THE ARMY CALLS HIM "IKE"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 178, 20 November 1942, Page 6

THE ARMY CALLS HIM "IKE"

(By |

Edward R

Murrow

ACK in the middle of the sixteen*hundreds, there was a family named Eisenhower living in Germany. I don’t know very much about this Eisenhower family except that the head of it was a Protestant who objected to religious persecution. The family moved to Switzerland and lived there for about a hundred years before going to America in 1732 (that was the year in which George Washington was born). The Eisenhower family took up residence in the state of Pennslyvania where there were many German-speaking immigrants. When the big covered-wagon migration into the Middle and South Western part of the United States began, great-grandfather Eisenhower, together with thousands of other restless and adventurous people, loaded his family into a wagon and started West. That old man was the great-grandfather of Lieutenant-General Dwight D. Elisenhower, Commandeér-in-Chief of the United States Army in the European theatre of operations. This general was born in Texas, but when he was two years old his family moved to the town of Abilene in Kansas. Abilene was a small, typical mid-Western town in a state of flat, rich land, cut by occasional streams of slow-moving muddy waterfambus for its tall corn, open-handed hospitality, and neighbourliness. The Eisenhower boys (there were six of them) attended the local school and worked during the summers, mainly on the nearby farms. Their father was a small-town business man and when two of the brothers, Edgar and Ike (that’s the one who is now the. general) had finished their secondary education, there was no money for them to go to college so Ike went to work. For two years he was cowpuncher, ditchdigger, professional baseball player and agricultural labourer. Finally, having saved enough money, he entered the University of Kansas, but shortly thereafter was ap-

pointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point, the American equivalent of your Sandhurst. That was in 1911, Football Helped All the Eisenhower boys seem to have been successful. One of them, Milton, is now Associate Director of the Office of War Information in Washimgton, but we are concerned here only with Ike, the one who became a general. At West Point he was a famous football player and it was there he acquired the nickname of Ike: one that is now used by everybody in the Army from private to general, He completed his course at the Academy in 1915 and distinguished himself in the last war by outstanding organisational and training work at the Tank Training School in Gettysburg. He became one of the youngest lieutenantcolonels in the war and was decorated with the Distinguished Service Medal. Ike Eisenhower served with line troops until 1926, and was then sent to the Command and General Staff School, where he was head of his class. By 1928 he had finished at the Army War College and by 1933 had gone through the Army Industrial College. When GenMacArthur went to the Philippines to take charge of the organisation of the Philippine Commonwealth Army, Eisenhower went with him as Chief of Staff. While in the Philippines, he learnt to fly. He came home from Manila in 1940 ‘arid was made Chief of Staff of the Third Army, but as soon as the United States entered the war he was called from the field and made Chief of War Plans for the United States Army. A few weeks ago he went to Britain as Commander-in-Chief of the American Forces. Eighteen months ago he was /a colonel, and now at the age of fifty-one he is a lieutenant-general with three stars on shoulders. These stars, by the way, resemble the pips worn by British officers and Eisenhower is often ‘mistaken for a captain, which does not bother him in the least. He told me the (Continued on next page)

(Continued trom previous page) other day he would trade places with any captain if he could trade years as well, Mythology of Rank There is an interesting bit of mythology about American insignia of rank. It. goes something like this: When a young man is commissioned as a lieutenant he enters the forest in the lowest possible position with the whole military universe above him. Therefore he wears only one bar on his shoulder. The next Promotion is to captain, so he wears two bars, in order that from the top of the fence he can oversee everything in his immediate vicinity. When he becomes a field-officer he naturally needs a better vantage point and so climbs into an oak tree, which improves his vision. That is why a major wears a gold oak-leaf on his shoulder. After that he mounts a silver poplar, the tallest tree in the forest, so a lieutenant-colonel wears a silver leaf on his shoulder. A full colonel wears an eagle which is supposed to fly above the forest and oversee everything. The general wears stars which look down upon all the forests and all the branches. _. This fanciful story is not true because American insignia of rank just grew up haphazard without any logic or planning. Certainly Eisenhower's three stars have not caused him to look down upon lower beings in the military universe. He doesn’t look down on anybody. He looks straight at you. He is an informal individual with a broad grin; his manner is pleasant, he is known in the Army as a leader rather than’a driver of men. He thinks best when seated in a swivel chair with his feet on the desk. His light brown hair is fast disappearing and when his grin disappears his face can look as bleak as a Kansas cornfield in midwinter. He is not a hail-fellow-well-met, back-slapping sort of American, but he AA ri

does like people. The over-advertisec English reserve has not bothered him in the least. He is pleased, and, I think. a little surprised at the warmth of the welcome extended to him and his officers and men. He wants his men to get to know the British people; he thinks that understanding will be important after the war. Likes "Wild West" Stories General Eisenhower is a professional soldier, but when he is off duty prefers to talk on non-military affairs. He plays a good game of bridge and there are rumours that he recognises a good poker hand when he sees one. His taste in non-military reading runs to Wild West thrillers, the wilder the better. There is nothing glamorous, romantic or exciting about Ike Eisenhower. He is a normal middle-class American soldier, proud of his son, now in his second year at West Point. He has an ability to soak up information in a surprisingly short time and is quick and generous with his praise | of subordinates and even of superiors. He does not care very much for what he calls "social formations" nor is he very keen about paper plans. He has a preference for seeing how a thing will work out on the ground rather than how it loeks on a blue-print. He is an officer with great singleness of purpose, and that purpose is to co-operate with the British and the other Allies in the destruction of German military strength. I have heard him express one unorthodox idea and that is, "Wars are won by public opinion as reflected in the factories and on the field". General Eisenhower has a healthy disregard for personal publicity. I heard him say the other day that this war "wasn’t being fought to make a ‘hotshot’ out of Ike Eisenhower" and that translated merely means that in his opinion personal publicity is no great contribution towards the winning of the war. E x& ss