After graduation, Eisenhower was stationed in Texas, where he met and started dating 18-year-old Mamie Geneva Doud from Denver, Colorado. The then got married nine months later, on July 1, 1916. Eisenhower was promoted to first lieutenant on his wedding day. For the first few years of Eisenhower’s military career, he and Mamie moved from post to post throughout Texas, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In 1917, Mamie gave birth to the couple’s first son, Doud Dwight. That same year, the United States entered WWI. Although Eisenhower hoped to be commissioned overseas, he was instead appointed to run a tank training center at Camp Colt in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Throughout the war and afterward, Eisenhower continued to rise through the ranks. By 1920 he was promoted to major, after having volunteered for the Tanks Corps, in the War Department’s first transcontinental motor convoy, the previous year.
Photograph from the Army Signal Corps Collection in the U.S. National Archives
Taken circa late 1943.
In 1921, tragedy struck at home, when the Eisenhowers’ firstborn son, Doud Dwight, died of scarlet fever at the age of 3. Mamie gave birth to a second son, John Sheldon Doud, in 1922. That year, Eisenhower assumed the role of executive officer to General Fox Conner in the Panama Canal Zone. In 1924, at Conner’s urging, Eisenhower applied to the Army’s prestigious graduate school, the Command and General Staff School at Ft. Leavenworth, and was accepted.
He graduated first in his class in 1926, with a firm reputation for his military prowess. From 1927 to 1929 Eisenhower toured and reported for the War Department, under General John Pershing. After finishing his tour in 1929, Eisenhower was appointed chief military aide under General Douglas Mac. From 1935 to 1939 Eisenhower served under MacArthur as assistant military advisor to the Philippines. Eisenhower returned to the United States in early 1940. Over the next two years he was stationed in California and Washington state. In 1941, after a transfer to Fort Sam Houston, Eisenhower became chief of staff for the Third Army. Eisenhower was soon promoted to brigadier general for his leadership of the Louisiana Maneuvers. Late that year he was transferred to the War Plans division in Washington, D.C. In 1942, he was promoted to major general. Just months later, he became commander-in-chief of the Allied Forces and led Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa.
General of the Army Dwight David Eisenhower, Chief of Staff, United
States Army. Portrait by Nicodemus Hufford, 1973