Don't Save Anything: The Uncollected Writings of James Salter(24)
Another of Pershing’s favorites was George Patton, who had gone to France as the old man’s aide and wangled his way into the front lines, commanding the first tanks near the end of the war. Eisenhower met him in 1919 at Camp Meade. Patton was a temporary colonel, tall, glamorous, every inch a soldier. He was rich and so was his wife—he would always be known as the wealthiest man in the army. He owned a yacht, played polo, and taught ladies’ riding classes. He was five years older than Eisenhower, with a high, squeaky voice and a foul mouth with which he loved to shock social gatherings, but he also had shrewdness and an intense love of his profession. It was at Patton’s house one night that Eisenhower met and made an impression on a general named Conner, who a few months later invited him to come to Panama as his executive officer. He was the first of the two important sponsors Eisenhower was to have during his career.
Fox Conner was a Mississippian with the common touch who’d been Pershing’s operations officer in France and had a reputation in the army as a brain. He was always quoted as saying that if we ever had another war he hoped to God we wouldn’t have allies. In Panama he took Eisenhower under his wing, encouraging him to read and discussing with him strategy, commanders, and the fate of nations.
“Someplace along the line there Ike got serious—there isn’t any question about that,” one of his classmates remembered. It’s uncertain exactly when or how this happened. It may have been due in part to the settling effect of marriage or to the death of his young son from scarlet fever a year before Panama. The change may have been something that was coming all along. What we do know is that when Conner arranged for him to get into Command and General Staff, the most important of the army schools, Eisenhower went, determined to do well. Those admitted were already an elect, and graduation high in the class was said to mark a man for future advancement. At the end of the year Eisenhower was number one.
George Marshall always kept a file of officers who impressed him and it’s probable that Eisenhower’s name first came to his attention at this time.
Known for years mainly as a coach of post football teams, Eisenhower was now viewed differently. The Army didn’t exactly stand on its head for him, but in a few years he found himself in Washington working for the assistant secretary of war and then for the chief of staff, a man of dizzying ego, phenomenal memory, and comprehensive knowledge who liked to refer to himself in the third person—in short, MacArthur. They had adjoining offices with only a slatted door between them. When, on his retirement, MacArthur accepted the post of military adviser to the Philippines, he took Eisenhower with him for what MacArthur said would be a year or so.
They arrived in Manila in September 1935. Already balding, wearing a white suit and straw hat as did MacArthur, Ike is in many ways fully formed—the man who, unknown to himself, will command the war. He stands dutiful and frowning in the tropical sun as his renowned chief poses. He was twenty years into his profession now and still a major. Years later a woman asked him if he knew the celebrated MacArthur. Yes, he knew him, Eisenhower said, he’d studied dramatics under him for seven years.
In the Philippines they worked to create a defense force. There was little money or equipment, and as the hundreds of ordinary days drifted behind there began to appear, drawing closer and closer, the storm they all knew was coming. Everybody felt it. One evening on an antiquated radio Eisenhower heard Neville Chamberlain declaring war. The first flicker of lightning. In far-off Europe catastrophe had arrived.
Eisenhower went to MacArthur and requested to return to the States, feeling he would be needed more there. He left at the end of 1939 and began a series of assignments as what he had always been, a staff officer, first at regimental, then division and corps level. He bumped into Marshall at some maneuvers soon after getting back. Duty in the Far East, everyone knew, was duty with houseboys, servants, amahs. Even privates got spoiled. With the barest of smiles Marshall inquired, “Well, Eisenhower, have you learned to tie your shoes again?” It was only the second time they had met.
In the fall of 1941 in huge maneuvers held in Louisiana, Eisenhower stood out as chief of staff of the victorious Third Army. He got his promotion to brigadier general just as the dust of the maneuvers was settling. It was late September. Two months later, all negotiations at an impasse, a powerful Japanese strike force left port and slipped into the fog of the Northern Pacific under sealed orders that when opened read “Pearl Harbor.”
It is easy to see in retrospect the confusion and fears, the long ordeal the end of which no one could foresee, the great wave that swept over the nation and half the world, the greatest event of the century: the Second World War.
Summoned abruptly from San Antonio to Washington a few days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor to fill a need in plans for someone who knew the Far East, Eisenhower went directly from the train station to Marshall’s office. He was to face an immediate test. For twenty minutes Marshall outlined the grave situation in the Pacific with its nearly insoluble equations. Then he looked at Eisenhower and said only, “What should be our general line of action?”
Eisenhower had just arrived, he was unfamiliar with the latest plans, he had no staff. He hesitated for a moment and then said, “Give me a few hours.”
Sitting in an empty office he thought at some length and then with one finger began to type out his recommendations. He went back to Marshall. The Philippines, with their weak forces, would probably fall, Eisenhower said. Nevertheless, everything possible should be done to help them hold out. This was important. All the peoples of Asia would be watching the coming battle there—they would accept defeat but not abandonment. Meanwhile, Australia was the key—it had to be built up as a base of operations and the long line of communications to it kept open at any cost. “In this last we dare not fail.”