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On June 14, 1911, Dwight saw the granite walls of West Point for the first time. That evening, the twenty-eight-year-old was sworn in as a cadet. Dwight hadn't thought about what it would mean to be a cadet and then an army officer. But when he took his cadet oath, he promised to do what his country wanted instead of what he wanted to do.
"The United States of America would now... mean something different than it ever had before," he wrote. "From here on, it would be the nation I would be serving, not myself."
Dwight played linebacker for the academy's football team. In November 1912, he hurt his right knee in a game. Later, he twisted it badly while riding a horse. The doctors managed to straighten the leg. But they said he could never play football again.
Dwight became bitterly depressed. Then an officer asked him to coach the first-year football players. Dwight liked training the younger men. The officers saw that he had a talent for leadership and command.
Leadership and command were important in an officer, but so was good health. The doctors worried about Dwight's leg. They suggested that Dwight take an easy job when he graduated. But Dwight refused. When he graduated in 1915, he chose to be an infantry officer. In wartime, the infantry would do most of the fighting.
Meet Dwight D. Eisenhower: From 1934 to 1938, Dwight served in the Philippines with a group of U.S. military advisors. The Philippine president liked Dwight so much that he offered to pay him anything to leave the army and stay in the Philippines. But Dwight said, "No amount of money can make me change my mind. My entire life has been given to this one thing, my country."
Copyright ©2005 by Elaine Marie Alphin