Dwight D Eisenhower
The early years
Born in Denison, Texas in 1890, the son of a railway worker and the third of seven brothers, Dwight David Eisenhower was brought up in poverty in Abilene, Kansas. He would later remark that his home there had less floor space than his office in the Pentagon.
After graduating from high school, he worked in a local creamery to help put one of his older brothers through college. Then, against the odds, he got a place at West Point Military Academy. There, he excelled in football but was only average in everything else. When, in his second year, he twisted his knee and had to stop playing, his roommate described him as ‘a man who has lost interest in life’.
Eisenhower graduated from West Point in 1915 at the age of 25. The following year, while stationed in Texas as a second lieutenant, he married Mamie Geneva Doud. Their first son Doud (‘Icky’) died, age four, in 1921. Their only surviving child John was born the following year; he would later serve in the US army and as ambassador to Belgium.
Undistinguished
For quite some time, Eisenhower’s army career was relentlessly undistinguished. He gained no combat experience during World War I. Instead he commanded 6,000 men at a tank training centre at Camp Colt, near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Their quarters there were so poorly heated that Mamie thought she was going to freeze to death. Although temporarily promoted to lieutenant colonel at the end of the war, he remained a major from 1920 to 1936.
In 1922, Eisenhower began a two-year stint as an executive officer at Camp Gaillard in the Panama Canal Zone. He and Mamie lived on the edge of the jungle, kept awake by the wild animals that screamed all night. This was followed by a year at the army’s Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, from which he graduated first in a class of 275. By this time, his reputation was that of an outstanding staff officer, uncommonly good at preparing reports.
With MacArthur
In 1932, Eisenhower helped General Douglas MacArthur disperse the ‘Bonus Army’ – some 15,000 World War I veterans who had gathered in Washington DC to demand immediate payment of benefits. Their encampment was broken up amid accusations of heavy-handed brutality. By 1939, Eisenhower had become chief military assistant to General MacArthur in the Philippines. While there, he got his pilot’s licence (he would be the first president to be licensed to fly a plane).
Eisenhower didn’t like MacArthur, finding him far too flamboyant. However, the general knew a good thing when he saw it, and came to depend on the major’s administrative and writing skills. As for Eisenhower, he made no secret that he despised these duties and wanted to command troops.
