The Yanks Are Coming! (43 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: GEORGE C. MARSHALL (1880–1959)

1
.
      
Quoted in Mark A. Stoler,
George C. Marshall: Soldier-Statesman of the American Century
(Boston: Twayne Publisher, 1989), 17.

2
.
      
H. H. Arnold,
Global Mission
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949), 44. Arnold himself became the “father” of the United States Air Force and its only five-star general. Arnold remained a lifelong friend of Marshall's.

3
.
      
Quoted in Stoler,
George C. Marshall
, 27–28.

4
.
      
Quoted in William Frye,
Marshall: Citizen Soldier
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1947), 146.

5
.
      
Marshall thought the transfer of troops from the attack on Saint-Mihiel to the Meuse Argonne Offensive was the “hardest nut I had to crack in France.”
Quoted in Ed Cray,
General of the Army: George C. Marshall, Soldier and Statesman
(New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000), 72.

6
.
      
Jim Lacey,
Pershing
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 160.

7
.
      
Quoted in Carlo D'Este,
Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life
(New York: Henry Holt, 2002), 198.

8
.
      
Pershing had recommended Marshall for promotion to brigadier general; instead, postwar reductions in personnel and rank meant that Marshall reverted to the rank of major in 1920. In 1923, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

9
.
      
Quoted in Stoler,
George C. Marshall
, 55.

10
.
    
This also gives some insight into the first Mrs. Marshall. She is quoted in ibid., 48.

11
.
    
He wanted to, but could not, add Dwight Eisenhower to his team of instructors.

12
.
    
Allen, who became an Army lieutenant, was killed in Italy in 1944.

13
.
    
Quoted in Cray,
General of the Army
, 111.

14
.
    
Quoted in Stoler,
George C. Marshall
, 70–71.

15
.
    
Quoted in ibid., 78.

16
.
    
Quoted in Eric Larrabee,
Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War
(Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1987), 101.

17
.
    
Quoted in Edward M. Coffman,
The Regulars: The American Army, 1898–1941
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 419.

18
.
    
Quoted in D'Este,
Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life
, 466.

19
.
    
Quoted in Cray,
General of the Army
, 111.

20
.
    
Quoted in Edgar Puryear,
Nineteen Stars: A Study in Military Character and Leadership
(Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 2003), 321.

21
.
    
He was the first twentieth-century American general to be awarded this rank. MacArthur, Eisenhower, Hap Arnold (all given the rank in December 1944), and Omar Bradley (1950) would follow. It has not been awarded since.

22
.
    
Quoted in Stoler,
George C. Marshall
, 157.

23
.
    
Quoted in ibid., 161.

24
.
    
George C. Marshall,
The Papers of George Catlett Marshall
, eds. Larry I. Bland and Mark A. Stoler, vol. 6,
“The World Hangs in the Balance”
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 484.

25
.
    
The school later (in 1978) erected a statue in his honor as well.

26
.
    
Quoted in Cray,
General of the Army
, 731.

27
.
    
Quoted in Larrabee,
Commander in Chief
, 99.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: EDDIE RICKENBACKER (1890–1973)

1
.
      
Edward V. Rickenbacker,
Rickenbacker: An Autobiography
(New York: Prentice-Hall, 1967), 6.

2
.
      
Quoted in W. David Lewis,
Eddie Rickenbacker: An American Hero in the Twentieth Century
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 81.

3
.
      
Quoted in H. Paul Jeffers,
Ace of Aces: The Life of Captain Eddie Rickenbacker
(New York: Presidio Press, 2003), 51.

4
.
      
Rickenbacker,
Fighting the Flying Circus
(New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1919), 194–95.

5
.
      
Rickenbacker,
Rickenbacker: An Autobiography
, 120. He was also appalled that the American Air Service stinted on parachutes because the chutes were too cumbersome for the tight cockpits and because it was feared they would give too many pilots an excuse to say “Geronimo” and abandon their planes—an attitude from the higher-ups that infuriated Rickenbacker.

6
.
      
Penicillin as a treatment for infections, it should be remembered, had not yet been discovered. Rickenbacker underwent one bout of surgery that kept him out of action for a few days in July 1918, but lied about the continued pain in order to keep flying. A month later he couldn't keep up the charade and ended up submitting to a second surgery. He declared himself cured in time to join the Battle of Saint-Mihiel in September.

7
.
      
Quoted in Jeffers,
Ace of Aces
, 135.

8
.
      
They remained friends until Runyon's death, in December 1946. Rickenbacker flew over New York City and cast Runyon's cremated remains over Manhattan, as per Runyon's wish.

9
.
      
Rickenbacker,
Rickenbacker: An Autobiography
, 144.

10
.
    
The failure of her previous marriage to the wealthy Clifford Durant was not her fault—or such was the judgment of her former father-in-law, William C. Durant, who settled a trust fund on her as her reward for “doing her best in a lost cause.” See Jeffers,
Ace of Aces
, 207–8, and for more detail, Lewis,
Eddie Rickenbacker: An American Hero
, 258.

11
.
    
Quoted in Jeffers,
Ace of Aces
, 216.

12
.
    
Rickenbacker,
Rickenbacker: An Autobiography
, 149.

13
.
    
Rickenbacker voted for Roosevelt in the 1932 election because he thought he was “sound and conservative.” Once in the White House, Roosevelt had, by Rickenbacker's reckoning, made “a complete 180-degree turn and taken off in the other direction toward liberalism and socialism.” Quoted in James P. Duffy,
Lindbergh vs. Roosevelt: The Rivalry That Divided America
(Washington, DC: Regnery, 2010), 24.

14
.
    
Quoted in Burton Folsom Jr.,
New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America
(New York: Threshold/Simon & Schuster, 2008), 96.

15
.
    
Rickenbacker,
Rickenbacker: An Autobiography
, 190.

16
.
    
Ibid., 272.

17
.
    
It remains secret, because it was never written down, but we know the gist: it was a reprimand from the secretary of war, Henry Stimson, to MacArthur for publicly criticizing President Roosevelt's war strategy. Stimson was also outraged at the tone of MacArthur's cables to Army Chief of Staff George Marshall.

18
.
    
Quoted in Jeffers,
Ace of Aces
, 295.

19
.
    
Quoted in Finis Farr,
Rickenbacker's Luck: An American Life
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1979), 332. He also judged John F. Kennedy “overrated” and Richard Nixon “a better man than people give him credit for.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: FRANCIS P. DUFFY (1871–1932) AND ALVIN C. YORK (1887–1964)

1
.
      
Quoted in Stephen L. Harris,
Duffy's War: Fr. Francis Duffy, Wild Bill Donovan, and the Irish Fighting 69th in World War I
(Sterling, VA: Potomac Books, 2006), 5.

2
.
      
Some still think him a poetaster. His popular poem “Trees” (“I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as. . . .”) is more parodied than the rest of his verse is remembered.

3
.
      
Sergeant Kilmer was killed in action on 30 July 1918. Father Duffy led his burial detail.

4
.
      
Francis P. Duffy,
Father Duffy's Story: A Tale of Humor and Heroism, of Life and Death with the Fighting Sixty-Ninth
(New York: George H. Doran Company, 1919), 60–61.

5
.
      
Both quotations can be found in Harris,
Duffy's War
, 180–81.

6
.
      
McCoy's assessment of Father Duffy can be found in ibid., 203.

7
.
      
Duffy,
Father Duffy's Story
, 136.

8
.
      
Donovan had told Father Duffy, “Oh, Hell, Father, I don't want to be a Colonel. As Lieutenant Colonel I can get into the fight and that's what I'm here for.” Quoted in Harris,
Duffy's War
, 307.

9
.
      
Quoted in ibid., xviii. In 1937, a statue of Duffy was erected in Times Square.

10
.
    
Quoted in ibid., xvii.

11
.
    
Quoted in David D. Lee,
Sergeant York: An American Hero
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985), 7.

12
.
    
Richard “Little Bear” Wheeler, ed.,
Sergeant York and the Great War: His Own Life Story and War Diary
(San Antonio, TX: Mantle Ministries/Vision Forum, 2011), 104.

13
.
    
Quoted in Lee,
Sergeant York: An American Hero
, 20.

14
.
    
Wheeler, ed.,
Sergeant York and the Great War
, 86–87.

15
.
    
Quoted in Lee,
Sergeant York: An American Hero
, 26.

16
.
    
Quoted in ibid., 43.

17
.
    
Wheeler, ed.,
Sergeant York and the Great War
, 205.

18
.
    
Quoted in Lee,
Sergeant York: An American Hero
, 73.

19
.
    
Still serving as a public high school, the institute was sometimes called the Alvin C. York Agricultural Institute because the state legislature had originally designated the school a center of agricultural learning.

20
.
    
At a minimum, it won large audiences—and an Oscar for Gary Cooper.

21
.
    
It was what we might call today a “zero-tolerance” policy. York's remarks are quoted in Lee,
Sergeant York: An American Hero
, 119.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: HARRY S. TRUMAN (1884–1972)

1
.
      
Quoted in Alonzo L. Hamby,
Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 57.

2
.
      
Quoted in Roy Jenkins,
Truman
(London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1986), 9.

3
.
      
He read, among other things, Plutarch's
Lives
and the works of Cicero, Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Mark Twain.

4
.
      
He liked to joke, “My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician—and to tell the truth there's hardly a difference.” Quoted in Hamby,
Man of the People
, 15.

5
.
      
Quoted in D. M. Giangreco,
The Soldier from Independence: A Military Biography of Harry Truman
(Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2009), 81.

6
.
      
Quoted in ibid., 98.

7
.
      
Quoted in ibid., 114.