After begging or borrowing everything I could from Signal, Quartermaster, Ordnance, and Medical groups, I went to Wichita, bought several planes [from Stearman Aircraft], then to the Winchester Arms Company in Connecticut. With what I had “liberated” and bought, I went back to Manila.80
Ike and Mamie sailed from Vancouver aboard the Canadian Pacific’s Empress of Japan on October 14. Before leaving, the Eisenhowers stopped off at Fort Lewis, Washington, to visit Lieutenant Colonel Mark Clark and his wife, Maurine. Clark, who was two years behind Eisenhower at West Point, had served with Ike in Washington and was now operations officer (G-3) of the 3rd Infantry Division. In 1938 there were only three infantry divisions in the United States. Eisenhower had not been with troops since his brief assignment to the 24th Infantry in 1926, and he discussed with Clark the possibility of his joining the 3rd Division when his tour in the Philippines concluded. According to Clark, there was no urgency in Ike’s query, and he voiced no displeasure toward MacArthur.81
Eisenhower returned to Manila confident that his trip to Washington had been a success. But the ground had shifted beneath him. During his absence, Sutherland, recently promoted to lieutenant colonel, had poisoned MacArthur’s mind against him. “I was familiar with the details,” said Lucius D. Clay, who enjoyed the confidence of both Eisenhower and MacArthur.82
A group in the Philippine legislature decided that Eisenhower was doing all the work and that he was being paid only $10,000 a year, whereas MacArthur was being given a beautiful penthouse apartment in the Manila Hotel and being paid a much more substantial sum. This little group of Filipino congressmen prepared to introduce a bill that would abolish the top job—MacArthur’s job—and leave Eisenhower in charge.
When Eisenhower heard about it, he went to them and told them that if they ever introduced that bill he would immediately ask to be returned to the United States. That under no circumstances would he be a party to it.
But General MacArthur found out about it. From that moment he had no more use for Eisenhower. And it was absolutely unfounded, although I am sure there were people [for example, Richard Sutherland] who deliberately tried to convince MacArthur that Eisenhower was trying to knife him in the back. But I know this was not true. MacArthur’s dislike for Eisenhower was based on the fact that he was either given completely false information, or that he misinterpreted it himself. I suspect it was a little of both.83
MacArthur’s response was to reorganize the mission. He made Sutherland his chief of staff (a post he would hold throughout World War II), and reduced Ike to operations officer—the post previously held by Ord. That, despite the fact that Eisenhower was senior to Sutherland. Ike was also stripped of any responsibility for dealing with President Quezon and the Philippine government. Eisenhower was not consulted. He learned of the changes upon his arrival back in Manila, and he was furious. His diary entry of November 10, 1938, smokes with anger.
Why the man [MacArthur] should so patently exhibit a jealousy of a subordinate is beyond me.… Of course, he has accomplished one thing he wanted to do, that is, make certain that I’d get out as soon as I decently can. On the surface, all is lovely. I will not give him the satisfaction of showing any resentment. But my usefulness is so curtailed as to rob the job of much of its interest, so I’m going at the earliest possible moment. If the d—— fool had only sent me his plan while I was in the States I would not have returned.
Ike said he regretted working on MacArthur’s behalf in Washington.
But I must say it is almost incomprehensible that after 8 years of working for him, writing every word he publishes, keeping his secrets, preventing him from making too much of an ass of himself, trying to advance his interests while keeping myself in the background, he should suddenly turn on me. He’d like to occupy a throne room surrounded by experts in flattery; while in a dungeon beneath, unknown to the world, would be a bunch of able slaves doing his work and producing the things that, to the public, would represent the brilliant accomplishment of his mind. He’s a fool, but worse he is a puking baby.
My fury is academic. But it is discouraging to have hammered home all the time that he is as stupid as he is crooked. T.J. [Davis] is no higher in his estimation than I. His confidence in our integrity and gentlemanly instincts must be high, because I cannot believe he’d deliberately make enemies of anyone that he feared might in the future reveal the true story of his black and tan affair [a reference to Rosario Cooper, MacArthur’s Eurasian mistress]; the circumstances surrounding the withdrawal of his libel suit; the names he’s called (in private) President Q[uezon]; his machinations to keep himself on as chief of staff; his speculations on his chances to be Vice President of the U.S.; his chiseling to increase the emoluments he’s getting from the Phil. Gov’t.; his abject fear that he will do anything that might jeopardize his job (rather his salary of $33,000 and all expenses). Oh hell—what’s the use. Now that I’ve jotted all this down I hope that it never again comes, even momentarily, to my mind.
The next day Eisenhower dispatched two letters: one to Mark Clark, the other to his old friend James Ulio, now executive officer to the adjutant general. He asked both to do what they could to get him assigned to the 3rd Division as soon as possible, preferably as a battalion commander. Eisenhower, like George Patton, was never shy about pulling strings to advance his career. In 1925, he sought Fox Conner’s assistance to gain an appointment to the Command and General Staff School. In 1926, he petitioned Conner to arrange a transfer out of the 24th Infantry. In 1929, when he felt he was in a military backwater with Pershing in Paris, he appealed once again to Conner, who introduced him to George Moseley. Conner and Moseley were retired in 1938, so Ike directed his quest for a new assignment to old friends who were in positions to help. Clark was the favorite of Major General Walter C. Sweeney, the commander of the 3rd Division, and a friend of George C. Marshall, the incoming chief of staff. Ulio was at the personnel switchboard in the adjutant general’s office.
While Eisenhower awaited orders, another opportunity arose. After Kristallnacht (November 10, 1938), when Nazi storm troopers smashed shop windows, burned synagogues, and looted Jewish stores in Germany, debate about Hitler’s policy toward the Jews became more frequent. At social functions in Manila, the grandees of the Spanish community, most of whom were loyal to Franco, as well as some anti-Semitic American expatriates, expressed admiration for Hitler. Eisenhower took exception, and the arguments often became heated. “There was a considerable Jewish community in the city,” wrote Eisenhower, “and I had good friends among them.” As a result, in early 1939 Ike received what he called an unusual offer. “Through several friends, I was asked to take a job seeking in China, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and every other country where they might be acceptable, a haven for Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. The pay would be $60,000 a year (roughly $775,000 currently) with expenses. The first five years’ salary would be placed in escrow to be delivered to me if I should be separated from the new job for any cause whatever.” Eisenhower said the offer was appealing for several reasons. He sympathized with the plight of the refugees, and the salary was very attractive. “But I had become so committed to my profession that I declined.”84
On May 27, 1939, Ike received orders assigning him to the 15th Infantry at Fort Lewis.85 James Ulio wrote subsequently that the chief of infantry had slated him to be the second-ranking officer in the 15th, virtually assuring Eisenhower of a battalion command. Ulio also said that the adjutant general had taken the question of Ike’s reassignment date directly to General Marshall (who had assumed the duties of chief of staff on July 1) and that Marshall decided to terminate Eisenhower’s tour at the earliest date to which the Philippine government would agree.86
“I cannot tell you how anxiously we are looking forward to our return to the States,” Ike wrote Mark Clark on September 23. “I feel like a boy who has been promised an electric train for Christmas.”
The date for Eisenhower’s departure was fixed at December 13
, 1939. President Quezon implored Ike to stay, and offered him a blank contract for his services. “We’ll tear up the old contract,” he said. “I’ve already signed this one and it is filled in—except for what you want as your emoluments for remaining. You will write that in.” Eisenhower thanked Quezon but declined. “No amount of money can make me change my mind.”87
Formalities were observed. At a farewell luncheon at the Malacañan Palace, President Quezon awarded Eisenhower the Philippine Distinguished Service Star. MacArthur wrote an affectionate farewell letter. “I cannot tell you how deeply I regret your leaving,” he told Ike. “Your distinguished service has been characterized at all times by superior professional ability, unswerving loyalty and unselfish devotion to duty.” MacArthur said he would miss Eisenhower, but would “follow with keen interest the brilliant career which unquestionably lies ahead of you.”88
Eisenhower said later, “I got out clean—and that’s that.”89
* * *
a Major General George Simonds, who became deputy chief of staff in April 1935, was MacArthur’s candidate for the post, but was the same age as Moseley and equally objectionable for his anti–New Deal remarks. Major General Hugh Drum, who had succeeded Moseley as deputy chief of staff, was also a contender (James Farley, FDR’s postmaster general and political confidant, backed him), but was passed over because of his lack of command experience. When MacArthur stayed on, Simonds, like Moseley, became ineligible. James A. Farley, Jim Farley’s Story: The Roosevelt Years 55 (New York: Whittlesey House, 1948).
b Craig, five years older than MacArthur, graduated from West Point in 1898 and fought with the 4th Cavalry in Cuba, and with the 6th Cavalry in the 1900 Peking Relief Expedition and the Philippine Insurrection (1900–1904). During the war he was chief of staff to General Hunter Liggett at I Corps, commanded the Army War College, the cavalry school at Fort Riley, and the Panama Department, and from 1930 to 1935 headed the IX Corps Area at San Francisco.
c In World War II, Eisenhower made Davis his adjutant general both in North Africa and at SHAEF. Davis accompanied Ike to Russia in 1945, and served as the Army’s assistant adjutant general from 1946 until his retirement in 1953.
d In 1937, MacArthur arranged with General Edward Markham, the chief of engineers, for two engineer officers to come to the Philippines for a year and conduct a hydroelectric survey of the islands. In addition to their Army salary, each officer was to be paid $10,000 (roughly $125,000 currently), receive an apartment at the Manila Hotel, and be given a generous expense allowance. General Markham offered the job to Clay, whose tour in the chief’s office was coming to a close, and Clay leapt at the opportunity. He selected Captain Pat Casey, his West Point roommate, then with the Corps in Vicksburg, to accompany him. Clay spent a year in Manila, and in late 1938 returned to build the Denison Dam, on the Red River in Texas. Casey remained with MacArthur and became his chief engineer during World War II. Jean Edward Smith, Lucius D. Clay 76–82.
e Brigadier General John S. D. Eisenhower was initially reluctant to make his father’s Philippine diary available, but eventually yielded. “In some ways the diary is useful for researchers,” he wrote, “but on the whole I wish that the staff [at the Eisenhower Library] had followed Ike’s orders and destroyed it. Ike was articulate, especially with the written word, and he suffered from a violent temper. Forced to suppress that temper in his dealings with others, he committed his frustrations to paper. I do not believe that everything he said in these pages represents his lifetime views of Douglas MacArthur.” John S. D. Eisenhower, General Ike: A Personal Reminiscence 28 (New York: Free Press, 2003).
f Eisenhower’s 1936 annual physical exam reported his distant vision as twenty-twenty, but his near vision was poor. “Compound Hyperoptic Astigmatism, Bilateral,” recorded Dr. Howard J. Hutter of the Army Medical Corps on January 6, 1936. EL.
g Captain Mark K. Lewis flaunted his Jewishness. A 1927 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, Lewis was West Point’s star goalie in soccer, hockey, and lacrosse for four years. In 1927 he captained the hockey team from the crease. His semiofficial West Point nickname was “the Jew Boy,” and he was known as Jew Lewis throughout his military career. There are two personal letters from Lewis to Ike in the correspondence files at the Eisenhower Library, both of which are signed “Jew.” Major Lewis was killed December 9, 1941, when his B-26 crashed on takeoff.
h When Roosevelt was reelected in the greatest presidential landslide since James Monroe trounced John Quincy Adams with an all-but-unanimous sweep of the electoral college in 1820 (one New Hampshire elector defected to Adams), MacArthur ate crow. “Boy did the General back pedal rapidly,” Eisenhower wrote in his diary on November 15, 1936. “I hear he went out to see Q[uezon] on the first or second and ‘took back’ what he had said. Accused the Literary Digest of ‘crookedness.’…But he’s never expressed to TJ or to me any regret for his awful bawling out of a couple of months ago.” DDE, Philippine diary, in Eisenhower: The Prewar Diaries and Selected Papers 328–29, Daniel D. Holt and James W. Leyerzapf, eds. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).
i The “Chaumont crowd” was MacArthur’s shorthand expression for what he considered the Pershing clique in the Army, Chaumont having been the site of Pershing’s headquarters in France.
j The overseas tour of general officers was set by the War Department at two years. For all other military personnel the normal tour was three years. Because MacArthur had retired, Eisenhower’s request was submitted to Washington by Major General John H. Hughes, the commander of the Philippine Department, on March 3, 1938. The War Department signaled its approval on March 8. DDE 201 file, EL.
SEVEN
Louisiana Maneuvers
Have you learned to tie your own shoes again since coming back, Eisenhower?
—GENERAL MARSHALL TO EISENHOWER,
January 1940
Eisenhower enjoyed an exemplary reputation as a staff officer. For eighteen years he had amassed an uninterrupted string of “superior” ratings in jobs of increasing complexity. First with Fox Conner in Panama, then with Pershing, then George Moseley, and finally with MacArthur, he had demonstrated an exceptional capacity to produce under pressure. His knowledge of procedure, his mastery of nuance, his political sensitivity, and his capacity to translate the decisions of his superiors into action were unexcelled.
The size of the officer corps had held steady during the interwar years, and most officers of the same rank were acquainted, particularly with members of their own branch.a Ike’s reputation for common sense, his dedication, his sense of humor—and his temper—had become legendary. But except for several months with the 24th Infantry in 1926, he had not been with troops since he commanded the 301st Heavy Tank Battalion at Fort Meade in 1921. If Eisenhower was to rise above the rank of colonel (and in the peacetime Army promotion to colonel was strictly by seniority), he needed command responsibility with an infantry regiment.
For that reason, a posting to the 15th Infantry at Fort Lewis was a plum assignment. But in December 1939, as the Eisenhowers stood on the pier in San Francisco awaiting their luggage, that prospect was put on hold. “A very military looking sergeant came down the line paging Colonel Eisenhower, in a voice that indicated he thought I was still in Hawaii,” Ike recalled. “Upon acknowledging, unwillingly, my identity (I could smell trouble), I was handed an order to report to Fourth Army headquarters [at the Presidio of San Francisco] for temporary duty.”1 Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, commanding Fourth Army, had plucked Ike from the 15th Infantry to help his staff prepare for the summer maneuvers General Marshall had laid on.2
“That order blew up a sizeable typhoon in the family,” Eisenhower said later. “At first I thought it was the old, old story that once more I was to start a tour of ‘staff’ duty instead of getting to troops.”3 Mamie was concerned about their quarters at Fort Lewis, and John was eager to enroll for his final semester of high school. When Ike indicated his desire to return to troops as soon as p
ossible, DeWitt assured him the assignment was temporary. He needed someone to do the “pick and shovel work” of drafting orders to assemble the far-flung units of Fourth Army at the maneuver areas. By the end of January, he told Ike, he could proceed to Fort Lewis. Eisenhower and Mamie spent the next month at the Drisko Hotel in San Francisco, and John went on to stay with his uncle Edgar in Tacoma, where he enrolled at Stadium High School.4
Eisenhower reported to the 15th Infantry on February 5, 1940. As the senior lieutenant colonel he became regimental executive officer and assumed command of the 1st Battalion. The 15th Infantry, another of the Army’s old-line regiments, had only recently returned to Fort Lewis. From 1912 to 1938 it had been stationed in Tientsin, China, guarding American commercial interests in accord with the protocols imposed on China in 1901 after its defeat in the Boxer Rebellion. The regiment had been withdrawn by the Roosevelt administration following the Japanese attack on the gunboat USS Panay. The continued presence of American forces in China appeared unnecessarily provocative in the face of the Sino-Japanese conflict, and the withdrawal of the 15th Infantry was a sop to isolationist sentiment in a congressional election year. The regiment’s motto was “Can Do,” pidgin English reflecting its long service in China, and a posting to the 15th was one of the Army’s most sought-after assignments. George C. Marshall served as regimental executive officer from 1924 to 1926—the same job that Ike now held.
In early 1940 the Army was still organized in the ponderous “square” divisions of World War I, a 28,000-man behemoth devised in 1917 for trench warfare on the western front.b The troops were regulars—Congress would not enact the draft until September—and many in the 15th Infantry had seen service in China. But the War Department was already cannibalizing existing units to form new cadres. The authorized strength of the regiment was 2,961, but it was 400 men short. It also lacked mortars, machine guns, and automatic rifles.5 Eisenhower’s battalion, which normally would have had two majors and seven captains in addition to a full complement of lieutenants, had only lieutenants. Ike was the only officer above that rank.6
Eisenhower in War and Peace Page 17