He wrote in one of his memoirs that by the time he was in his thirties he had learned “the basic lesson of the military—that the proper place for a soldier is where he is ordered by his superiors.”21 He was given a run-of-the-mill assignment. “I found no better cure than to blow off steam in private and then settle down to the job at hand.”22
As a staff officer—never a coveted or glamorous role—Eisenhower learned to master procedure, process, teamwork, and organization. He learned the secrets of thriving within the organization. “When I go to a new station I look to see who is the strongest and ablest man on the post. I forget my own ideas and do everything in my power to promote what he says is right.”23 Later, in At Ease, he wrote, “Always try to associate yourself closely and learn as much as you can from those who know more than you, who do better than you, who see more clearly than you.” He was a fanatic about both preparation and then adaptation: “The plans are nothing, but the planning is everything,” he would say. Or, “Rely on planning, but never trust plans.”
He also gained a perspective on himself. He began carrying around an anonymous little poem:
Take a bucket, fill it with water,
Put your hand in—clear up to the wrist.
Now pull it out; the hole that remains
Is a measure of how much you’ll be missed….
The moral of this quaint example:
To do just the best that you can,
Be proud of yourself, but remember,
There is no Indispensible Man!24
Mentors
In 1922, Eisenhower was ordered to Panama, where he joined the 20th Infantry Brigade. Two years in Panama did two things for Ike. First, it allowed him a change of scene after the death of his firstborn son, Icky. Second, it introduced him to General Fox Connor. As the historian Jean Edward Smith put it, “Fox Connor was understatement personified: self-possessed, soft-spoken, eminently formal, and polite—a general who loved reading, a profound student of history, and a keen judge of military talent.”25 Connor was completely devoid of theatricality. From Connor Ike learned the maxim “Always take your job seriously, never yourself.”
Fox Connor served as the beau ideal of the humble leader. “A sense of humility is a quality I have observed in every leader whom I have deeply admired,” Eisenhower later wrote. “My own conviction is that every leader should have enough humility to accept, publicly, the responsibility for the mistakes of the subordinates he has himself selected and, likewise, to give them credit, publicly, for their triumphs.” Connor, Ike continued, “was a practical officer, down to earth, equally at home in the company of the most important people in the region and with any of the men in the regiment. He never put on airs of any kind, and he was as open and honest as any man I have ever known…. He has held a place in my affections for many years that no other, not even a relative, could obtain.”26
Connor also revived Ike’s love of the classics, military strategy, and world affairs. Eisenhower called his service under Connor “a sort of graduate school in military affairs and the humanities, leavened by the comments and discourses of a man who was experienced in his knowledge of men and their conduct…. It was the most interesting and constructive [period] of my life.” On a visit to Panama, Ike’s boyhood friend Edward “Swede” Hazlett noted that Eisenhower had “fitted up the 2nd story screened porch of their quarters as a rough study, and here, with drawing board and texts, he put in his spare time re-fighting the campaigns of the old masters.”27
At the same time, Ike was particularly affected by the training of a horse, “Blackie.” In his memoirs, he wrote:
In my experience with Blackie—and earlier with allegedly incompetent recruits at Camp Colt—is rooted my enduring conviction that far too often we write off a backward child as hopeless, a clumsy animal as worthless, a worn-out field as beyond restoration. This we do largely out of our own lack of willingness to take the time and spend the effort to prove ourselves wrong: to prove that a difficult boy can become a fine man, that an animal can respond to training, that the field can regain its fertility.28
General Connor arranged for Eisenhower to attend the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He would graduate first in his class of 245 officers. Like Blackie, he was not to be written off.
In 1933, after graduating from the War College as one of the youngest officers ever to attend, Eisenhower was appointed General Douglas MacArthur’s personal assistant. For the next several years, Eisenhower worked with MacArthur, primarily in the Philippines, helping that nation prepare for its independence. Douglas MacArthur was the theatrical one. Ike respected MacArthur but was put off by his grandiosity. He described MacArthur as “an aristocrat, but as for me, I’m just folks.”29
Under MacArthur, Eisenhower met the ultimate test of his temper. Their small office rooms adjoined, separated by only a slatted door. “He called me to his office by raising his voice,”30 Eisenhower remembered. “He was decisive, personable, and he had one habit that never ceased to startle me. In reminiscing or in telling stories, he talked of himself in the third person.”31
Several times, Ike asked to leave his staff assignment. MacArthur denied the request, insisting Eisenhower’s work in the Philippines was far more important than anything he could do as a mere lieutenant colonel in the American army.
Ike was disappointed, but he remained with MacArthur for six more years, working behind the scenes with more and more planning work falling on his shoulders.32 Ike remained respectful in his boss’s presence but eventually came to detest MacArthur for the way he put himself above the institution. After one of MacArthur’s more memorable acts of egomania, Eisenhower erupted in the privacy of his diary:
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 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.33
Eisenhower served loyally and humbly, putting himself inside the mind of his superior, adopting his perspectives as his own, getting his work done efficiently and on time. In the end, the officers he served—MacArthur included—ended up promoting him. And when the great challenge of his life came during World War II, Ike’s ability to repress his own passions served him well. He never greeted war with a sense of romantic excitement, the way his lifelong colleague George S. Patton did. He saw it as another hard duty to be endured. He had learned to focus less on the glamor and excitement of wartime heroics and more on the dull, mundane things that would prove to be the keys to victory. Preserving alliances with people you might find insufferable. Building enough landing craft to make amphibious invasions possible. Logistics.
Eisenhower was a masterful wartime commander. He suppressed his own frustrations in order to keep the international alliance together. He ferociously restrained national prejudices, which he felt as acutely as anyone, in order to keep the disparate armies on the same team. He passed credit for victories on to his subordinates and, in one of the most famous unsent messages in world history, was willing to put the blame for failures upon himself. This was the memo he was going to release if the D-Day invasion failed. “Our landings…have failed…and I have withdrawn the troops,” he wrote. “My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”