Robert Hargrove

Ike and Patton

Shortly after my romp through Harvard Yard where I met with Tony Mayo, I took a shopping trip, not to one of our classy high-end malls in the Boston area, but to the proletarian Building 19 whose advertising moniker is Good Stuff Cheap (reading glasses, oriental carpets, designer suits, etc.)

I like Building 19 because, while the store does have cheap stuff, it’s possible to find bits of treasure there, and in this case, I happened to luck out. As I have to drive from my house in Boston to my house in Ogunquit Maine I was looking for some books on CD and the store had some on sale.

After sorting through the usual collection of mysteries and thrillers, I saw a boxed set called General Ike, The Personal Reminisces of His Son John S. D. Eisenhower for just $7.98. I purchased this and went out to the car to listen as I made my way north. Within 5 or 10 minutes I found myself totally captivated by a story being told by the narrator, one that ignited my investigation into the subject of mentoring.

As the story goes…One day two men road down a long, dark, country road heading toward Fort Meade, Maryland. The two men were armed with pistols and were hunting banditos, who were reported to be harassing local service men in the area and taking their wallets. The two men, later to become heroes known world-wide, never found any bandits, but the incident shows the aggressive, battle-ready nature of those individuals.

One was Dwight Eisenhower, who led the allies in WWII and went on to become President; the other was George Patton, who gained fame as a charismatic general, the soldier Hitler and his Field Marshals were terrified might bring an end to the Third Reich. I found out that Ike had started out as a mediocre, slightly above average student at West Point and developed a reputation for being kind of a maverick.

Both Ike and Patton (who was six years Ike’s senior) trained tank crews during WWI. At the close of the war, Ike had developed some game-changing ideas on tank warfare and Patton, an early admirer of Ike, attended his lectures, vociferously taking notes. In 1921, Ike authored a controversial article in which he visualized fleet-foot agile tanks armed with canon and machine guns attacking en mass, breaking through the enemy lines, and tearing up the enemy's rear guard.

At that time, tanks were lightly armed, rather clumsy and were mainly used to protect soldiers in the infantry. The article got him in trouble with the head of the army core and almost derailed his career.

George Patton's influence on Ike was significant. His greatest role was to bring Ike under the influence of Fox Connor, the man who was to become his mentor.

General Ike and His Mentors …to be continued.