Team America

Patton, MacArthur, Marshall, Eisenhower, and the World They Forged

Robert L. O'Connell

• Publisher: Harper
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780062883285
• eBook ISBN: 9780062883322
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

“A delicious blend of insight, wit and history, Team America is a punch-packed introduction to four great military minds and the zeitgeist that produced them.” —Wall Street Journal

“Robert O’Connell has written a rollicking, insightful story of some particularly American heroes.” —Evan Thomas, author of Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World

From national bestselling author and acclaimed military historian Robert L. O’Connell, a dynamic history of four military leaders whose extraordinary leadership and strategy led the United States to success during World War I and beyond.

By the first half of the twentieth century, technology had transformed warfare into a series of intense bloodbaths in which the line between soldiers and civilians was obliterated, resulting in the deaths of one hundred million people. During this period, four men exhibited unparalleled military leadership that led the United States victoriously through two World Wars: Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, George Marshall, and Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower; or, as bestselling author Robert O’Connell calls them, Team America.

O’Connell captures these men’s unique charisma as he chronicles the path each forged—from their upbringings to their educational experiences to their storied military careers—experiences that shaped them into majestic leaders who would play major roles in saving the free world and preserving the security of the United States in times of unparalleled danger. O’Connell shows how the lives of these men—all born within the span of a decade—twisted around each other like a giant braid in time. Throughout their careers, they would use each other brilliantly in a series of symbiotic relationships that would hold increasingly greater consequences.

At the end of their star-studded careers (twenty-four out of a possible twenty-five), O’Connell concludes that what set Team America apart was not their ability to wield the proverbial sword, but rather their ability to plot strategy, give orders, and inspire others. The key ingredients to their success was mental agility, a gravitas that masked their intensity, and an almost intuitive understanding of how armies in the millions actually functioned and fought. Without the leadership of these men, O’Connell makes clear, the world we know would be vastly different.

Chapter 1

Dawn

Before we can start weaving the lives of our four protagonists together, we should wait until meaningful interaction actually begins, a process precipitated by America’s entry into World War I in 1917. Until then, we’ll focus on spinning the early days of the individual strands, making occasional cross-stitches when experiences converge—for example, attending a military academy—but otherwise keeping them separate on the sound ground that they were all basically strangers. And since historians are suckers for chronological order, we’ll begin with the first born.

ALWAYS EAGER TO GET THE JUMP ON THE OPPOSITION, DOUGLAS MACARTHUR entered this world prematurely at Arsenal Barracks in Little Rock. His mother, the redoubtable Pinky, had wanted to return home to Norfolk to give birth to what proved to be the last of three sons, but he got the drop on her, leading to the local headline: “Douglas Macarthur was born on January 26, [1880] while his parents were away.”

The birthplace was certainly appropriate. If ever an American was preordained to be a soldier, little Doug already had a good shot at the title. Pinky’s ancestors had marched with George Washington and Andrew Jackson, and her brothers had attended the Virginia Military Institute and fought with Robert E. Lee. But compared with the exploits of Doug’s dad, Arthur MacArthur, they were amateur warriors.

Arthur’s military career began during the Civil War when, as a teenager, he displayed virtually nonstop heroism (except when he was wounded, which was often), culminating in leading his regiment up Missionary Ridge against a storm of fire and clearing it of Confederates, all the while shouting “On Wisconsin,” words immortalized, on the gridiron at least. At war’s end, he was a full colonel, the youngest in the entire Union Army.

But that was a rank earned in combat, and in the peacetime Army he sank to captain, where he remained for twenty-three years. It was hardly time lost, though, as the elder MacArthur studiously, almost compulsively prepared himself for greater responsibility and in the process provided a remarkable template for his son.

We pick up little Doug’s life at age three, at Fort Selden, New Mexico, a base of around fifty soldiers, about as far as you could get from anywhere else in America. It was his father’s first independent command, and a period when the son built up a set of happy memories. “My first recollection,” he liked to say, “is that of a bugle call.”

That’s not likely. The previous years had brought the death of Pinky’s beloved mother (and a substantial inheritance of around $1 million in 2022 dollars); a father increasingly preoccupied with his study of all things Asian; and, above all, the end of Doug’s middle brother and constant playmate, Malcolm, swept away by the measles. These were all things not to be forgotten by any of those involved.

But ever the romantic, young Mac morphed his youth into a tale of the Wild West. “It was here I learned to ride and shoot even before I could read or write,” he wrote, conveniently forgetting the indoor part under a grieving and increasingly didactic mother. While Doug’s remaining brother, Arthur, drifted temporarily into his father’s orbit, Pinky’s attention focused on him and would remain locked there until her boy was a general. So what if she occasionally dolled him up in skirts and left his hair in long curls until age eight? Achilles’s mom also disguised her boy as a girl, and in both cases it made absolutely no difference.

Doug’s idyll in the desert ended after three short years in 1886, when the scene shifted from the frontier to the confines of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, by tradition the Army’s professional schoolhouse. It also heralded the beginning of his formal education, entering second grade with mediocre results. Unlike his older brother, who thrived under regimentation, Doug seemed disoriented, missing apparently the freedom of the frontier. Pinky and Arthur wondered aloud why he couldn’t be more like his elder sibling. But there was no need to worry. Things would change.

Arthur MacArthur’s interminably stalled career suddenly snapped to life in 1889, when his commanding officer recommended him for promotion to major and a job in Washington, calling him “beyond doubt the most distinguished Captain in the Army.” Better still was the proximity of Arthur’s own father and Doug’s grandfather, a politically well-connected superior court judge in the District of Columbia. As garrulous and engaging as his son was taciturn and remote, it was the judge who filled his grandson’s head with the details of Arthur’s heroics, and also gave him a glimpse of the psychological environment of the nation’s capital—“that whirlpool of glitter and pomp, of politics and diplomacy, of statesmanship and intrigue,” Doug remembered.

But that didn’t help much with the schoolwork. Mac completed his elementary education at Force Public School on Massachusetts Avenue with nothing more than average grades, still, it seems, in the shadow of his older brother. But that vanished abruptly in 1892 when the first son received an appointment to Annapolis, and was essentially gone from the family. Now only Doug was the center of attention, and this being exactly what he always wanted, he rose to the occasion.

It coincided with another fortuitous transfer for the family, this time to sprawling Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. They all liked the place. As always Arthur dove into his duties, and in the process won the complete confidence of his commanding general. Meanwhile, the surroundings allowed Pinky to give full vent to her southern-belle proclivities, making similarly inclined friends and lolling away lazy afternoons wandering San Antonio’s shops and restaurants.

Yet it was their son who found the place transformative—or, more specifically, the ground occupied by what came to be known as the West Texas Military Academy, where his parents had enrolled him in hopes of lighting some sort of academic fire. The move resulted in a veritable conflagration of achievement. Although he was initially resented as a day student, something about the learning environment set his mind ablaze. “Abstruse mathematics began to appear as a challenge, dull Latin and Greek seemed a gateway to the moving words of the leaders of the past.” Meanwhile, his jealous classmates gaped as MacArthur “was doing Conic Sections when the rest of us were struggling with Elementary Algebra.”

But he didn’t truly win them over until his third year, and he did that largely through sport. He was no natural athlete, but good enough, so that, when combined with his newly discovered work ethic and determination to win, he produced a reasonable facsimile of one—credible enough to become almost inexorably the school’s tennis champion, shortstop, and quarterback.

By his senior year he was on full burn. He led both the football and baseball teams to undefeated seasons, organized the school’s prizewinning drill unit, and was one of only four cadets to finish the year without a demerit in comportment. Already showing signs of verbal spellbinding, young Mac also was awarded the Lockwood Silver Medal in elocution for his stirring rendition of “The Fight of the General Armstrong.” More impressive still, he grabbed the Academy Gold Medal, making him class valedictorian for 1897. A clean sweep, except for one significant category: he doesn’t seem to have made any friends.

But even at this stage, it’s likely he would have dismissed that as beside the point. He was focused on one objective, the official gateway to leadership in the US Army: West Point. Entrance required a presidential or congressional appointment, and that proved to be the first real challenge in Douglas MacArthur’s young life. This is particularly surprising, since his father’s career was about to accelerate as if it had been shot from a cannon. Promoted to lieutenant colonel the year before Doug graduated, Arthur would shoot to lieutenant general within four more years, and in the process put down a major insurgency in the Philippines. He also crossed swords with its civilian administrator, the future president William Howard Taft, and was sent packing back to the mainland. This was characteristic. Both father and son generally proved adroit at service politics, but when confronting the civilian version they were consistently tone-deaf and almost comically uncomfortable.

That was key to the West Point problem. Judge MacArthur, with just weeks to live, did what he could, gathering a stack of recommendations for his grandson, as did Arthur. But they didn’t impress the outgoing Grover Cleveland enough to send one of his four presidential appointments in a MacArthur direction, and, even more depressing, the next year his replacement, William McKinley, remained similarly oblivious to Doug’s virtues. Further complicating his way ahead was a preliminary academy physical, which detected a slight curvature of the spine, causing him to flunk. Finally, Arthur had to leave San Antonio, having been named adjutant general of the Department of Dakota. If Doug was going to get into West Point, Pinky would have to pick up the slack. It may have been coincidence, but with Arthur gone, she managed brilliantly.

The plan was elaborate, yet feasible. Wisconsin congressman Theobald Otjen was a friend of the late judge. Once Pinky established residence in his district, Doug would become eligible to take a competitive exam for an appointment. She did so by moving into Milwaukee’s posh Plankinton House in October 1897, from where she ran an operation worthy of a professional strategist.

Except that it was all focused on an army of one. The first objective was to straighten Doug out, literally, by placing him in the hands of Dr. Franz Pfister, a renowned local spinal specialist, who later recalled that they “worked together for a year. He was one of the quickest fellows to obey orders I ever treated.” He had to be, as Pinky left him time for little else. If her son had a slightly suspect body, it must have been obvious that he had a first-rate mind. But she was leaving nothing to chance. In addition to her own substantial reading list, she had Doug attend classes at West Side High School and receive special tutoring from its principal: “Every day I trudged there and back the two miles from the hotel to the school. I never worked harder in my life.”

Arthur visited some weekends and the MacArthurs occasionally socialized with the family of Senator John Mitchell, who had also served in the Twenty-Fourth Wisconsin—sojourns that left Doug with a crush on one daughter and brief acquaintance with son Billy. The latter was never a friendship, but it would have some significance for the future of airpower. Still, for Doug the only future that mattered loomed in May, when the exam would at last be given.

The great day dawned inauspiciously. After a sleepless night, he promptly threw up breakfast, notable only because it would reoccur, but only at what he considered his most desperate moments. This time Pinky provided a pep talk: “Doug you will win if you don’t lose your nerve. You must believe in yourself, my son, or no one else will believe in you. Be self-confident, self-reliant, and even if you don’t make it, you will know you have done your best. Now, go to it.”

That he did, crushing twelve other applicants, the best of whom did not come within twenty points of his 99.3 score. Dogged Doug, hard work and determination will triumph—that was the point of the story as he later told it. But in reality it was an exercise in overkill. When he finally did join the long gray line in June 1899, he would find himself both overprepared and overconnected. Not a good thing if you were a plebe.

THE SECOND OF OUR FOUR PROTAGONISTS, GEORGE CATLETT MARSHALL JR., also arrived in 1880, but characteristically sneaked in on the year’s last day, December 31, far removed from the world of war and his future in it. His birthplace, Uniontown, Pennsylvania, was instead on its way to becoming the coke capital of America, which in the nineteenth century had industrial, not pharmaceutical, implications—specifically, the burning of bituminous coal to produce high-carbon ash for the blast furnaces of nearby Pittsburg. George’s father, George Catlett Marshall Sr., was one of the key local “coke barons,” which meant a prosperous if grimy existence in a place that was gradually becoming encrusted with its own byproducts. But if there was a perpetual cloud over Uniontown, part of it was of George’s own making, at least from a historical perspective. His most scrupulous biographer, Forrest C. Pogue, who managed to produce four thick volumes on his later life, notes that accounts by contemporaries are nearly totally missing, and “almost all that can be reported of the boy is what the man at the age of seventy recalled and chose to reveal.” This was not much.

In addition to Dad, George had a kindly mother, Laura, who showered him with attention since he was the youngest of her three offspring, and already somewhat isolated. Marie, four years older, treated her younger brother basically as a pest, an annoyance to be ignored when possible. Relations with his brother Stuart, six years his senior, were worse—so bad they would eventually lead to permanent estrangement. Meanwhile, as with MacArthur, the age gap in effect left little George to be raised as an only child. Still, sibling estrangement aside, the picture that Marshall painted was that of an upper-middle-class family “so normal,” in Pogue’s words, “that it could be remembered by Marie as well as by George in terms of something like folklore.”

Childhood according to Marshall proceeded in a more or less Tom Sawyer fashion. Most of the pleasant memories he chose to relate were bucolic: playing in a stream with his friend Andy, or growing vegetables. Later there were hunting and fishing trips with his father into the countryside, including at least one visit to George Washington’s ill-fated Fort Necessity.

But the great majority of his time must have been spent in Uniontown, and here the recollections grow scarce and negative. Even a child could see the place was being gobbled up by coal and greed. The mines had torn up the surroundings, flooded the place with newcomers, and generated true inequality—a growing plutocratic element (Uniontown would soon lead the nation in millionaires per capita) and reciprocal labor troubles, ones destined to explode in 1894 with the deadly bituminous coal miners’ strike. All of this was hard to miss and must have been depressing, but George chose to relate his problems only in more personal terms.

First came school. Like MacArthur’s, young George’s elementary years were largely a wash, spent at a private academy and leaving him with only the most basic reading and computational skills. This became apparent when his father enrolled him in public school, and the admissions officer discovered he couldn’t answer even simple factual questions. Inevitably, this led to ridicule by his fellow students, who “made fun of me a great deal.” He grew to hate being laughed at. And as this happened, he grew more shy and remote, while his sense of humor retreated deep inside to a very dry and sardonic place. Recitation proved particularly excruciating, but in general Marshall remained a mediocre student throughout his education, blooming intellectually only decades into his professional career.

Then there were complications at home. In 1890, when George was nearly ten, the senior Marshall and his partners sold their coke operation to Pittsburg steel interests, his father’s share amounting to around $4.5 million in today’s money. Despite the strong objections of Mrs. Marshall, he almost immediately invested, then lost, much of it in a Virginia land speculation. After that blow, the son remembered, “we had to economize very bitterly,” which, he also notes, meant no more servants. Very likely, this reflected his mother’s perspective, given that she was now saddled with the housework after a lifetime of domestic help, but it seems to have left George perpetually tightfisted and inclined toward the security a steady income can bring.

Actually, the family doesn’t seem to have been ruined, just taken down a notch, maybe two. The elder George Marshall appears far from defeated, using his extra time to expand his roles in Freemasonry and local politics, while still seeming to have money enough to occasionally buy his wife expensive gifts, albeit ones she invariably claimed they could not afford. Nevertheless, the years continued to roll past 130 West Main Street, the Marshall’s capacious but ugly residence, much as they had before—socioeconomically, at least.

You get the same feeling about George, drifting along through his youth. He did make one true friend, Andy Thompson, but in adulthood they would reconnect only after he became a general; he described the experience as that of two middle-aged strangers who inexplicably shared common memories. He also refers vaguely to a sort of club of youngsters, names a dozen or so acquaintances, even brings up a heartthrob who made him want to spell better, but nothing more substantial in the way of social interaction. You get the impression of George most...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Dawn
• Chapter 2: Long Gray Lines
• Chapter 3: First Base
• Chapter 4: Total War
• Chapter 5: Halftime
• Chapter 6: Spring Training
• Chapter 7: Devil Season
• Chapter 8: The Main Event
• Chapter 9: The Overlord
• Chapter 10: Aftermath
• Chapter 11: Fire on Ice
• Chapter 12: Ike
• Chapter 13: The End
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index
• Photo Section
• About the Author
• Also by Robert L. O’Connell
• Copyright
• About the Publisher