General Fox Conner by Steven Rabalais

General Fox Conner by Steven Rabalais

Author:Steven Rabalais
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Casemate
Published: 2017-06-15T00:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER 9

UNLIKE IKE

George Patton’s influence on Ike was significant, but his greatest contribution to Ike’s development was indirect, his role in bringing his friend under the tutelage of his true mentor, Brigadier General (later Major General) Fox Conner.

—John S.D. Eisenhower1

Camp Meade, Maryland offered few entertainment opportunities for the officers stationed there. Rows of simple wooden barracks lined the dusty, sometimes muddy, streets of the base, which had been cleaved from the surrounding woodlands in 1917 for a wartime training camp. Some officers posted at Camp Meade after the war, such as Dwight Eisenhower, had spent their own money to transform the austere structures into suitable family housing. Even something as ordinary as the arrival of a guest at the base provided a welcomed break from the monotony.2

Camp Meade was not the type of place normally associated with momentous events in a life. But in late 1920, Dwight Eisenhower met a visitor who would profoundly influence his future.

George and Beatrice Patton hosted their friends Fox and Bug Conner for lunch one Sunday in the autumn of 1920.3 The Pattons also invited Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower to meet the general and his wife. In the afternoon, Conner asked the two younger officers to show him their tank-training facilities. As Eisenhower put it in his 1967 memoir, At Ease, the interest shown in their work by an officer of Conner’s stature was “meat and drink to George and me.”4

Eisenhower took the Conners for a ride in one of his tanks. The steel machine creaked and lumbered forward with tremendous noise and vibration. As the tank slammed into, and over, the uneven terrain of the training grounds, Bug Conner recalled in her memoir that she and Fox “nearly had our teeth jarred loose.”

Patton and Eisenhower then took Conner to the base’s repair shop. Immersed in the bouquet of the garage’s gasoline and grease, the older officer found a chair and got comfortable. Conner, who had been among the first American officers to assess the feasibility of using tracked vehicles for military purposes, and who had helped select the tanks used by the AEF during the war, then began to ask questions, most of them posed to Eisenhower.

The three officers talked tanks until nearly dusk. Eisenhower recalled that as Conner left, he said little except that the discussion was interesting. In At Ease, Eisenhower wrote that Conner “thanked us, and that was that.”

At the time, Eisenhower had not comprehended that he had just gone through a job interview.

As Fox Conner waited to learn whether he would remain on general staff duty or return to field service, he had begun to seek out a younger officer to serve as his assistant. When Conner asked Patton if he knew of any good candidates, Patton immediately thought of his Camp Meade colleague. “Ike Eisenhower is the man you want,” Patton told Conner, “someday his name will be well known.”

In late 1920, Dwight Eisenhower’s name had also come to the attention of the Army’s chief of infantry—but not in a positive light.



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