Eisenhower John S. D. - American general: the life and times of William Tecumseh Sherman

by

Susan Eisenhower

I t is hard to articulate the sum of a life. But my father, John S. D. Eisenhower, who died before the publication of this book, produced a loving family and accomplished his professional goals. The only surviving son of Mamie and General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower, John Eisenhower wore his fathers fame with dignity and resolve. By midcareer, he had gotten into the writing game to fulfill his desire to be an author. He also knew it would help him create an identity of his own. In the succeeding decades he made an independent reputation for himself, becoming what the Washington Post called a soldier, diplomat and acclaimed historian.

John Eisenhowers life was utterly shaped by the military. As a young man, he moved with his parents from army assignment to assignment, in places like Panama and the Philippines. After high school he sought an appointment to West Point. After three years he graduated from the Academy coincidentally on June 6, 1944, just hours after the invasion of Normandy had begun. He served in intelligence posts in Europe before the war ended, and later in combat operations in Korea. He left the Army in 1963 to pursue his love of writing.

Becoming a military historian was, for John Eisenhower, more than a vocation. Putting pen to paper is not just what he did; being a writer is who he was. He knew this even before he graduated from West Point. After VE Day he got a masters degree at Columbia University and was assigned to the English Department at West Point. Between 1948 and 1951, he was, in his own words, able to learn much of what he and the Class of 1944 had missed because of West Points [foreshortened graduation schedule] during the war. His masters thesis was on the role of the military in William Shakespeares work. In addition to military histories, he loved humorists like Mark Twain and P. G. Wodehouse and appreciated the lean, evocative style of Ernest Hemingway.

In the late 1960s, after serving as an editor on Ikes two-volume White House memoirs, my father wrote his first book, The Bitter Woods, on the Battle of the Bulge. He undertook extensive research on the subject, which included doing interviews at all echelons in the chain of command, including those who fought on the German side. I remember vividly dining with the 5th Panzer Army General Hasso von Manteuffel after his interview with my father at our house in Pennsylvania. The German general had played a significant role in the Battle of the Bulge.

After The Bitter Woods appeared on bestseller lists, my father was appointed as U.S. Ambassador to Belgium, and he served in that capacity from 1969 to 1971. During his tenure my parents rented a small cottage in the Ardennes forest, and on my visits home he would take me out on battlefield excursions, much like he did with my other siblings.

As my fathers career developed, he and I made trips to a number of Civil War battlefields, family landmarks and other points of historic interest. There he would try to learn more, all the while he told me stories and explained the significance or the strategic importance of the place.

My father was a cerebral mana quiet observer of the many things to which hed been exposed. He had done a lot of living. During the war in Europe, hed been to Buchenwald and seen the Holocaust firsthand. He was a combat officer in the Korean War, and that conflict also left a deep imprint on him. Perhaps, notably, he may have been the last person alive who had dined with both Churchill and Stalinand he went with his father to Normandy just after the invasion. He wrote several books on World War II, but on subjects he later tackledfrom General Winfield Scott and the War of 1812 to the United States intervention in Mexico and World War Ihe used his love of writing as a gateway to a lifetime of intellectual discovery. He had an instinct for detail and an eye for spotting uncommon capabilities, historic ironies, and the elements of a good story.

What impressed me the most was his extraordinary ability to connect the intellectual dots across centuries of history and articulate them as simple principles, often associating them with the events of the day. He had a striking ability to identify the exceptional qualities in people that made them leaders, as well as the ones that made others fall short.

With respect to our society, it was the changing mores and attitudes that fascinated him. In this, he saw the hand of time as a mysterious fourth dimension, which altered things as no physical change ever could.

My father also liked colorful charactershe knew a few in his day. Perhaps this is what drew him to General Sherman in the first place. It was Sherman who famously said: War is hell. Indeed, fact and lore reveal a quick-witted Sherman who didnt hesitate to speak his mind. One such example relates to Shermans disdain for journalists, whom the General deemed as nothing better than battlefield spies and gossipmongers. On hearing that three correspondents had been killed near Vicksburg, Sherman is said to have quipped, Good! Now we shall have news from Hell before breakfast.