In the discharge of his duties, which were most difficult, and which were rendered even more difficult by reason of the short time available for their completion, he has shown superior ability not only in visualizing his work as a whole but in executing its many details in an efficient and timely manner. What he has done was accomplished only by the exercise of unusual intelligence and constant devotion to duty.
With kindest regards, I am
Sincerely yours,
JOHN J. PERSHING10
Pershing’s letter of commendation established a watershed in Eisenhower’s career. Before that, he was merely a gifted protégé of Fox Conner’s, still subject to whatever roughhouse the infantry establishment might choose to inflict. After Pershing’s commendation, he was admitted to the ranks of the chosen few. Pershing was parsimonious with praise, and the glowing recommendation he gave Ike made the chief of infantry take notice. Eisenhower’s path to the top was not guaranteed. But from that point on his assignments were certain to be commensurate with his ability. If he failed to perform, he would be left by the wayside. But if he continued to excel, he could shoot for the stars.
Eisenhower’s sojourn at the War College was a leisurely respite from his hectic days at Leavenworth and the Battle Monuments Commission. There were no tests, no grades, and no final examinations. Students were required to write an original research paper, and Eisenhower chose to address the neglected problem of mobilization. Congress had reduced the Regular Army to fewer than 120,000 men; the National Guard was at half strength; and graduates of the various reserve officer programs numbered about a hundred thousand. But there were virtually no troops for them to command. Eisenhower advocated the creation of an enlisted reserve force, staffed by veterans whose service tour had expired.11 The report was seventeen pages long, and Eisenhower—contrary to the national mood of pacifist isolation—structured the nation’s military needs to meet a possible overseas crisis. When Ike graduated at the end of June 1928, he was given an overall rating of “superior” (students were not ranked for class standing). General William D. Connor, the school commandant, said Eisenhower’s theoretical training for high command was superior; his suitability for the War Department General Staff was superior; and his academic accomplishment was superior—in short, he was “a young officer of great promise.”12 Ike was thirty-seven years old.
Along with most of his classmates, Eisenhower was assigned to the War Department General Staff—another choice assignment.13 But General Pershing, who had moved the Battle Monuments Commission to Paris, set out to redo the guidebook, and wanted Eisenhower for the job. That would necessitate Ike’s transfer to Paris, and would enable him to visit the battlefields firsthand. When Pershing inquired, Eisenhower jumped at the opportunity. “This was my first chance to get to know a European country. I saw Paris for the first time. The job now took on new interest. It involved travel, all the way from the Vosges in the southeast of France to the English Channel.”14 The fact that Mamie wanted to go to Paris made the decision easy. On December 16, 1927, “By order of the President,” Ike was instructed to join the Battle Monuments Commission in Paris when his course at the War College was complete.15
The Eisenhowers sailed for France on July 31, 1928, aboard the recently refitted SS America, formerly the SS Amerika of the Hamburg-Amerika Line.b They were joined by Mamie’s parents, and experienced a smooth nine-day crossing, arriving in Cherbourg in the early morning hours of August 9, 1928. They boarded the boat train for Paris and found temporary hotel accommodations. While Ike reported for duty with Pershing, Mamie began the quest to find a suitable apartment. She was assisted by several resident Army wives and an exceptionally favorable exchange rate. The American dollar, normally worth five francs, now bought at least twenty-five, and occasionally as many as forty or fifty. There was little inflation in France; the prices Frenchmen paid had changed little since the war, but the French franc had fallen out of bed on the international exchange market. According to the 1928 Guide Michelin, a superior room at world-class hotels such as the Ritz, the Crillon, or the Plaza Athénée cost 250 to 300 francs a night. For Americans that translated into ten to twelve dollars. (Today, the cheapest room at one of these hotels is well in excess of $700.) Prices at less famous establishments were substantially lower. Ernest Hemingway, writing for the Toronto Star, said, “Paris in winter is rainy, cold, beautiful and cheap. It is also noisy, jostling, crowded and cheap. It is anything you want—and cheap.”16
Within a week Mamie had found an elegant furnished apartment in the fashionable sixteenth arrondissement, on the Right Bank, about a mile downstream from the Trocadéro and the Eiffel Tower, and close by the Bois de Boulogne. Located on the premier étage at 68 Quai d’Auteuil, overlooking the Seine and Pont Mirabeau, the apartment was within easy walking distance of Pershing’s headquarters at 20 rue Molitor.17
The apartment belonged to the Comtesse de Villefranche, the doyenne of one of France’s most distinguished families, and rented for five thousand francs a month—a price that would have been unaffordable for the Eisenhowers except for the exchange rate. It was furnished with fin de siècle elegance: walls paneled in brocade; windows framed by satin draperies cinched with ropes of twisted silk; exquisite Aubusson carpets covering the floors; crystal chandeliers suspended from ornate ceilings; rooms crowded with gilt and brocade chairs and sofas, inlaid desks and armoires, and innumerable small tables laden with Sèvres figurines and bibelots. Mamie said the difference between the Comtesse de Villefranche’s apartment and typical Army quarters was “as far as Peary and Amundsen when they reached their respective poles.”18 There was a large vestibule, two drawing rooms, a dining room, three bedrooms, and an immense kitchen, and quarters for the help in the attic. The Eisenhowers employed a live-in maid and a full-time cook, and enjoyed off-street parking for their car, which had been shipped over from the United States.
Eisenhower initially relished his posting to Paris. He and Mamie commenced daily French lessons, and Ike set out to explore Paris on foot. After three months of daily instruction, Eisenhower became proficient at reading and writing French, but the spoken word eluded him. “Major,” said his teacher, “you are one of the best readers of French and translators of the written language that I have among my students, but you are the worst candidate as a French linguist I have ever tried to teach.”19 Ike persevered for a year, but his effort to speak French proved hopeless. Mamie, for her part, began enthusiastically but soon lost patience. Unaccustomed to rigorous study, she learned no French at all during their fourteen months in Paris and used a pocket dictionary to communicate. What Mamie did enjoy was shopping. According to Ike, she became “a specialist in the shops that ranged from the flea market and sidewalk stands to the grands magasins.”20 When the Eisenhowers left the White House for Gettysburg in 1961, Mamie’s closets were still filled with gowns and dresses and shoes she had purchased during their Paris years.21
Paris of the 1920s was a mecca for a generation of Americans. Aside from the favorable exchange rate and the absence of Prohibition, the City of Light had regained its role as the world’s great international metropolis. France as a whole had suffered dreadfully during the war. War damage was extensive in the north and east of the country, and casualties were proportionately higher than in any other nation—1.3 million dead, with more than three million wounded and disabled. One in ten Paris conscripts never returned from the fighting.22 But the city itself had avoided significant damage. The economy flourished, national averages surpassed prewar levels, and the birthrate had turned positive. “I feel as if I was biting into a utopian fruit,” said the writer Anaïs Nin about life in the city: “Something velvety and lustrous and rich and vivid.”23
No other city lived the frantic twenties with greater energy, imagination, and indulgence.24 Cabaret star Josephine Baker dominated the entertainment scene with her quirky singing and exotic dancing. Anglophone writers, freed from conventional restraints, spawned some of the masterpieces of literary mo
dernism and often wrote of their Paris years. James Joyce, Henry Miller, John Dos Passos, Edith Wharton, E. E. Cummings, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Gertrude Stein, Archibald MacLeish, Allen Tate, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Carlos Williams, and Hart Crane shared Ike’s time in Paris. There is no evidence their paths crossed, but the Paris they wrote about was the same. Crane captured its essence: “Dinners, soirées, poets, erratic millionaires, painters, translations, lobsters, absinthe, music, promenades, oysters, sherry, aspirin, pictures, sapphic, heiresses, editors, books, sailors. And How!”25
Two English-language dailies, James Gordon Bennett’s venerable Paris Herald (daily circulation thirty-nine thousand) and Colonel Robert R. McCormick’s upstart Paris Tribune, a successor of the Chicago Tribune’s Army edition published for the AEF, not only kept the expatriate community informed, but provided employment for a generation of fledgling journalists, including William L. Shirer, Waverley Root, and James Thurber.
Mamie in Paris, 1929. (illustration credit 4.1)
Eisenhower and his colleagues at Pershing’s Battle Monuments Commission paid little attention to the city’s artistic community, traditionally drawn to Paris by the combination of cheap rents and available studio space. Picasso, Modigliani, Miro, Chagall, Max Ernst, and the American sculptor Alexander Calder flourished in Montparnasse and the Latin Quarter. What did make an impression, at least among Army wives, was the great Paris exposition of decorative arts shortly before the Eisenhowers’ arrival, which launched Art Deco as a new international style.
Many years later Ike and Mamie agreed that the fourteen months they spent in Paris was the most idyllic period in their marriage. “We had a nice life and a nice group of friends. Our son, John, was going to a good school, and we had lots of fun and lots of company.”26 Mamie was at her best. Naturally gregarious and fun-loving, she entertained generously in their spacious apartment, so much so that 68 Quai d’Auteuil was soon christened Club Eisenhower, a home away from home for the American military in Paris. “The apartment became a sort of informal, junior-size American Express for friends who were visiting Paris,” said Ike. “Mamie and I were drawn into their trips. In time we both became small-scale authorities on what should not be missed and what should be avoided.”27 When the Eisenhowers entertained formally, it was at the elegant officers’ club, the Cercle de l’Union Interalliée, on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, near the Palais de l’Élysée.28
Eisenhower trooped the battlefields relentlessly, not only those on which the AEF fought, but the entire front from the Swiss border to the English Channel. Often away from Paris for days at a time, he immersed himself in mapping, cataloging, and taking notes about every aspect of the battles, tracing trench lines and terrain features. “In this way I came to see the small towns of France and to meet the sound and friendly people working in the fields and along the roads.” Captain George Horkan, a colleague on the Battle Monuments Commission who later served as Ike’s quartermaster general, believed that the experience gave Eisenhower “a grasp of the military terrain of northern Europe that was absolutely invaluable.”29
Ike was not all business. “Whenever possible,” he recalled, “I stopped along the road to join groups of road workers who were eating their noonday lunch. They were invariably relaxed and hospitable. When my chauffeur (he was always my interpreter) and I would ask if we could join them, their custom was to offer something from their lunchboxes. I developed a habit of carrying a bottle of Evian and an extra bottle of vin rouge…which was always welcome. Whenever I could find no group along the road, I would save my lunch, look for a little auberge, and eat there to mingle with the people.”30
In the spring of 1929 Ike began to take Mamie and young John on his battlefield trips. “Verdun was a forbidding place,” John remembered. “A large portion of the town lay in ruins. Its most frightening place was a strong point named Fort Douaumont. Nearby we visited the Trench of Bayonets, where a squad of Frenchmen, preparing to go over the top, had been buried alive by the impact of a nearby German shell. By some miracle the bayonets had remained sticking out of the ground, and the bodies of the victims had been left unmolested by the French as a national monument.”31
Eisenhower followed French politics as best he could. The Herald and the Tribune provided satisfactory summaries in English, and to improve his French he consulted the Paris press. He was dismayed at the multiplicity of parties, the doctrinaire extremism of the Left and the Right, and the absence of a democratic consensus. Unlike Americans, the French did not agree on the rules of the game. Since 1789 there had been three republics, three separate monarchical regimes, two empires, a provisional government, and the Paris Commune.c The French Revolution was not so much a revolution as a civil war—and the outcome was still being contested. The radical Right and the church rejected the republic, and the republic rejected Christianity and the church. The principal party of the Third Republic was the Radical-Socialists, which was neither radical nor socialist but a middle-class party dedicated to the secularization of France. The issues were intractable, and Eisenhower soon concluded that France was inherently ungovernable. That realization—which Ike came to during his fourteen months in Paris—helps explain his undisguised admiration and support for Charles de Gaulle fifteen years later. The last thing Eisenhower wanted in 1944 was for his headquarters to be saddled with governing liberated France. De Gaulle and his Free French movement were eager to take on that responsibility, and Eisenhower—despite the entrenched opposition of FDR and the U.S. State Department—was only too happy to turn the problem over to him.
De Gaulle, for his part, always appreciated what Eisenhower had done. The mutual admiration between the two was remarkable.32 They were almost exactly the same age, shared similar military careers, and possessed extraordinary political instincts. “He knew how to be adroit and supple,” wrote de Gaulle about Ike in his Memoirs, “but he was also capable of great daring.” Later, when de Gaulle was president of the Fifth Republic during the final years of Ike’s presidency, the two old soldiers, now heads of state, not only found common ground, but also discovered that they enjoyed each other’s company. Eisenhower invited de Gaulle to the farm in Gettysburg, and de Gaulle welcomed Ike to overnight at his summer residence, the Château de Rambouillet.33 (De Gaulle, incidentally, spoke flawless English, but reserved it for those with whom he felt a special affection.)
On March 20, 1929, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the Allied commander in chief during the final year of the war, died following a brief illness. General Pershing was an honorary pallbearer, and the officers of the Battle Monuments Commission marched in the funeral procession from the Arc de Triomphe, down the Champs-Élysées, to the cathedral of Notre Dame. For Eisenhower, it was the greatest spectacle of his career. Three million Frenchmen lined the parade route. In addition to the military units and the procession of anciens combatants that stretched for half a mile, the cardinals of Paris and Rouen marched behind the catafalque in full panoply of office, marking their first participation in a civic ceremony since the separation of church and state fifty years earlier.34
Duty with the Battle Monuments Commission was pleasant enough. While Eisenhower worked at revising the guidebook, General Pershing undertook to write his memoirs.35 The general’s work habits were rigid, but somewhat Churchillian. He rarely came to the office until early afternoon and worked until well past midnight. Pershing appreciated Eisenhower’s way with words, and soon drew him into the project. “I’m unhappy about the description of Saint Mihiel … and also about the Argonne,” he told Ike. “Read the parts of the book that cover these two periods and let me know what you think.”36
Eisenhower, fifth from right, marching with Pershing’s staff at the Paris funeral of Marshal Ferdinand Foch, March 26, 1929. (illustration credit 4.2)
Pershing’s account hewed closely to his wartime diary. Eisenhower read the chapters and suggested that a strong narrative, interspersed with diary entries, would be easier for the reader to follow. Pershing respo
nded enthusiastically and asked Ike to redraft the material. “With considerable effort I produced two chapters and left them with the General,” Eisenhower recalled. “After reading them over, he said he was happy with them.” Pershing said that before making a final decision, however, he wanted to show the chapters to his former aide, Colonel George C. Marshall. In such matters, he told Ike, he always turned to Marshall for final advice.37
Eisenhower had not met George Marshall, but several days later he arrived in Paris and spent several hours with Pershing. He read Ike’s chapters and found them interesting. “Nevertheless,” he told Eisenhower, “I’ve advised General Pershing to stick with his original idea. I think to break up the format at the climax of the war would be a mistake.” Colonel Marshall rarely explained why he decided anything, and his explanation to Eisenhower suggests he respected the effort Ike had put in.
“I said there was some virtue in continuity,” Eisenhower replied, “although I still thought that the battles should be treated as a single narrative, with the proper annotations to give it authenticity.
“He [Marshall] remarked, rather kindly, that my idea was a good one. Nevertheless he thought General Pershing would be happier if he stayed with the original scheme.”38 Eisenhower would not see Marshall again for ten years. But evidently he had made an impression.
After a year in Paris, Eisenhower became anxious about his assignment. He enjoyed the relaxed life he and Mamie led and welcomed the opportunity to travel, but fretted about his career. In many respects the Battle Monuments Commission was a cul-de-sac. Two more years of revising the Army’s guidebook for American tourists seemed a frivolous waste of time. Eisenhower was impatient and, as he did whenever he felt stymied, he contacted Fox Conner. Conner was no longer in Washington but was commanding the Hawaiian Division at Schofield Barracks in Honolulu. Once again, he lent a sympathetic ear. On August 10, 1929, Eisenhower received orders from the War Department to report to Washington, where he was to assume the duties of military assistant to the assistant secretary of war. As at Fort Benning three years earlier, his tour was being curtailed—a highly unusual move where an overseas assignment was involved.
Eisenhower in War and Peace Page 10