…"Obscure Lieutenant Colonel" to Wartime Commander.
"On the afternoon of Sunday, December 7, 1941, Dwight Eisenhower was exhausted. The Louisiana Maneuvers had just been completed, and after returning to Fort Sam Houston, he settled down for a long nap, leaving orders that he was not to be disturbed.
Within a few minutes, those orders were disobeyed with the alarming news that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor and other American military installations in Hawaii. The United States was at war. As the army leadership swung into responsive action, Eisenhower's plans for Christmas leave at West Point to visit with son John, who was then a plebe, were dismissed.
Five days after the Japanese attack, the telephone in Eisenhower's office clanged. "‘Is that you, Ike?'" he remembered the caller asking. "‘The Chief says for you to hop a plane and get up here right away. Tell your boss that formal orders will come through later.' The ‘Chief' was General George Marshall, and the man at the other end of the line was Colonel Walter Bedell Smith, who was later to become my close friend and Chief of Staff throughout the European operations."
From here
link
Amicalement
Armand
's first experience with 1:4800 scale naval models.
