Dwight D. Eisenhower at the Army War College, 1927-1928

摘要

The Army War College in the late 1920s was a pleasant, contemplative assignment for senior professionals of that generation. Then located beside the gently lapping waters of the Potomac River on Greenleaf's Point (now Buzzard Point) in downtown Washington, the neo-classical building provided the requisite setting in an era of peace for the Army's senior educational institution. 'To anyone subjected to the pressures at Leavenworth the Command and General Staff College,' concluded one recent analyst, 'the War College seemed by contrast to be pleasurably contrived for a leisurely respite.' It was into such a halcyon atmosphere that young Major Dwight David Eisenhower entered with the academic class of 1927-1928. Major Eisenhower had just finished an instructive year with the Battle Monuments Commission, surveying and preparing a guidebook on the battlefields of World War I. He was scarcely two years out of the Command and General Staff course, a young officer who enjoyed the respect of General of the Army John J. Pershing. Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie, lived across town at the Wyoming Apartments, a fashionable older building located on upper Connecticut Avenue not far from Rock Creek Park. There the evenings were filled with old friends, now also in attendance at the War College--friends like Gee Gerow and Wade Haislip, both of whom had also served in the 19th Infantry at Fort Sam Houston, and Everett Hughes, one of Eisenhower's instructors at Leavenworth. Before the onset of the wet Washington winter, another former mentor and the new Commandant of the War College, Major General William D. 'Fox' Connor, joined the group adding distinction and intellectual prestige to the environment of Eisenhower's 'year at the War College.'.