Category Archives: Dwight D. Eisenhower

The Class the Stars Fell On at Gettysburg, 1915

02 Monday Jul 2018

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gettysburg, Ulysses S. Grant (General and President)

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The West Point Class of 1915–The Class the Stars Fell On–toured Gettysburg in early May 1915 a few days before the sinking of the Lusitania and graduated one month later. Two years after this many of these men would be lieutenants and captains serving in France.

We are going to continue with the Gettysburg theme this Fourth of July Week with this photograph of the West Point Class of 1915 posing on the steps of the Christ Lutheran Church on Chambersburg Street. This West Point cohort is called The Class the Stars Fell On because so many of the firsties we see here went on to become generals by the time of the Second World War. Somewhere in here are Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley. They arrived in Gettysburg on 2 May and toured for several days under the supervision of Colonel Gustav J. Fiebeger, the legendary instructor who for more than a quarter of a century served as chair of the Academy’s Civil and Military Engineering Department. Among Fiebeger’s important works was “Campaign and Battle of Gettysburg,” which was studied by students at West Point. Remember that military parks like Gettysburg still fell under the auspices of the War Department in 1910s, not being turned over to the National Park Service until the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration.

When these cadets graduated a month later on June 12 they were the largest West Point Class up until that time, comprising 164 second lieutenants. Secretary of War Lindley Garrison was the commencement speaker. This was the first United States Military Academy class to graduate since the outbreak of the Great War the previous year and everyone understood that these young men might eventually be leading men into battle. The Lusitania was sunk later the very week this photo was taken. A very short list of those in attendance when the West Point Class of 1915 graduated the following month included Major General and Chief of Staff Hugh L. Scott; Major General George W. Goethels, who built the Panama Canal during the Theodore Roosevelt Administration; a West Pointer from the Class of 1847 who went on to become a brigadier; and Horace Porter, another West Pointer, who was an important aid to General and President Ulysses S. Grant and who went on to build Grant’s Tomb and was managing the mausoleum up through this time.

 

Liberty trucks at Grant’s Tomb

06 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Grant National Memorial (NPS)

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I wish the above image were less grainy but it is how it appears in the digitized edition of the 28 April 1918 Brooklyn Daily Eagle. For much of the year leading up to the taking of this picture, the Society of Automotive Engineers had worked exhaustively with the Quartermaster Corps’s Motor Transport Board to standardize a number of vehicles before putting them into mass production. The ones we see here are Standard B “Liberty” trucks. They were brought to Grant’s Tomb in late April 1918 to observe the anniversary of Ulysses S. Grant’s birthday, show the vehicles off, and demonstrate to the public how their Liberty Loan money was getting spent. When the war began most European armies were still using horse-drawn carriages. The United States experimented with trucks somewhat during the Punitive Expedition in Texas in 1916 but was also largely dependent on equestrian transport out in the field. Thus the need for the automotive industry and War Department to brainstorm in 1917-18 before putting the Standard B and other models into mass production. By early winter 1918 through the summer, dozens of factories were turning these and the other models out by the thousands every month.

In the same edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in which this photograph appeared, there was an article stating that the automobile would become increasingly significant in American life after the war. That prediction proved prescient but it is nonetheless jarring to see, given that the United States had not yet fully engaged in the Great War and that the outcome was far from certain. In July 1919,, just one month after the Versailles Treaty, about 275 officers and men of the U.S. Army, including one Dwight D. Eisenhower, engaged in the first Transcontinental Motor Convoy from Washington D.C. to San Fransisco. The convoy’s mission was both to test the efficacy of moving men and material across such a distance and to advertise to the public and military/political leadership the significance of motorized transport.

 

Sunday morning coffee

02 Sunday Jul 2017

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gettysburg

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July 1917: Bakers make war bread by the pound to feed hungry recruits at the Gettysburg training camp

Good morning, all. I have been thinking about Gettysburg all weekend. I was off all this past week and used the time productively to write 4500 words on my book about Civil War Era New York. The goal today is to write 750, which would put me in even better shape. Yesterday I went to the greenmarket on Union Square and pick up some things. The produce is almost in full season, though there is not yet sign of the heirloom tomatoes. I thought I would share this photo of an army baker taken in Gettysburg in July 1917. “War bread” was a concoction developed by the Army to hold the loaf’s freshness for several weeks. They needed the bread; thousands of troops were filing into Gettysburg for training in June – July 1917. This was not Camp Colt, the tank corps commanded by Captain Dwight Eisenhower in 1918, but a more general basic training facility similar to camps sprouting throughout the country that summer.

The Gettysburg army camp was constructed by Brooklyn architect Woodruff Leeming. Leeming attended Adelphi College in Brooklyn and later received his B.S. in Architecture from M.I.T. Five years prior to the Great War he designed the Beecher Memorial Building for Plymouth Church, which was constructed in recognition of the Henry Ward Beecher centennial. Leeming was active in the Brooklyn Institute of Arts & Sciences, what later became the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Woodruff was a major in the Officers’ Reserve Corps and it was under this jurisdiction that he traveled to Gettysburg in early June 1917 to build the camp.

Enjoy your holiday Sunday.

(image/Brooklyn Daily Eagle)

An afternoon at the Library of Congress

16 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Great War centennial, Libraries, World War One Centennial Committee for New York City, WW2

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I was having a conversation with someone last night who noted how many of the images I have used recently on the blog have come from the Library of Congress. I try to mix up the sources, but indeed most of the best photographs for recent posts have come from the LOC’s extensive collections. As a librarian myself, I understand how valuable these resources are to our nation. Not only have I used the library’s image collections, I have utilized the Library of Congress manuscript collections for my book projects as well. And the best thing is, with the internet at our fingertips many of these resources are available to us regardless of where we live or work. They do such a great job, we almost–almost–take it all for granted. Well today I had the good fortune to go with the Hayfoot to the Jefferson Building to see Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I. The curators did a fine job not just discussing the battles, but the economic, political, and social consequences of the war as well. With our country facing so many issues and uncertainties in our own historical moment, it is comforting to know that we as a nation have weathered times of uncertainty in the past. The challenges vary only in the details.

It is hard to believe the the World War I Centennial Commission Trade Show was three years ago this week, and right here in Washington D.C. no less. Approaching others is not something that comes easily to me, but I made certain at that event to talk to the representatives at every table. I remember having discussions with staff from various museums and cultural institutions, including some people from the Library of Congress’s Veterans History Project of the American Folklife Center. The friend with whom I was speaking last night lost his father, a veteran, not long ago. His father was buried in a military cemetery in a Southern state. I was telling my friend that waiting for my bus in Manhattan yesterday morning I struck up a conversation with a man wearing a WW2 cap. He too was waiting for the bus and was headed to Bethesda to see his daughter and her family, presumably for Father’s Day Weekend. Over our coffees I asked him if he had fought in Europe or the Pacific and he said Europe. He said he was nineteen when he entered the war, which would put him now in his early 90s. He looked more like seventy-five at the oldest. I told him I wrote my master thesis on Dwight Eisenhower and he told me he met the general one time. Eisenhower had come to speak to his unit of about 100 men to explain in person why their transport ship home would be delayed for a week. I know my WW2 well enough to know that troop transport delays homeward immediately after V-E Day were a major snag, though I didn’t say that to the veteran that at the coffee shop. Hearing the man tell the story was an incredible experience I will never forget.

I say all this because I noticed in the outstanding exhibit today that the curators incorporated a good deal of material from the Veterans History Project into Echoes of the Great War. Frank Buckles was the last of the American WW1 veterans, and he himself died over six years ago. If you have a chance, make sure to check out the Library of Congress’s outstanding Echoes of the Great War, which runs through January 2019.

The ETO turns 75

08 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George Marshall, George S. Patton (General), John J. Pershing (General), Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), William McKinley

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Colonel N.A. Ryan, acting chief of transportation, U.S. Army European theater of operations, and Major General D.J. McMullen, D.S.O., C.B.E., director of transportation, British Army, Great Britain circa 1942

General Pershing’s arrival in first England and then France one hundred years ago this week is often understood to mark a turning point in American-European relations. The coming of the A.E.F. certainly signaled the arrival of the United States on the world stage, a process that had begun almost two decades earlier during the Spanish-American War. The evolving American relationship with Europe dates back to then too; it was John Hay, Secretary of State in the McKinley and Roosevelt Administration from 1898-1905 and, just prior to that, Ambassador to the Court of St. James, who had done so much to build the “special relationship” with Great Britain. Hay and Pershing laid the groundwork diplomatically and militarily for the Allied victory in the Second World War. Pershing’s protégés included George Marshall, George Patton, and Dwight Eisenhower. Today, 8 June 2017, marks another significant moment: the War Department created the European Theater of Operations on this date in 1942.

Dwight Eisenhower, at fifty-one now a major general, took over at director of the European Theater of Operations (ETO) in London on June 24. Joseph Stalin had been pressing for a second European front for some time, and now it appeared he would get that some time in 1942. That of course did not come to pass. Roosevelt and his planners decided to make North Africa the first Atlantic offensive. Two years later came the invasion of Normandy and V-E Day less than on year after that. Ike was now a hero and came home to assume the presidency of Columbia University. He was back in Europe as the head of NATO in 1950. For the past three quarters of a century we have taken the work of the U.S. Army in the European Theater of Operations granted. It was in Germany as part of the ETO where Elvis was stationed after getting drafted in the late 1950s.

We would do well to remember in our current moment that building alliances is much more arduous and time consuming than tearing them apart. Diplomacy is a funny thing: when done well one does not see it; when done poorly it is all one sees. I only saw one reference to the creation of the European Theater of Operations today. Here is to remembering the work that Roosevelt, Marshall, Eisenhower, and millions of anonymous American uniformed service persons have done over the past seventy-five years.

(image/Library of Congress)

Remembering Normandy

06 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Memory, WW2

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My gosh, was it six years ago that I posted this originally? Even 2011 when I penned this seems like forever ago. My step-grandmother’s brother parachuted into France on D-Day and ended up stuck on the roof of a French family’s house. I wish I had had the chance to talk more with him when I was growing up, but that’s the way it goes. As I wrap up with mu morning coffee I am wondering how many people will mention it to me over the course of the day. We shall see,

I could not let the 67th anniversary of D-Day go unnoticed.  When I was younger this was a much bigger deal than it is today.  It is only a bit of a stretch to say that I have measured the events of my life according to the anniversaries of the Normandy invasion.  In June 1984 I was still in high school, getting ready to start my senior year at the end of the summer.  Ten years later I had graduated from college, but was unsettled and still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.  By 2004 I had gone to graduate school and moved to New York City.  Now I am married and in full middle age.

The arc of D-Day presidential ceremonies, or lack thereof, paints a fascinating portrait of the postwar decades.  In 1954 President Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander of the invasion a decade earlier, skipped France altogether and instead vacationed at Camp David.  His only public comment was a small proclamation about the Grand Alliance.  For the 20th anniversary Ike did record a television special with Walter Cronkite entitled D-Day Plus Twenty Years: Eisenhower Returns to Normandy.  The footage of the journalist and the retired president was filmed in August 1963 and is quite moving.  On June 6, 1964 Johnson, who had taken office only seven months earlier after the Kennedy assassination, was in New York City speaking to the Ladies Garment Workers Union.  In the waning days of Vietnam and the Nixon Administration in 1974 Americans were too tired and cynical to care about World War 2.  Reagan’s address in 1984 remains the most memorable of the anniversaries.  At Pointe du Hoc he addressed a sizable audience of veterans still young enough to travel but old enough to appreciate their own mortality.  President Clinton’s address on the beaches of Normandy during the 50th anniversary symbolized the passing of the baton from the Greatest Generation to the Baby Boomers.  In 2004 current events overshadowed the 60th anniversary and the ceremony painfully underscored tensions in the trans-Atlantic alliance.

Today only one person mentioned it to me.  Alas we have reached the tipping point where most of the veterans have either passed on or are too aged and infirm to participate in the observance.  In other words it has become part of history.  Makes me feel old and a little sad.

An Eisenhower Christmas

24 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gettysburg

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I’m sorry about the lack of posts the past two weeks. It was the end of the semester rush at my college and there were so many loose ends to tie up. For Christmas Eve I thought I would share this brief video from the Gettysburg Foundation featuring these dioramas that belonged to the Eisenhowers. It’s hard to imagine Ike going out of his way to set up the farm for the holidays; it had to have been all Mamie, which is great. Their Gettysburg farm meant the world to the Eisenhowers. Ike was first there as a junior officer training recruits at Camp Colt and dreamed of settling there. When they finally purchased the farm after WW2, it was the only home the couple ever owned. Shelby Foote always stressed the importance of visiting a battlefield during the time of year at which the engagement was fought. It makes sense but the evolution and provenance of the battlefields have evolved in their own right and taken on a significance of their own. I would love to get to Gettysburg during a holiday season to see the farm and so many other things as well.

Enjoy the video, and have a Merry Christmas.

 

Sunday morning coffee

18 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Film, Sound, & Photography, Gettysburg

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Eisenhower Farm in winter

Eisenhower Farm in winter

It is feeling more and more like fall by the day here in New York. I do miss Governors Island but at the same time I must say I have been enjoying these Sundays off. This past week marked the 125th anniversary of Dwight Eisenhower’s birth. Many forget that he was born in Texas and not Kansas. One thing that is so fascinating about that generation is the way it spanned most of the major events of the 20th century. And they did not just witness such events as the Great War, the Russian Revolution, the Depression, rises of Hitler, Stalin, & Mussolini, FDR’s New Deal, the Second World War, and Cold War, they were active participants. Ike was born during the Benjamin Harrison Administration and lived long enough to see the Beatles conquer America.

Eisenhower was in the West Point Class of 1915, known as the class “the stars fell on” because nearly five dozen graduates went on to become generals. Most of them first put what they learned in class to use on the battlefields of France. The lieutenants and captains of 1917 were the major generals of 1942. Ike of course did not go to France; he was too valuable as a trainer and organizer. He spent a great deal of time at Camp Colt in Gettysburg. That is why he and Mamie eventually bought their first and only home there. They were part of the fabric of the local community for decades, and entertained world visitors frequently as well. If you have never been to the Eisenhower Farm, make sure to visit on your next trip to Gettysburg.

Check out these great photos that Penn Live has posted in tribute. One of my favorites is the one with him and the 101 Airborne just prior to the Normandy Invasion. It is almost an outtake of the more famous image one sees all the time. It is amazing how many of photographs, especially the color photographs, appear modern. The cut and styling in the suits were timeless.

(image/Library of Congress byJack E. Boucher via Wikimedia Commons)

 

November 1963

23 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gettysburg, Memory

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Gettysburg battlefield for the back porch of Eisenhower's farm, early 1960s

Gettysburg battlefield from the back porch of the Eisenhower farm, early 1960s

This past Wednesday morning I mentioned to the Hayfoot that it was Remembrance Day, the anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Remembrance Day, besides being an opportune time to contemplate Lincoln’s words, is a gentle reminder that the cold and early darkness will not last forever. Spring and summer will indeed return and with that will come our near-annual visit to Gettysburg.

I was thinking about this again yesterday when I realized it was the 51st anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. JFK’s murder is something I have never gotten too involved in; it just seems an interminable rabbit hole. I remember living in Dallas in the mid-1990s and coming across Dealey Plaza by accident one day. This was already thirty years after Kennedy’s death and more people than you might think were out selling their pamphlets with their individual theories. For 5/10 bucks someone would take you on a guided tour. Maybe people are still doing this.

One aspect of Kennedy’s assassination that does not always occur to people is that it came three days after the 100th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. Quite intentionally, some of the iconography of Lincoln’s funeral was incorporated into the ceremonies for Kennedy. Interestingly they had invited Kennedy to Pennsylvania but he went to Texas instead. His predecessor, Eisenhower, took his place. Eisenhower of course lived in Gettysburg and was an active part of the community. One thing that stands out in the Eisenhower parlor are the statuettes of Meade and Lee on the mantel.

Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote this letter just after the 100th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address and Kennedy assassination

Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote this letter days after the Kennedy assassination and 100th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.

This past February, on Lincoln’s Birthday no less, I was doing research at the Union League Club for the Theodore Roosevelt Sr book. Nineteen sixty-three was the centennial not just of the Gettysburg Address but of the ULC as well. Roosevelt Senior and his brothers were early members of the club, which was founded in February 1863 to help Lincoln prosecute the war. This was just after Fredericksburg and the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln popularity was down and he needed all the help he could get. The Union League Club is something I always discuss during my tours of the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace.

I came across an interesting document. It is a letter written by Dwight Eisenhower to the leader of the Union League Club thanking him for honorary membership in the organization. Many things stand out in the letter. One of the most striking is that it was written on 30 November 1963, eight days after the Kennedy assassination.

(top image/Library of Congress)

 

Selling Governors Island

07 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Governors Island

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Times were difficult for the Army in the decades between the First and Second World Wars. This was especially true on Governors Island. The American people wanted a quick draw down after Versailles. One of the most distinguished officers in the history of the U.S. Army served on Governors Island during these lean years. Unfortunately, General Fox Conner has largely been forgotten.

BookReaderImages.phpConner was born in Mississippi in the decade after the Civil War and graduated from West Point in 1894. He received an auspicious assignment in 1911; Conner was posted to the French Army’s 22nd Field Artillery. Such assignments had a long history; prior to the American Civil War George McClellan and Richard Delafield were just two American military observers in the Crimea. When American began its involvement in the Great War, René Viviani and Joseph Joffre came to the United States in April-May 1917 to coordinate military and logistical matters with American officials. Conner received orders to coordinate the so-called Viviani-Joffre Mission. His diplomacy and light touch helped make the mission a success all the way around.

General Pershing took Conner to Europe that next month. In France. Conner was the youngest officer on Pershing’s staff and quickly became chief of operations for the AEF. Conner recognized the talents of a young George Marshall and took him under his wing. As the Meuse-Argonne Offensive was grinding along and American victory seemed at hand, Conner advised Pershing against advocating for an armistice. Conner believed the Germans had to be defeated totally or another war would be inevitable. Pershing concurred but the civilian leadership had other ideas. The Armistice came that November, and we will never know how things might have turned out otherwise.

New Yorkers turned out to see Marshal Joseph Joffre when he, René Viviani, and other French officials visited the United States in spring 1917

New Yorkers turned out to see Joffre when he, René Viviani, and other French officials visited the United States in spring 1917

Conner had a number of assignments during the draw down in the 1920s. Budgets were tight and he saw first hand how the cutbacks in funding and personnel were harming the Army. That led to one of the more unusual incidents in the history of Governors Island. In April 1926 Deputy Chief of Staff Conner testified in front of the Senate Military Committee that the War Department should sell the island here in New York harbor as well as the Presidio in San Francisco. Conner estimated the two sites could generate 25 and 26 million dollars respectively. Conner reasoned that with these funds the Army could spend the money in much needed other areas. People were listening. Congressman Fiorello LaGuardia pounced on Conner’s testimony to advocate for an airport on Governors Island.

It may sound sacrilege but Conner had a point. Servicemen on the island were living in dilapidated shacks and old warehouses left over from the buildup during the Great War. A German officer was quoted in the New York Times as saying the Germany provided better quarters to POWs during the war than what existed for soldiers on Governors Island. The savior turned out to be Calvin Coolidge. In January 1928 the president signed legislation authorizing the construction of a new regimental barracks on Governors Island. This would be Liggett Hall. There was much debate over where the barracks for the 16th Regiment would go. Wisely they built it adjacent to the new YMCA.

Conner’s involvement is a little fuzzy, but he may have had something to do with Liggett Hall’s construction; ironically the man who had advocated Governors Island’s sale was stationed here in 1927 as commander of the First Infantry Division. It is interesting that just eight months later Coolidge authorized the spacious new barracks.

This photograph of Brigadier General B.H. Wells, Major General Fox Conner (center) and Major General Dennis E. Nolan (right) was taken on March 8, 1926. Connor was Deputy Chief of Staff at the time. Note that the three are wearing business suits. That decade after the war military men wore civilian attire, not uniforms, to work due to isolationist sentiment.

This photograph of Brigadier General B.H. Wells, Major General Fox Conner (center) and Major General Dennis E. Nolan (right) was taken on March 8, 1926. Conner was Deputy Chief of Staff at the time. Note that the three are wearing business suits. In the decades after the Great War military men wore civilian attire, not uniforms, to work due to isolationist sentiment.

Conner is forgotten today because he was wedged in between generations. Military glory eluded him during the First World War because he was so important to Pershing as a staff officer. Subsequently, Conner was hugely influential in the intellectual development of a generation of young military officers who played prominent roles in the next World War. Conner alumni included the aforementioned Marshall, George Patton, and Dwight Eisenhower. Conner retired from active service in 1938 and was too old when Pearl Harbor came.

Still, he did prove helpful. Eisenhower, for one, wrote frequently for advice. How to keep a fragile allied coalition together during wartime was something Ike wanted to know. This was a sensitive topic  and one that Conner knew a little about, having handled such irascible characters as Joseph Joffre and Douglas Haig so well thirty years earlier. The Second World War was the conflict Conner and Pershing warned about in October 1918. At least he lived to see its conclusion. Fox Conner died in October 1951.

(image/Wells, Conner, and Nolan photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress)