Eisenhower in War and Peace Read online

  Unlike the men in the Doud family, Mamie received only a sketchy education. Her father preferred ladylike accomplishments to formal learning. Mamie graduated from the eighth grade and briefly attended Denver’s East High, but soon dropped out. She took piano and dance lessons, traveled extensively with the family, and enjoyed the services of the personal maid that John Doud provided for his daughters. In 1914 she enrolled at Miss Wolcott’s socially correct finishing school, where young ladies from Denver’s finest families were taught the polite graces but few domestic skills. “Most people are raised to do something,” Mamie once said. “I wasn’t.”10

  Mamie as a Denver debutante, 1914–15. (illustration credit 2.2)

  Eisenhower was swept off his feet. Not just by Mamie, but by the whole Doud family. John and Elivera treated Ike like the son they never had, and Mamie’s sisters rhapsodized about his charms. A whirlwind romance ensued, and on Valentine’s Day 1916, Ike proposed and Mamie accepted. John fretted briefly over whether his indulged daughter could adjust to life as an Army wife, but acquiesced and soon provided Mamie a monthly $100 allowance (slightly more than $1,600 currently) to help make ends meet.b

  Mamie set the wedding date for November 14, 1916, her twentieth birthday. But events intervened. On March 9, Pancho Villa, evidently hoping to provoke war between the United States and Mexico, crossed the border in strength and mounted a surprise assault against American forces in Columbus, New Mexico. Nine civilians and eight troopers of the 13th Cavalry were killed before Villa (who suffered much heavier casualties) was driven off. Washington responded by ordering General Funston to organize a punitive expedition under Brigadier General John J. Pershing to capture Villa and disperse his forces.11 All leaves were canceled, and the Southern Department was placed on a war footing. Meanwhile, the conflict in Europe raged unabated. At Verdun, the French narrowly averted disaster at the cost of 350,000 dead. British losses on the Somme in the spring of 1916 exceeded 400,000. Pressure for the United States to intervene mounted daily. State militias were federalized, and war appeared inevitable. At Ike’s suggestion, Mamie agreed to advance their wedding to July 1, 1916, provided he could get leave to come to Denver for the ceremony.

  Eisenhower requested twenty days’ emergency leave (“It seemed to me that imminent marriage was just that”), but was turned down.12 His colonel did, however, agree to pass Ike’s request to the department commander.

  Eisenhower approached General Funston’s headquarters with trepidation. Funston’s adjutant suggested it was a poor time for second lieutenants to be getting married. The chief of staff offered no encouragement. Finally, Ike was ushered into Fighting Fred’s office.

  “I understand you want to get married,” said the general.

  Eisenhower affirmed he did, and at that point Funston recalled their earlier encounter. “Oh yes, Mr. Eisenhower. I remember you very well.” He asked Ike what the hurry was, and Eisenhower explained as best he could.

  Ike and Mamie’s wedding photo, July 1, 1916. (illustration credit 2.3)

  “All right, you may have ten days. I am not sure that this is what the War Department had in mind [when it said emergency leaves only], but I’ll take the responsibility.”13

  The wedding took place at twelve noon on July 1, 1916—the same day the Army promoted Ike to first lieutenant—in the gladiola-filled music room of the Douds’ home. The short Presbyterian service was attended only by the family. Mamie said later that the wedding was the only time she ever saw her husband nervous.14 After the ceremony, the Douds’ chauffeur drove the couple to Eldorado Springs, a thermal resort in the foothills between Denver and Boulder, for a two-day honeymoon. They returned briefly to the Doud house to retrieve their belongings, and then took the train to Abilene so Mamie could meet Ike’s family.

  They arrived about four o’clock in the morning and found Ida and David waiting on the platform. Mamie was astonished that David was in his shirtsleeves and not wearing a jacket. When they got to the modest Eisenhower home, she was even more surprised that there were no servants and that Ida did all of the cooking and cleaning herself. She was also disconcerted by the Eisenhowers’ lack of worldliness. They did not permit drinking, smoking, or card playing, and did not appear to enjoy life as the Douds did. Nevertheless, in the few hours they spent in Abilene, Mamie hit it off with Ida and adored Ike’s younger brothers Earl and Milton. David she never warmed to. In future years, Ike and Mamie spent little time in Abilene, and much preferred visiting with the Douds in Denver.15

  Back at Fort Sam Houston, with no married quarters available, Mamie moved into Ike’s two-room suite in the bachelor officers’ quarters (BOQ). As a sympathetic biographer observed, “He concentrated on his work; she concentrated on him.”16 Mamie used money from her father’s generous wedding check to buy carpets and curtains for Ike’s quarters, and rented a piano for five dollars a month. Later, John Doud purchased a used Pullman six-wheeler for Eisenhower to drive—he was one of the very few first lieutenants on active duty to have a car.c Although she could not cook, resented cleaning, and had no clear idea how to make a bed properly, Mamie converted Ike’s suite into a gathering place for the post’s junior officers and their wives. Sunday night buffet suppers (mostly cooked by Ike) became an Eisenhower ritual. The china, crystal, and silver Mamie received as wedding presents set the scene, and her joie de vivre won the hearts of Ike’s contemporaries. As Maureen Clark, General Mark Clark’s wife, wrote, “A wife plays a big part in her husband’s career,” and from the beginning Mamie did her share.17

  By the end of 1916 the situation on the Mexican border had stabilized. Cross-border raids ceased, and a modicum of order was restored in Mexico. Pershing failed to catch Villa, and after a humiliating defeat of units from the famed 10th Cavalry (the all-black regiment known to history as “buffalo soldiers”)d at Carrizal, ninety miles south of El Paso, American enthusiasm for the punitive expedition faded. War with Mexico was averted—due in part to the sagacity of the Carranza government—and Pershing was ordered back to the United States on January 27, 1917. In retrospect, the sole accomplishment of the ten-month exercise was to provide valuable field training that helped prepare the Army for what lay ahead.

  The Wilson administration was eager to clear the table of the Mexican problem. The war in Europe was going badly, and American intervention seemed ever more likely. The western front remained intact, but Allied lines were stretched perilously thin. Imperial Russia was on the verge of collapse, revolution loomed, and on February 1, 1917, Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare, hoping to force Britain from the war. Two days later, following the sinking of the American liner Housatonic, President Wilson broke diplomatic relations with Berlin. U-boat sinkings of American vessels continued, and on April 2, Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war: “The world must be made safe for Democracy.”18 The president requested authorization to draft five hundred thousand men for the Army and bring the Navy to combat readiness. Wilson had favored Funston to command the American forces, but Fighting Fred suffered a fatal heart attack on February 17 and the mantle fell to Pershing.

  To accommodate the draftee influx, Regular Army units were cannibalized to provide the framework for new formations. This was in deliberate contrast to the Civil War, during which volunteers were organized in freestanding, self-contained units (for example, the 2nd Iowa), while the Army’s regulars fought in the Brigade of Regulars—an elite formation similar to the Brigade of Guards in the British Army. The Civil War pattern initially deprived the Union Army’s new volunteer units of the experience and professionalism of the regulars and may have contributed to early Union reverses. In 1917, the War Department hoped to avoid that by parceling out the regulars as cadre.e

  Eisenhower, along with a dozen other officers and a larger complement of NCOs from the 19th Infantry, was selected as cadre for the new 57th Infantry Regiment, which was to be formed at Leon Springs, Texas, a government preserve twenty miles north of San Antonio. Eisenhower was designated r
egimental supply officer and shortly afterward was promoted to captain. There was nothing particularly meritorious in the promotion. As the Army expanded, all members of the Class of 1915 were assigned increased responsibility, and all were promoted to captain in early May 1917. What may be more noteworthy is that Eisenhower’s first wartime assignment was in logistics. Grant too, during the Mexican War, began his service as a regimental supply officer. Grant and Eisenhower not only learned the importance of keeping the troops supplied, but how to do so. In Grant’s case, his experience as a supply officer with Winfield Scott in Mexico afforded him the confidence at Vicksburg to cut loose from his Memphis base and live off the land. For Ike, the logistical buildup before D-Day not only left nothing to be desired, but provided an abundance of everything the Allies needed to take them to Berlin.

  Eisenhower assumed that when the 57th was trained and equipped it would ship out for the battlefield in France. “We were sure that we were one of the best outfits in the whole Army and were confident that we were destined for overseas duty.”19 Instead, he was detached from the 57th in September and ordered to Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia to train newly commissioned reserve officers. Ike’s final efficiency report with the 57th, written by the regimental commander, called him “an energetic officer; well grounded in his profession and of above average capacity; has executive ability and considerable initiative.”20

  On September 24, 1917, four days after Eisenhower departed for Fort Oglethorpe, Mamie gave birth to their first child, a boy she named Doud Dwight Eisenhower, and whom she called “Little Ike,” or “Ikey.” Fortunately, Mamie’s mother, Elivera, was on hand to assist, and the baby was delivered in the post infirmary. “Fort Sam Houston had no maternity facilities,” Mamie recalled. “They had to fashion a hopelessly primitive, makeshift delivery room that was little better than a broom closet.”21

  Eisenhower was in the field when Elivera’s telegram announcing Little Ike’s birth arrived. “You could have knocked me over with a feather,” he wrote Mamie that evening. “I’ve sent you 100,483,491,342 kisses since I’ve been gone. Please teach our son to like ‘Sheltering Palms.’ Millions of kisses and lots of love to you and [mother]. Your lover—YOU BET, Ike.”22

  Ike remained at Fort Oglethorpe until mid-December, constantly in the field, wet, cold, and miserable. The training for new officers was tough—designed to weed out the weak and inept as well as to instruct. “I get up at 5:15 a.m. and go all day long,” Eisenhower wrote Mamie. “It is pretty hard to handle this thing, and it keeps a fellow busy until 9:00 p.m.”23 The Army closed the Oglethorpe facility in December and transferred officer training to Fort Leavenworth. Ike was given a brief Christmas leave to visit Mamie and Little Ike, who were now living off post in San Antonio with the Douds. His final efficiency report rated him average in all categories and noted that his performance of duty had been “satisfactory.” In the time-tested argot of Army efficiency reports, Colonel T. M. Anderson, the infantry officer commanding, said he would be satisfied to have Eisenhower serve under him, but had no special desire to have him.24 Separated from Mamie and their young son, removed from his regiment, and disappointed at not going overseas, Ike may have been at the low point of his military career at Fort Oglethorpe.

  At Leavenworth, Eisenhower supervised the physical training, calisthenics, and bayonet drill of the new officers. The winter was severe, but Ike found his responsibilities challenging and relished the physical exertion. “Our new captain is one of the most efficient and best Army officers in the country,” one of his charges wrote his mother in Worcester, Massachusetts.

  He is a corker and has put more fight into us in three days than we got in all the previous time we were here. He is a giant for build and at West Point was a noted football player and physical culture fiend. He knows his job, is enthusiastic, can tell us what he wants us to do, and is pretty human, though wickedly harsh and abrupt. He has given us wonderful bayonet drills. He gets the fellows’ imaginations worked up and hollers and yells and makes us shout and stomp until we go tearing into the air as if we meant business.25

  Another young officer, Princeton’s F. Scott Fitzgerald, took a more jaundiced view of the training at Leavenworth. Despite his tailored Brooks Brothers uniforms, Scott considered himself “the worst second lieutenant in the United States Army.” He was convinced he would be killed in action, and devoted much of his time at Leavenworth to completing his first novel, “The Romantic Egotist,” major portions of which he wrote in class concealed within a copy of Small Problems for Infantry.26

  While he was at Leavenworth, Eisenhower found time to take a course in the Army’s first tank school, and in February 1918 was rewarded with orders to report to Camp Meade, Maryland, to join the 65th Engineers, the parent unit of the 301st Heavy Tank Battalion, slated to ship to France in June. His final efficiency report, a notch up from Oglethorpe, called him a good all-around officer, painstaking and intelligent, with good military bearing and a pleasing personality.27

  The tank corps opened a window of opportunity for Ike. He was thrilled at the possibility of combat and overjoyed at being among the first in a new branch of service. The tank, though still in its infancy, would revolutionize battlefield tactics, and Eisenhower appreciated that he was in on the ground floor. George Patton, who was already in the field with the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) tank corps in France, was also among the first to recognize the tank’s possibilities, as were Charles de Gaulle, Heinz Guderian, and J. F. C. Fuller.

  The early tanks, based on the Holt Caterpillar Tractor, were developed initially by the British to breach the German trench line and open a path for the cavalry to pour through. (At the Somme, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig kept tens of thousands of cavalrymen and their mounts in readiness behind British lines waiting in vain for the breakthrough that never came.) These primitive behemoths, which bear as much similarity to modern battle tanks as Eddie Rickenbacker’s biplane does to a jet fighter, weighed about thirty tons, moved at two miles an hour (somewhat slower than a combat infantryman could walk), and were armed with a six-pounder gun inside a small turret and four machine guns.28 Aside from poor reliability, the early tanks were not ventilated, fumes inside were suffocating, and the vehicles were stupefyingly noisy. The armor plate would deflect German machine-gun bullets, but vision was severely restricted and a tank commander transmitted his order to the driver through a series of well-placed kicks to the driver’s back and shoulders.

  The French developed an alternative light tank manufactured by Renault that was smaller and faster than the British model. With a two-man crew, the Renault tank, rather than opening a gap in enemy lines, was designed to replace horse cavalry entirely and could travel rapidly cross-country once a breakthrough had occurred. It was, as one British observer remarked, “an armored, mechanical horse,” and could be deployed in mass formations.29 At the beginning of 1918, when Eisenhower was assigned to Camp Meade, the United States did not have an operational tank of its own. The War Department had arranged for the British and French tanks to be shipped to the United States for evaluation, but as yet none had arrived.

  Ike’s task at Camp Meade was to organize and prepare the 301st for combat, a remarkable assignment considering that no tanks were available. The men were all volunteers, morale was high, and Eisenhower threw himself into his job with enthusiasm. “We were different,” Ike remembered. “The men dreamed of overwhelming assault on enemy lines, rolling effortlessly over wire entanglements and trenches, demolishing gun nests with their fire, and terrorizing the foe into quick and abject surrender.”30

  In mid-March 1918, Eisenhower was informed that the 301st would ship out for France shortly, and that he would command it. British Mark VI tanks, known as “Big Willies,” would be provided once the unit arrived. “As a regular officer, I had to preserve the sedate demeanor of one for whom the summons to battle is no novelty. But my exuberance, I’m sure, was shown in every word and gesture to the battalion.”31

  To en
sure there were no hitches, Ike rushed to the port of embarkation in New York to iron out the final details of shipment. “Too much depended on our walking up that gangplank for me to take a chance on a slipup anywhere. The port authorities may have thought me a worrywart, but I worked my head off.”32

  When Eisenhower returned to Camp Meade he found his orders had been changed. The War Department had terminated the Corps of Engineers’ responsibility for the tankers and established the tank corps as an independent branch of the Army, similar to the infantry, cavalry, and field artillery. Colonel Ira C. Welborn, a canny Mississippian (West Point Class of 1898) who had won the Congressional Medal of Honor with the 9th Infantry at Santiago, Cuba, was named director, and stateside strength was set at 16,660 officers and men.33 Welborn’s office was in the War Department. The tank corps itself would be formed and trained at Camp Colt, an abandoned post on the site of the Gettysburg battlefield, with Captain Eisenhower in command. It was another daunting assignment. Less than three years out of West Point, Eisenhower was charged with organizing the tank corps’ first stateside training facility. He would soon be in command of thousands of men, all volunteers, and working with the Army’s weapon of the future. There were no training manuals, no experienced officers or NCOs, and no tanks. Ike had been chosen by Welborn because of his organizational ability. Eisenhower, on the other hand, was dismayed that he was unable to take the 301st to France. “My mood was black,” he remembered. “Whenever I convinced myself that my superiors … had doomed me to run-of-the-mill assignments, I found no better cure than to blow off steam in private and then settle down to do the job at hand.”34

  Once again, fortune smiled on Ike. As he quickly discovered, organizing the tank corps at Camp Colt was scarcely a run-of-the-mill assignment. He arrived in Gettysburg on March 24, 1918, with a handful of cadre. “I was very much on my own. There were no precedents except in basic training and I was the only regular officer in the command. Now I really began to learn about responsibility.”35