was a volunteer Army. . . . Your mechanics, some of them were reliable and married, but most of them had weaknesses; but they were very capable saddlers, blacksmiths, and horse-shoers—mule-shoers—whatever you want to call them. We had good mechanics and good service people as soon as we got over payday. They were a hard lot and they did their job well. They liked to soldier. They demanded quite a lot of you.”7
Many of the soldiers drank too much, loafed too much, and played too much poker. The heavy drinking and gambling, however, tended to occur around payday, when the men had money in their pockets. One of Devers’s duties was to go to town with the first sergeant, round up the drunk soldiers, and get them back to their barracks with the least amount of trouble. Once they had run through their cash, the men remained relatively sober for the rest of the month. Alcoholism has been a consistent problem in the army since 1776. The number of sick-call cases related to drunkenness peaked in 1876 at 72 cases per 1,000; by 1897, it had fallen to 27. In 1912 Congress passed a law that required the army to withhold the pay of men who were sick due to alcoholism. This action was in step with the Progressive Era’s goal of improving society through all types of legislation, and the sick-call rate for drunkenness fell to 13 per 1,000 by 1915.8
Another major problem that plagued the army in the early twentieth century was venereal disease. Secretary of War Henry Stimson reported in 1912, “The high percentage of venereal disease continues to be the reproach of the American Army, and the daily average of those [soldiers] sick from that cause during the last calendar year was larger than the daily average number of those sick from all other of the more important diseases combined.” Throughout the army, the hospital admission rate for venereal disease was 164 per 1,000 soldiers per year. The problem became so bad that the army resorted to court-martialing soldiers who failed to use the prophylaxis station available at every post.9 Any officer who contracted a venereal disease could assume that his career was over.
Officers on posts such as Vancouver Barracks were part of a tight-knit group that provided many gainful social opportunities for its members. Bachelors found themselves the ready prey of officers’ wives who were eager to introduce them to young unmarried women. The married ladies of Vancouver Barracks routinely invited Devers and his fellow bachelor officers to afternoon tea for expressly that purpose. There were also frequent dances. Devers tried to avoid the teas, but he did participate in the dances, noting, “We had our manners.” Devers was determined to remain single for at least five years, but, he admitted, “I only lasted three years.”10
A second lieutenant’s workday in 1909 was filled with duties and activities that kept him busy and prepared him for future duties. The primary task was to learn how to serve as part of a combat unit. Devers worked with his soldiers to master the skills of the field artillery in general and pack artillery in particular. One of his greatest challenges was loading mules. Although he had been a good athlete at West Point, Devers (who stood only five feet ten inches) found it difficult to hoist heavy cargo such as hay or beef onto the packing frames and properly tie it down. However, he eventually became proficient at loading mules and later learned many of the fundamentals of a mule skinner.11
Army officers had to study for and pass examinations before they were eligible for promotion. The army expected units or posts to operate schools where the lieutenants studied military law, field engineering, topography, and international law. These schools were part of an educational system designed and implemented by Secretary of War Elihu Root from 1901 to 1903. This system comprised a hierarchy of schools, beginning with the post schools and including (from the base up) branch schools such as Infantry or Field Artillery Schools, the School of the Line, the Staff School, and the War College. All but the last two schools required a tremendous amount of rote learning and frequent examinations and grading, the results of which were placed in the officer’s personnel file.12 Thus, Devers’s afternoons were spent studying for his examinations.
As a leader, Lieutenant Devers had some advantages due to his athleticism. Since soldiers must be in good physical condition to perform their duties properly, the army of the twentieth century stressed athletics and physical conditioning, and Devers set the standard for his troops. Baseball and football were the two most popular sports among the enlisted men, and officers were expected to participate as both players and coaches. Infantrymen often used calisthenics, road marches, and bayonet drills for physical conditioning. Artillerymen and cavalrymen got their workouts from riding and training horses. The army paid for the upkeep of two horses for each officer and encouraged them to play polo for its physical conditioning and competiveness.
Devers had played some polo at West Point, and when he arrived at Vancouver Barracks, he immediately took up the sport again. He acquired his first horse for $150 and played polo with the other officers on a field next to the Columbia River. His horse “was a white Arabian, [a] very small pony. . . . That little pony stayed with me and came all the way to West Point and got to be my wife’s—some years later—riding horse. He was a good polo pony . . . because he had been broken in to work with cattle. This gave me a much better chance to play polo and made a better player out of me.” He paid a soldier, called a striker, $5 a month to take care of his horses in the post’s stables. Polo provided good exercise, but equally important, it allowed Devers to get to know his fellow officers.13 In addition, playing polo can teach lessons that are directly applicable to leadership in the army: “What got me interested in this sport was the horse and also the intelligence of the horse,” Devers observed. “Also, I learned what a light hand meant and what relaxation meant. . . . There’s nothing more interesting than trying to train a green polo pony. You try all the incentives. . . . This effort helped me a lot, not only in dealing with horses, but with men, because the same principles apply when you’re dealing with a difficult person.”14 For the next thirty years, Devers continued to play polo, often with West Point classmates such as George Patton.
As it turned out, Devers was a better polo player and athlete-coach than he was a student of military subjects. He failed the military hygiene and military topography examinations in the garrison school at Fort D. A. Russell in mid-1910. This displeased his regimental commander, who ordered him confined to the post for twenty-one days so he could study for and pass these exams.15 He evidently succeeded, since his rating officer, Captain Henry L. Newbold, wrote in his efficiency report for January–June 1910: “[he] is qualified for his position and should be intrusted with important duties.”16
As in today’s army, special assignments or duties were thrust upon junior lieutenants to give them experience dealing with challenging situations. Within a week of his arrival at Vancouver Barracks, Devers was detailed to serve as an aide to President Taft during his visit to the Rose Festival in Vancouver. “So I dressed up in my new uniform and my saber and I had a horse that pranced too dang much!” Devers rode behind the president’s car in the parade, and he “didn’t know whether or not that horse was going to stand up or fall down, or what, and I didn’t know whether that saber was going to get mixed up with me and the people alongside [the parade route].” Overall, he concluded, “it was a very broadening experience, but it all went off very well. We had breakfast and met the President. Then he departed and we went back to business.”17
The 1st Battalion and the 4th Field Artillery’s regimental headquarters left Vancouver Barracks just three months after Devers joined the unit. The post was too small to allow the artillerymen to fire their howitzers, and the regiment’s 2nd Battalion was returning from the Philippines. The regiment’s new post was Fort D. A. Russell, on the outskirts of Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Fort Russell (later renamed Fort Warren) was a much larger post than Vancouver Barracks, with plenty of room for three regiments with two battalions each. The 4th Artillery joined the 9th Cavalry and 11th Infantry Regiments and a signal battalion at the brigade-sized post. This consolidation was part of the army’s effort to bring the three major combat arms together where they could train with one another. The ultimate purpose was to better prepare for the type of warfare envisioned by reformers such as Root. The regiments at Fort Russell formed the 2nd Division’s 6th Brigade on the Mexican border in 1913.18
The train carrying Devers and his battalion arrived at Fort Russell in December 1909 during a blinding snowstorm. The change from the rainy but temperate climate of the Northwest to winter on the Great Plains was profound. Devers later remarked that it seemed to snow eleven months of the year in Wyoming, and “the wind was terrific. . . . In the blizzards the cattle and horses crowded in there over the fences, [and] came in to get up against the buildings to keep warm.” The artillerymen often had to break trails through the snowdrifts with their mules, and the temperature regularly dropped as low as twenty degrees below zero.19 Just surviving in such an environment was difficult, although it was a valuable experience for Devers, who would eventually command two armies fighting in the Vosges Mountains of France in the winter of 1944–1945.
Fort Russell was a relatively new post, and although it was somewhat isolated, both the post and nearby Cheyenne were on the main line of the Union Pacific Railroad, ensuring year-round communications to anywhere in the nation. Cheyenne in 1909 was “a real Western town” with a theater, a fairground, and a red-light district. The post commander, Brigadier General Clarence Edwards, made a point of introducing his officers to community leaders and took them to visit state legislators and the governor. Devers noted that the local population worked well with the post.20
Shortly after his arrival at Fort Russell, Devers was reassigned to Battery C, commanded by Captain Henry “Swish” Newbold, who had been a tactical officer at the Military Academy when Devers was there. Devers recalled that Newbold “was sort of a social leader there. He was unmarried and demanded all the proper social graces of his officers.” Shortly thereafter, First Lieutenant Lesley J. McNair (West Point class of 1904) assumed command of the unit. “He and his good wife added much to the post.” Devers considered him a “brilliant officer. . . . He was very serious minded and we worked hard.” McNair was an important role model for young Devers, reinforcing his work ethic and his understanding of how to get things done. “He used to go over and work in the blacksmith shop and I was his helper with the blacksmith. In that way I picked up a great deal of information about how you got things done as you go along. I admired McNair greatly and this proved to be a good judgment because he, as you know, became, really, the head trainer of the Army that fought the Second World War.”21
Fort Russell was a large post with plenty of room for artillery practice and other types of training for infantry, artillery, and cavalry units. Battery C did a lot of howitzer training, and Devers learned “an awful lot about firing because you didn’t have many aiming points, [since] the ground was more or less flat. You had to go a distance to get into the hills where you learned something about clearing the crest. . . . We had a lot of trouble judging overs and shorts because of the nature of the terrain.”22
While at Fort Russell, Devers’s assignments included assistant to the post adjutant, post engineer, and post signal officer. He was responsible for a great deal of property and for mundane but important matters such as the efficient operation of the furnaces in the men’s quarters. As signal officer, he was in charge of the post switchboard. His handling of this duty shows that he understood the need for a hands-on approach to leadership: “I always had a problem with that switchboard. . . . So I went up and ran the switchboard for a week myself, at peak loads, and found out what the problem was. I found that it required a lot of concentration and that we didn’t have enough people. I got that corrected. . . . While you can’t be as skillful as the people that are doing it, it gives you the information which you need to make a just decision.”23 Devers admitted that although these additional duties were difficult, they were also challenging and interesting and kept him alert. “There wasn’t any chance to be dull at Cheyenne, certainly not for a second lieutenant of Field Artillery.”24
One of the most instructive experiences for Devers was a 1,000-mile march across seven passes in the Rocky Mountains over a two-month period. Like most army units, the 4th Field Artillery was well below its authorized war strength. For this exercise, all regimental personnel were consolidated into one battalion consisting of a headquarters battery, three firing batteries of four guns each, and three quartermaster trains of fifty mules each. This reorganization allowed the officers to experience wartime conditions.25 The field exercise allowed the battalion to train as realistically as possible for its wartime mission as a mountain artillery unit; the firing batteries were able to fire their howitzers in the mountains, and the support units practiced their missions under arduous conditions. In addition, the officers and men were hardened by weeks of cross-country movement over difficult mountain terrain. The battalion also experimented with several types of pack saddles and frames for the mules.
Devers was assigned to McNair’s Battery C, where he helped conduct artillery practice. He was also put in charge of the battalion’s seven pack trains—four from the battalion and three quartermaster trains led by hired civilians. Each train had about thirty-five mules that were led and cared for by a pack master, a cargodor, two cooks, a farrier, and seven mule handlers (one for every five mules). The work was hard from the outset. “In the first five to ten days of this march—when we were covering twenty miles a day—we lost a lot of civilians in the Quartermaster trains,” he recalled. Devers was forced to replace these civilians with soldiers. About 13 soldiers deserted from each of the 200-man batteries during the expedition.26
Desertion was a major problem for the U.S. Army during the first thirty years of the twentieth century. In 1907 more than 7.4 percent of enlisted soldiers deserted. This rate fluctuated each year, partially in response to the civilian job market. From 1926 through 1929, more than 22 percent of the garrison at Fort Hamilton, New York, deserted. This was probably representative of the army’s overall rate. In the early 1930s desertion rates remained high, even in units such as the 1st Infantry Division.27 Reports by the inspector general indicate that low pay was the primary cause of desertion, especially when army pay was less than civilian pay. In 1909 privates received $13 per month, or $156 per year, whereas the annual civilian wage averaged $524; agricultural workers earned an average of $319 annually. Even during the Great Depression, the army paid its privates only $18.75 a month, while members of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) received $30. Both soldiers and the CCC men received housing, food, medical care, and clothing. Whenever the training was arduous, as it was for the 4th Field Artillery during its two months of mountain training, the desertion rate rose. One month, 6.5 percent of the men deserted, forcing the unit to send for additional soldiers from Fort Russell to fill the ranks.28
Nonetheless, the battalion continued its journey while Devers’s pack trains moved supplies of food, ammunition, and forage from various railheads to the batteries. “We carried three days’ rations, two days’ forage, and I used to come into the camp—sometimes passing the batteries . . . drop my loads where the batteries were to camp, pick up my mantas and ropes and start out for a railhead which might be another twenty miles away. Frequently I would arrive at midnight at the railhead; then I’d get water and clean up my equipment, get ready to load up early the next morning and join the batteries at the next camp.”29 Such hard and important work gave Devers a superb understanding of the most important task in the army: logistical support. He learned to plan for future operations and to adjust to conditions. For example, the average load carried by a mule was 250 pounds, but due to a shortage of mules, he had to figure out how to transport more than 300 pounds per mule without breaking the animals. He and his men did this by rotating the loads so that each mule got a break from the overload periodically.30 Since the army, with a seemingly perverse sense of humor, often expects officers to do more than they have the resources for, this type of experience was good preparation for Devers’s later service.
The soldiers and animals of the 4th Artillery marched twenty miles a day for the first five days. In retrospect, this was too much, given the physical condition of the men and the mules. A number of soldiers suffered blisters and other injuries. Devers and the other officers inspected their soldiers’ feet every day and helped the battalion’s medical officer treat blisters. Soldiers who were too injured to walk or were suffering from other ailments were carried in travois suspended from mules. Devers and his men also had to treat sore spots on the backs of the mules with a purple fluid, and they shifted the animals’ loads to prevent further injury. On the evening of the fifth day they arrived at Denver, Colorado, where they stopped for several days to reorganize and bring replacements from Fort Russell.31
The lessons learned during that first week were applied, and the unit continued its trek for another seven weeks, moving through the Rockies to Canyon City, Colorado, then on to Fort Collins and eventually back to Cheyenne and Fort Russell. According to Devers, “those were long marches, men leading mules. . . . Each train had a bell mare—a mare with a bell around its neck—and the mules were trained to follow the bell mare in their particular pack train.” The weather was cooling down as fall approached, and the men often found ice on their water buckets in the morning. Bedrolls got wet from the nightly dew, forcing the column to stop and readjust the loads and knots in the late morning as the ropes dried out. Perhaps the most difficult part of the journey was crossing the narrow mountain passes. Mules sometimes fell from the trail and plunged into the valley below. Then Devers and his men had to climb down to retrieve the animal’s load and the mule itself if it was not killed.32 Even if all the animals made it to the top of the pass, “we frequently ran into a swamp of accumulated water, dried and broken wood, trees, and leaves. Not once or twice, but about ten times in order to get the mules across such a place we had to build roads of saplings we cut down.” If a mule got bogged down, Devers learned that the best way to get it moving again was to climb onto its back “and bite his ear.”33
The officers and men learned to cope with the elements, difficult terrain, and stubborn animals. Devers learned a great deal about soldiers and how to care for them. He and McNair also became closely acquainted. McNair found that his subordinate got things done and never failed to throw himself into his duties completely. This undoubtedly accounts for their smooth working relationship in 1941–1943, when McNair was Army Ground Forces commander and Devers commanded the Armored Force. McNair remarked in Devers’s 1911 efficiency report that he was “excellent” in “attention to duty, professional zeal, general bearing and military appearance and intelligence and judgment shown in instructing, drilling and handling enlisted men.”34
Devers’s years at Fort Russell gave him the professional grounding essential for an officer’s successful service to the nation. They also gave him the opportunity to meet his future wife.
Major Leroy S. Lyon remained in command of the 1st Battalion, 4th Field Artillery, during Devers’s service at Fort Russell. Devers greatly respected Lyon and enjoyed his “keen sense of humor.” By early 1911, Major and Mrs. Lyon had taken Jake’s measure and considered him to be a promising young officer—promising enough to introduce him to their nineteen-year-old niece, Miss Georgie Lyon, when she visited Fort Russell in January or February. As Devers remembered, it was, “of course, one of my responsibilities” to escort the major’s niece to various functions. “She was going to stay one month but she stayed three.”35
When Georgie arrived, Devers was not the only bachelor at Fort Russell. In fact, two of his closest friends in the battalion, Lieutenants McBride and Erlenkotter, were single. And at the time, Devers was a confirmed bachelor. While at West Point, he had listened to the advice of Major Charles Summerall, a popular artillery officer on the faculty, and resolved to stay single for at least five years. Nonetheless, he clearly fell in love with the petite young lady, and she soon reciprocated his affection.
Georgie was from Arlington, Virginia, where her father, Frank Lyon, was a prominent attorney. Being new to the West, she threw herself into the social activities at the isolated army post. With Jake’s help she learned to ride Major Lyon’s horse. She proved to be a natural and accomplished horsewoman and continued to ride for pleasure and exercise for most of her life. There was a theater in Cheyenne, and officers and their families frequented it regularly. There was a streetcar line connecting the fort to downtown Cheyenne, and Devers remembered, “I used to ride with her considerably and we had a lot of fun together. Pretty soon—it took quite a while—I was engaged.”36
When Georgie returned home in early April, she and Jake were engaged, and they planned to marry in Arlington in the fall. By then, Devers’s friends McBride and Erlenkotter were also engaged to girls from back east. The young officers hoped to get leave at the same time so they could attend one another’s weddings. Unfortunately, their commander would not allow all three lieutenants to be gone at the same time. As it worked out, Devers and McBride had leaves that overlapped, so McBride was able to be Devers’s best man.
Devers first met Georgie’s father in early October. He found that Frank Lyon “was a different man from Major Leroy S. Lyon. He was very serious minded, very active and a very brilliant mind, as his brother was, but he didn’t have the sense of humor, and he didn’t play poker. He didn’t do a lot of things like that.” Frank proved to be a good influence on the young couple and was very supportive of their marriage, despite his daughter’s youth. In addition to being a successful attorney, he owned a lot of real estate in the Washington, D.C., area. Lyon served on the Interstate Commerce Commission and introduced his son-in-law to politics.37
McBride and Devers headed east in late September. McBride married first, and then he traveled to Virginia for Georgie and Jake’s wedding, which took place in the Lyons’ home in Arlington. As Jake recalled, “The wedding went off all right but I had a problem because Georgie wanted lilies-of-the-valley and it seems lilies-of-the-valley aren’t in existence in October, so I had a hard time getting the florist to go to some house and get me a bunch.”38 McBride and Devers stayed at the Army and Navy Club in Washington, and on the day of the wedding they got lost on their way to the Lyons’ home. With flowers in hand, they finally made it, and the wedding proceeded.
While in Arlington, Devers drove an electric car for the first (and probably the last) time. Frank Lyon owned “one of these electric automobiles. I didn’t have a driver’s license, but I could drive, so I used to drive that electric automobile to take Georgie downtown to do some shopping.” On one of these trips, Devers turned the wrong way onto a one-way street, right in front of a policeman. “The policeman held up his hand, and, of course, I was young and pretty niftily dressed, I guess, and scared to death. He gave me a ticket and told me I’d have to appear at the police court the next morning. . . . This was my first experience with the law. I told the judge my story and he sort of smiled and said, ‘Well, we’ll give you a year’s grace.’”39
After this adventure, the newlyweds traveled to Niagara Falls for a brief honeymoon before returning by train to Fort Russell. There, they settled into an apartment in a new fourplex. The building was on the edge of the prairie, and there was a large lake about half a mile away. The lake provided ice for the post, and Devers often had to take a detail up to the lake to cut ice and store it in the nearby icehouse. “That lake froze over solid! We had great cakes of ice to handle and we didn’t have too good equipment in those days. . . . Every now and then one of these men would be thrown into the water. Boy when he came out he was a cake of ice! We never stopped—we just threw him in that wagon” and headed for the hospital to thaw him out.40 The lake was also a great place to ice-skate, and skating parties helped break the monotony of winter on the plains.
Georgie and Jake attended the weekly post dance. “Each regiment prepared the punch for one month so we alternated. . . . Each of those regiments had their special punch. Believe me, ours in the 4th Mountain Artillery was something!” These dances gave the officers and the ladies an event to look forward to and a chance to socialize with people from the other regiments. Dinner parties were a routine part of these evenings. After dinner, the couples would ride together to the post’s dance hall in a four-wheeled wagon pulled by four mules. “There we’d all congregate and that is the way we got to know each other.”41
At the theater in Cheyenne, road shows traveling from New York or Chicago to San Francisco often made a one-night stand. Unmarried officers usually sat in the front row. During musical comedies, “some of the brave souls would go up on the stage and dance with the girls. . . . Sometimes the train was held up for an hour or so because we didn’t get the girls back in time for them to leave about two o’clock in the morning.”42
The Deverses remained at Fort Russell until December 1912, when Jake was reassigned to West Point. Their time together at Fort Russell, away from their families, allowed the young couple to develop their relationship and establish their own routine. It also introduced Georgie to army life. For the rest of their lives, the Deverses would cherish many of the friends they made in Wyoming.
In November 1912 Lieutenant Devers received orders to return to the Military Academy as a mathematics instructor. The assignment was somewhat unexpected, and Jake and Georgie had only about a week to pack before they were to leave for New York. The hardest part of the trip was getting across the western plains in early December. As Devers recalled:
I was to report there by the 15th of December. So we planned and packed up to go East. We had our reservations on the Union Pacific Railroad and we got into one of the worst storms the country has ever known. So that train didn’t appear in Cheyenne for three days. But I could see that, with field glasses, top of the mountain where it was to come over in that cold weather. So I watched for it! . . . I had a driver and four mules and a wagon standing by and, of course, along about three o’clock one morning I got the call, “the train’s coming over the mountain.”43
Quickly, they roused the wagon driver and headed for the train station in Cheyenne, three miles away. Jake rode on the box seat with the driver, and Georgie was bundled up inside with their luggage. “Well the first thing that happened was the mules started to run away with us.” With some effort, the driver got the team under control and stopped the wagon. In the process, a trace loosened, forcing Devers to “jump off into the snow—in all my finery, and get that fixed.” They quickly resumed their race to the station, arriving barely in time to board the train. After that hectic start they had a comparatively calm journey to Washington, D.C., where they enjoyed a brief visit with the Lyons before going on to West Point.44
When Jake and Georgie arrived at the Military Academy in December 1912, they were assigned quarters at 16 Kingsley Row—a three-story wooden house that remains in use today. Their apartment was on the middle level, with a beautiful view over the Hudson River toward Garrison, New York. They had a kitchen, a living room, and a bedroom. The other apartment in the house was on the first floor and was occupied by a civilian who worked in the paymaster’s office on post.
Devers recalled that “one of the first things I did, of course, after I arrived there was to call on the Superintendent, General Townsley. General and Mrs. Townsley returned the call.” When they arrived, Mrs. Townsley observed to her husband that the Deverses ought to have a porch on the front of the house, overlooking the river. “So within a couple of weeks I had a porch and an awning. You could sit out there in great comfort and have the greatest scenic view in the world.”45 That view can still be enjoyed from that porch today.
Devers arrived in the middle of the academic year, with no teaching experience. “I was thrown into the middle of Plebe Math, Convergency and Divergency of Series, Probability and Chance, and I hadn’t been too good in those subjects when I was a cadet.” Fortunately, the head of the Mathematics Department, Colonel Charles P. Echols, had developed a method of preparing newly assigned instructors for their classroom duties. He “required all his new instructors to recite on the subjects two or three days ahead of the lessons.” Colonel Echols personally supervised these sessions and “handled us just as though we were cadets—and we were cadets, really—although we were young officers.”46 This type of training for new instructors remains a tradition at the Military Academy, ensuring that the cadets receive the finest technical education possible while exposing them to young officers recently returned from field duty.
Devers taught two classes a day, six days a week. Each class section had about twelve cadets, ensuring a great deal of individual attention. In 1912 the officers wore their blue uniforms in the classroom, and Devers observed that “they’re expensive, and chalk gets on them. They are hard to maintain, but we were immaculate in that sense.” The most tedious part of teaching at West Point was the grading. Cadets recited daily and were graded on their work. Examinations were frequent, and instructors spent hours scoring them. In the Math Department, Devers and his peers marked exams in teams of two. If they disagreed on the marking of a paper, they met with Colonel Echols and explained their rationales for their scores. Echols would then decide on the final grade. However, according to Devers, “I never knew him to give the cadet the lower mark. He always gave him the higher mark of the two.”47
Cadets were assigned to sections based on their previous grades. The lowest section in math was called the Goat Section. Devers taught the second to lowest section. His cadets faced expulsion from the Academy if they failed the course, so Devers considered it his duty to save as many of his students as possible by providing them with good instruction and frequent tutoring. “I was able to save more than 50% of the people, particularly in the Plebe Year, which was quite a good record. I got terribly interested in why they were having trouble with Math. . . . Well, you know, that taught me a good lesson because in all the rest of my career I found out that you must look very carefully at both sides of the question to get the facts before you get rid of a man you don’t like or you don’t think is any good.”48
Devers’s teaching experience at West Point demonstrates a facet of the Military Academy’s history that is sometimes overlooked. There are actually two graduation classes each year: the first is the cadets, who are commissioned as officers; the second is the group of young officers who were brought back to the Academy to teach and then return to the field army with greatly enhanced intellectual capabilities and more finely honed leadership skills. In 1912 most of the instructors were West Point graduates. Today, about half of them are graduates of other colleges or universities.
Georgie and Jake found social life at the Academy to be both challenging and enjoyable. They often invited cadets to their home for dinner. These dinners were expensive, and the young couple received no additional funds to pay for such gatherings. Jake also ate with the cadets in the mess hall, where he could assess their attitudes and habits. Such personal mentorship is an important part of the West Point experience and is a terrific way to introduce cadets to army traditions and values. Devers himself had received this kind of mentoring from Joe Stilwell and Charles Summerall, both of whom became four-star generals.49 In addition, there were numerous officers’ functions such as dances and dinners. Social life at the Academy in 1912 centered around the academic department to which an officer was assigned. These officers and their wives often established lasting friendships.
Devers studied hard for his teaching duties; in addition, he coached the basketball team and worked with the artillery detachment on post. “I was the only one there that knew anything about pack artillery. So after my academic obligations were filled, I had to go to work there. This kept me very busy.” Devers also helped coach the baseball team, on which Omar Bradley played. “Were the hours long? I would say they were long but they didn’t bother me very much.”50 One of his fellow instructors noted that Devers seemed to be “in perpetual motion.”51 Devers left no record of his relationship with Bradley during this time, and it is possible he did not even remember him. Bradley and Devers would serve together at the Academy in the early 1920s.
We do not know what Georgie thought about her husband’s work schedule or the responsibilities of entertaining cadets and other officers and their wives. She certainly worked hard to be the proper hostess for the athletic coaches from visiting schools such as the Naval Academy and Cornell. Sometime during their first tour of duty at the Academy, Georgie gave birth to a baby boy who was either stillborn or died shortly after birth.
During his years in the Math Department at West Point, Devers clearly impressed Echols, the department head. Echols noted repeatedly that Devers did an excellent job teaching and interacting with the cadets. He recommended that Devers be given increasing responsibilities and deemed him “fitted for promotion.” In his final efficiency report, Echols wrote, “[Devers] cooperates loyally with others, [and is] a fine young officer, of most agreeable personality, enthusiastic in his work and thoroughly efficient.”52
After teaching at the Military Academy for more than three years, Devers was assigned to the 9th Field Artillery at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. The newly established regiment was one of the army’s first motorized field artillery units. This assignment would expand Devers’s professional horizons significantly.53
The post known as Schofield Barracks was established in late 1908 to provide housing and training areas for regiments of the Hawaiian Division. The mission of the Hawaiian Division was to provide mobile forces to defend the naval base at Pearl Harbor from landward attack. Schofield Barracks and Pearl Harbor were part of the American Pacific empire that stretched from Alaska to the Philippines and from Wake Island to the Hawaiian Islands. Schofield Barracks remains a critical installation for American forces in the Pacific. Devers asked to be assigned to the newly organized 9th Field Artillery Regiment because it was one of the first units in the U.S. Army equipped with motorized vehicles.54
During the summer of 1916 Jake was able to take several months’ leave, and the couple visited Georgie’s parents in Arlington—a time he described as “a most enjoyable summer.”55 To reach Hawaii, Georgie and Jake endured a four-day train ride from New York to San Francisco and then an ocean voyage from there to the island of Oahu. At Pearl Harbor they were met by their sponsor and driven to Schofield Barracks. Their quarters were primitive, since the post was less than a decade old. As Devers remembered, “We lived on post, up near the [Kolekole] pass, and many of the quarters had been built from the crates which had been used to ship the furniture over there.” Their home was a one-story house with a bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, and living room. They were able to afford domestic help, so they hired servants from among the “Chinese (who inhabited the valleys around the post) for a reasonable amount of money.”56 Since the area was more than 1,000 feet above sea level, the climate was pleasant, except when it rained.
The Deverses’ social life revolved around the two artillery regiments on post. Officers’ families were close, and “if somebody gave a dinner party on the post, the servants found out who the guests were to be. If you were one of them and you went to that house, you were liable to see your own silver or your china on the table. This was common and you’d also see some of your servants working there. In other words, the service family was also well organized and very efficient.” It is clear that Devers found Hawaii a very pleasant place to be assigned:
We weren’t very well paid in those days. . . . We did go down to the beaches in the afternoon, and on weekends, to bathe and picnic. Oahu has lots of good beaches. . . . We sometimes went down to visit friends at other posts on the island to enjoy their beaches, but we stuck strictly to our business because our money ran out too fast if we didn’t. . . . We lived close together in the areas of the post. We intermingled at the club and if we had a party, we returned our party invitations at the proper time and in the proper way, generally on dance night, which was Saturday night always. Our social life was very normal and very interesting.57
By late fall 1916, Georgie was pregnant. Her parents came for a visit in November or December, and the young couple showed them around Oahu. Devers had given them a preview, describing the island in a letter to the Lyons in October: “It is small for you can see across the island from the divide upon which we live and it is one of the most beautiful sights one can see. . . . We live right up against the mountains and the weather is ideal.”58
One of Devers’s duties was serving as judge advocate of the General Court. This was in the era before the establishment of the Judge Advocate Corps, and Devers was surprised by the assignment “because I’d never been a Judge Advocate in my life. . . . However, I had been well educated, both at the Military Academy and in my short experience at D. A. Russell—and later at West Point—in the duties of the Judge Advocate.” The job required Devers to travel all over the island to deal with about a dozen military justice cases. Because there was no public transit system, the Deverses had to buy their first car, taking out an $800 loan for a new 1916 Buick. He also had to find a stenographer to serve as the court recorder. He located a competent civilian stenographer on the post, but the man tended to drink too much. On several occasions Devers had to sober him up after a four-day binge. To do so, he used “the water cure—I got his clothes off him and with the help of a couple of sergeants I gave him a cold water bath and sobered him up.” Devers managed to resolve the cases assigned to him and was able to return to his regular duties with his battery.59
First Lieutenant Devers was assigned to Captain Pratt’s Battery C of the newly established 9th Field Artillery Regiment.60 The technical aspects of this job were different from his experience as a pack artilleryman. The battery was equipped with caterpillar-type tractors to pull its 4.7-inch guns and 155mm howitzers. Four-wheel-drive trucks carried the ammunition and the gun crews, and a number of motorcycles were used by messengers and officers. One of his main tasks “was to teach everybody how to ride a motorcycle because that was our mode of transportation. . . . As a result we had a good many accidents. You might call them minor, but there were broken legs and broken arms, and I learned to dislike the motorcycle extremely.” Soldiers with broken bones had to spend time in the post hospital, and Devers lost their services until they healed.61
Devers and the newly established unit had to learn to move and fire its heavy guns. An even greater challenge was maintaining the artillery pieces, tractors, and trucks, “which meant training a lot of mechanics.” The soldiers had to learn how to drive the tractors and trucks on the highways, as well as how to maneuver the vehicles and guns over rough terrain. According to Devers, he “had no problem of reacting to the adjustment from pack to horse-drawn artillery. . . . However, I had had nothing to do with tractor-drawn artillery. This presented quite a problem because we found that with a heavy gun behind the tractor if you didn’t handle it just right going down a steep incline, the weight behind the tractor had a tendency to push it around and overturn it.” This happened several times before the men figured out how to put ropes on the wheels of the guns to keep them behind the tractors.62
Devers also faced the normal personnel problems encountered in a newly organized army unit. The cadre for the new regiment had come from the 1st Field Artillery Regiment, which was also assigned to Schofield Barracks. It is quite likely that the 1st Artillery had not sent its best noncommissioned officers and soldiers to the newly formed 9th Artillery. Within four months of his arrival, Devers was ordered to take command of the problematic Battery F and straighten it out. Colonel McMahon advised him that the unit had had a “sort of mutiny,” and Devers would be the sole officer in the battery. Further, he advised Devers to “look at your noncommissioned officers and see what the problem is. Whatever you decide to do, go ahead and do it. If you need any advice, come to me; and if you need any help, come to me; and I’ll back you up.”63
First, Devers observed the unit during and after duty hours and identified the main problem: the battery’s low morale, poor discipline, and inadequate training stemmed from weak leadership by several key noncommissioned officers (NCOs). The first sergeant was a competent artilleryman but a young and inexperienced NCO. He was too close to the men and regularly played blackjack with them at night. The mess sergeant was incompetent; therefore, meals were distasteful and often cold. Then Devers took action: “I called the First Sergeant in and told him I was going to reduce him from First Sergeant to sergeant and that Sergeant Jones [the battery’s junior section sergeant] . . . was going to be the First Sergeant. . . . Then I assembled the battery and told them of the changes I was going to make and what we had to do, [and] that I would start to improve the Mess. Well I had to get a new Mess Sergeant, which I did. I took the senior cook and I made him Mess Sergeant.”64 Devers backed the new first sergeant to the hilt and spent a great deal of time helping the new mess sergeant improve the chow. The process of building unit morale and enhancing training and discipline took time and a great deal of energy. However, once the food got better and the men saw a firm but fair leader at their head, the battery improved. Devers demonstrated a good understanding of his men when he decided to put the former first sergeant in charge of a gun section, keeping an experienced individual in a critical position. From that time on, the sergeant’s gun section was always the best one in the unit. “I suppose,” Devers reflected, “this was because he knew we meant business.”65
Devers’s approach to training was innovative. He followed the battalion’s training guidance but did things his own way. For example, if he had too few soldiers to man the battery’s four guns, he combined the men into one or two gun sections and took them to the ranges. When the soldiers completed their training missions with proficiency, he would organize a baseball game as a reward. He varied the drills and organized “short difficult marches through the ravines where they had to manhandle the guns and tractors. This took a lot of skill.” He also willingly listened to ideas from his NCOs and his men. It was a noteworthy performance, especially considering that Devers was the only officer in the battery, even though five were authorized.66 His new battalion commander, Major Raymond Pratt, noted that Devers showed “remarkable zeal and efficiency as an organizational commander, and has obtained remarkable results from his battery.”67 This was high praise indeed!
The 9th Field Artillery was one of the first regiments in the army to become motorized. It was the beginning of a dramatic transformation that would take more than twenty years. There was a lot of support for the continued use of horses in the 1916 army. However, the war in Europe was demonstrating the need for howitzers and guns that were too heavy for teams of horses to move across torn-up and muddy battlefields. In Devers’s view, motorization was inevitable because “mobility is very important to artillery and it was the coming thing. . . . I was glad to get this assignment.” Officers like Devers who could readily adjust to tactical and technical innovations and lead others in the process of modernization were well positioned for future success in the military. Devers “wasn’t sorry to lose the horses,” even though he loved to ride and to play polo. From his perspective, the gradual transition from a horse-equipped army to a mechanized and motorized force was necessary.68
One additional duty illuminates an element of Devers’s personality that was important to his later career success and explains why he irritated certain other senior officers, such as Bradley and Eisenhower. Colonel William Snow made Devers responsible for the officers’ club, which was experiencing serious financial problems because some of the officers failed to pay their bills promptly. Devers found an effective solution that shamed them into meeting their obligations. As he recalled:
I had to notify them and post their names on the bulletin board. This had never been done before and involved one of the highest ranking men in one of the regiments. I warned him and then I posted his name on the bulletin board. The officer sent his Adjutant to get the name removed. . . . I told him there was only one way this could be done properly and that was by paying his bill promptly. As each bill was settled, I reprinted the bulletin board list.69
This got results, but it did not make Devers any friends. Fortunately, Colonel Snow appreciated Devers’s initiative and his success in getting the club’s finances on a better footing. In his future service, Devers would often take whatever action he deemed best, regardless of the political consequences. Self-confident superiors like Colonel Snow valued this dedication to duty and mission accomplishment.
Amazingly, the officers at Schofield Barracks seemed to give little thought to the war raging in Europe and the possible consequences for them and the American army. This is somewhat understandable, since U.S. policy at the time was to remain neutral. Also, as Devers observed, “We had our family problems, [and] our local problems, which kept us plenty busy. We studied the war a little bit but not as we would do today. We never spoke about the coming U.S. involvement in World War I until it actually happened.”70
On 6 April 1917 Congress declared war against Imperial Germany. Devers recalled that “when the war finally came, we got orders in a hurry to move the regiments from Schofield Barracks to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, which was being built and expanded into a great artillery school. . . . So I packed up my family, which then consisted of a six-month old daughter [Frances] and my wife. We took the first transport.” They had just two days to pack up their personal household effects.71 By that time, Devers had been promoted to the rank of major. Colonel Snow, who would be commandant of the artillery school, preceded Devers to Fort Sill. Together, they would cope with the largest and fastest expansion of the U.S. Army in its history to that date.
Jacob Devers’s first eight years in the army gave him a variety of experiences. He made the transition from mule-carried pack artillery to motorized artillery. He learned to deal with soldiers effectively and demonstrated an ability to learn from his men, his peers, and his superiors. Georgie and Jake found a comfortable place in the army family. During his assignments at Fort Russell, West Point, and Schofield Barracks, they grew together as a couple and were mentored by people such as the McNairs and the Snows. By 1917, they were ready for greater challenges in difficult times.