General Fox Conner: Pershing's Chief of Operations and Eisenhower's Mentor (The Generals Book 3)

In the fall of 1897, Company A received a new tactical officer to enforce discipline in the company.28 The new “tac” himself had been the top graduate of the West Point Class of 1886; he knew all the cadet tricks, including the places where men hid to smoke.

Six months earlier, Conner had been on mundane duty as an inspector. The combination of Palmer’s misfortune and Conner’s own perseverance placed Fox Conner in position to direct the development and deployment of an army that would number in the millions and play a decisive role in the deadliest war humankind had fought to that time. In James G. Har

Eisenhower frequently used-two particular sayings he had learned from Conner: “Always take your job seriously, never yourself ” and “All generalities are false, including this one.”

Fox Conner soon learned that he, as a high-ranking military officer during the 1930s, was almost as removed from the American mainstream as were his monastic neighbors. As noted in historian Russell Weigley’s History of the United States Army, a “gloomy, negative kind of pacifism, automatically hostile to any measure which might improve the Army” p

Conner also came to understand the shame that permeated the French Army over its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, which resulted in France’s loss of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine in 1871. Despite the passage of four decades, France’s desire for revenge—and for recapture of the lost provinces—still smoldered.

To begin lifting French morale, Pershing ordered his staff officers to display a sense of optimism at all times; a positive attitude became “a matter of duty,” as Conner put it.

By late October, as the French and British offensives to the west continued to succeed, Pershing and his staff began to recognize that Foch’s strategy to end the war in 1918 might actually work. Acutely aware of the AEF’s poor showing—and that jockeying among the Allies for postwar influence had begun—Pershing dispatched Fox Conner to meet the pres

Conner stressed the war’s “one great lesson”—which he feared was “soon to be forgotten” as the nation returned to peace: “The unprepared nation is helpless in a great war unless it can depend upon other nations to shield it while it prepares,” a lesson he thought had been borne out by “every scrap of the history” of the AEF.7 The highlight of Conne

According to one newspaper article, Conner kept a schedule that “would have exhausted many a younger man.” He inspected each of the camps, several of which required treks into remote forest locations. Conner ate with the men to assure the quality of their rations; he also took the time to ask questions and listen to answers.