School of War - Ep 217: Steven Rabalais on Ike’s Mentor

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

Steven Rabalais, litigator and author of General Fox Conner: Pershing's Chief of Operations and Eisenhower's Mentor,  joins the show to discuss the extraordinary influence of now-forgotten General Fox Connor on the outcome of WWI and Eisenhower’s career.   ▪️ Times     •      01:51 Introduction     •      03:10 Growing up with history      •      05:47 A southern story      •      07:44 West Point struggles      •      12:07 A reader            •      14:50 Coastal artillery          •      20:46 Rocks and airplanes     •      23:51 Mechanism of victory     •      27:54 WWI logistics        •      32:47 Summer 1918     •      46:03 Eisenhower     •      51:24 Panama        •      01:01:58 Foreshadowing Follow along on Instagram, X @schoolofwarpod, and YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

Okay, hear me out. Today's episode is one of my favorite conversations of the year so far. Its topic is the career of a now largely forgotten U.S. Army General named Fox Connor. Why does Connor matter? And why was this episode so interesting to make? Well, for one thing, Connor was the operations officer for the American Expeditionary Force in World War I. And so a study of his career gives you unique insights into how America fought that war. But actually, more important is that Fox Connor was the man who saved Dwight Eisenhower's

career and taught the young future supreme Allied commander what he would need to know to save Europe one day. That's not an exaggeration. Let's get into it. It is a perspective for war. The Iraqi invasion of May December 7, 1941, a date which will live in him. A bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the great situation in grand. We shall fight on the beaches, which will fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender.

For more, follow School of War on YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and Twitter. And feel free to follow me on Twitter at Aaron B. McLean. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome to the show today. Stephen Rabelais. He is the author of General Fox Connor,

Pershing's Chief of Operations and Eisenhower's mentor, which is our subject today. He's also a litigator with over 40 years of experience. This book, The Biography of Connor, won the 2016 Army Historical Society's Distinguished Writing Award for Military Biographies. I have been wanting to do an episode about Fox Connor, which I suspect some of our listeners probably have never heard of, but they should have for a long time. And Stephen, I'm grateful to you for joining the show. Well, thank you very much, Aaron. It's a pleasure to be here. I've been a regular listener of your show. and this has been, this is quite a treat for me to be able to sit and talk with you. I mean, particularly when you look at the illustrious guest list that you have had,

I certainly don't belong in that category and am highly flattered that you would take some time to chat with me and old Fox Connor. Well, that's very humble of you to say, considering the book, is really very good. And it's, you know, it's, we'll spend some time explaining the listeners why they should be interested in Connor, and he is most famous, of course, as Eisenhower's mentor. And, you know, if you know one thing about Conner's contribution, if you're not a historian of the army at the time, and you know one thing about Conner's contribution, that's probably what you know. But what I actually really enjoy with your book is somebody who really has never made that serious of a study

of the First World War, your book, seeing those operations on the Western Front in 17 and 18 through Conner's eyes as Pershing's operations officer, was actually a great sort of, you know, short, efficient, but like really clear introduction to just the American operational history of the American Expeditionary Force in that period. It was really, really good. Well, thank you. Stephen, how did you, you're not an Army officer, and you haven't made your career as a historian. Your main living was as a lawyer. How did you get into all of this? Well, the short version is, I've always been a fan of history. My father, you know, was an educator. You know, we grew up with history all around us at home, and I've always loved history.

I had a phenomenal history professor named Dr. Carl Reuter at LSU in Baton Rouge, phenomenal teacher who taught a course on the First World War, and I've had a great interest in the subject. And one of my old friends, another old college roommate of mine, has a radio program in Baton Rouge. And from time to time, he needs guest host, and he asked me to guest host the show one day. and it happened to fall on the 6th of June of that year, so I decided to do one on a D-Day theme. I was aware of a fine book called Partners in Command.

Are you familiar with that one? Partners in Command by Mark Berry. Okay, read that one, okay. And it was about the relationship between Conor, excuse me, between Eisenhower and Marshall. And so I got the book to read it, to prepare for the interview, perhaps like you've done. And, you know, and every time I would read through that book about, you know,

Eisenhower and Mark. It seemed like one or the other of them was talking about this gentleman Fox Connor, whom I've never heard of. So, you know, I did my interview with Mark and then, you know, just said, well, I want to find a book about this Fox Connor. I want to read about him. There was no book at the time. So I decided, you know, I always wanted to write a book. I've got enough energy in me to do that in practice law. And so it became literally a labor of love.

I thoroughly enjoyed every part of this process. It was fun for me. And I guess it's like anything you do when it's not work, you know, when it's when it's fun for you and it's when it's when it's a pleasure for you, it is not work. And it was a pleasure from start to fudge. But that was that was the genesis. You know, your last name, your accent and your reference to Baton Rouge indicate your Louisiana associations. Connor, of course, you know, reading your account of his early life, Mississippi, I was struck by how, not to kind of invoke a cliche here, but kind of how

falconarian it was, the blind father, the father blinded, he wasn't blinded at Shiloh, right? He's blinded later. He was blinded outside. There was a battle at Atlanta, which was all part of Sherman's March to the Sea, and he was, he was blinded in that conflict. Well, I wonder, did you find any affinity with that family story? I mean, I imagine Mississippi and Louisiana have some real cultural distinctions, but this is a truly southern story for Fox Connor's post-war upbringing.

To some degree. To some degree. And, of course, General Connor accomplished, you know, infinitely more in his life, you know, than I have in mind. But just in general, the fact that I would say this, as I mentioned, my dad was, you know, he began his educational career as a history teacher. And just the whole time when I was growing up, we, he would always talk history to me. Man, you know, I knew about Charlemagne and I knew about Louis the 14th. And I knew about, you know, various, you know, people from history. And honestly, that's where Connor got his, that's where it started for Connor as well.

His father, blinded after the war, became a teacher. He became a highly intelligent man who became a teacher. And, you know, sometimes, I mean, I can't say that I've faced a whole lot of, you know, I would say discrimination from being from the Deep South. I personally have not really experienced that. but I can tell you sometimes when I've had to deal with counsel from, oh, I don't know, other parts of the other parts of the country from time to time, they perhaps underestimate me or have underestimated me.

I think that was true of Connor as well. So there were some certain affinities. Just an admirable character on how nothing was given to this guy. And he really battled his way, relied on his own intelligence and his own drive and his own determination. nation and was able to make an impact and a success wherever he, wherever he happened to find himself. So he has this father who's a civil war veteran like so many of these guys, you know, MacArthur's father, like the list of early to mid-20th century generals whose dads are

civil war veterans, I think is not a short one. And then, you know, despite his, I mean, his reputation as, you know, famous military intellectual of his era, he kind of, he sort of struggles a bit to get into West Point and then has sort of a bumpy time there. Tell us about that phase of his life. Yeah, very much so. So, you know, West Point, then as now, you know, is a premier educational institution in the United States. At that time, there was only an engineering curriculum. You know, you did not go there to study philosophy or history or the curriculum was focused upon being an engineer. And then as now, you know, you can't just waltz into any class and sit down and do calculus. You know, you need a certain level.

of preparation. And while his father and his mother as well, you know, had done the very best they could to teach this, you know, this young fellow, you know, I'll point out in reconstruction, in the reconstruction South, that's when he came of age, you know. He did not have, you know, the background that many of his contemporaries would have had. It was very common for people, for young men before they entered West Point to do a year or two at preparatory colleges. you know, and Connor did not have that. He didn't have that advantage. So his first attempt to get in the West Point, he did not succeed.

He had a failing grade in one of the primary entrance examinations, but what he determined was, okay, I still want to do this. So he figured out how to teach himself, went back to Mississippi, focused on the, it was a mathematical subject, and applied himself and got back in. And, you know, I think that taste of failure, you know, Aaron, I'm in my 60s now, and I can tell you, looking back over life, you know, sometimes the things that drive you the most of those tastes of failure when they don't, when they don't overwhelm you. And Connor certainly did that. He did not like the way that felt to fail. And so he absolutely applied himself, ended up graduating, I believe, number 17 in that class of 57 graduates. So, you know, in the upper portion, he qualified for the artillery, which was, you know, the hierarchy of the top graduates became engineers.

The next one down became, you know, artillery officers. So, you know, that's basically he applied himself. And then he had native intelligence for other things. So one of the keys to his career was languages. Some people are just born with that. You know, some people, you can, man, you could do the duolingo all you want and you just can't get it, you know. This guy had a facility for languages. He understood French, spoke French, spoke German, understood Spanish.

I think those were some of the things that equipped him. Partly was just native intelligence that he could apply. Partly was just hard work to overcome the part that he could not. People who are really good at languages have always been deeply frustrating to me because I'm one of those guys who always wanted to be really good at languages. And I did indeed labor on one. I was an Arabic person in my youth, like a lot of people born around when I was born, 11 happened. We were still pretty young. And I worked really hard at it for years and years. And I was

okay. I was I was I was okay. But it was work. And I remember I was studying abroad in the Middle East and I had a classmate who were both in this advanced Arabic program. And she was blonde hair, blue eyes, looked as American as apple pie, had been studying the language for I think for substantially less time than I had. And she could go into the next room and she could choose to speak the Moroccan, the Levantine, or the Egyptian dialect of Arabic, and would be, you know, for good chunks of time, totally plausible, totally plausible in that, you know, dialect and accent and inflection. And it would drive me nuts. It would drive me nuts because she had this like, whatever the auditory version is of a photographic memory, you know, and it's just born with it.

Some people have it. Some people just have, okay, you know, to save my life, I could not hit a golf ball, you know, from a T to a green to save my, some people, first time they sit there and do that. Just, you know, God gives us all different talents. And then one of Connors was languages for sure. You also talk about how at West Point, he spends a lot of time in the library and spends a lot time reading literature, reading fiction and especially historical fiction. You know, talk about that aspect of his life, which obviously sticks with him. And I don't know if it has its roots in this sort of historical literary world in which he grows up in in Mississippi, but it's a, it's a distinctive part of him. Yeah, no question. I think it did. I think that it's hard to underestimate

how beneficial it was for this man, for his mother and his father to have really drilled into him the value of education. This is going to be your way out. And he was a reader. So when he was a kid, just one of the little anecdotes in the book is that, you know, he won a, there was a, all totally forgotten today, but there was a very, very popular, very influential magazine called Youth's Companion back in his, you know, let's say his preteen days, his teenage days, and so forth. And he won a prize for selling the most subscriptions. And you had all kind of prizes that you could, you could, you know, get from that. You could get a knife. You could get a, you know, a, you know, a bow and arrow, you could get all kind of things that maybe perhaps teenage boys would be more

interested in. He chose a set of encyclopedias. I mean, that's what he wanted. And so the reading was good, the fact that historical fiction, and I'm a big fan of historical fiction, I don't know if you have the opportunity to read much of it, but it is fine. It's really, really, you know, good stuff. And this may get ahead a little on your interview, but I mean, that was really, the fact that he had this enjoyment of the melding of literature and history into the genre of historical fiction was a pretty important, you know, feature of, you know, what I think was in all fairness, I think in all accuracy was a reclamation project that he undertook in the 1920s to salvage the career of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was really on the ropes at that point.

And historical fiction played a distinct role per Eisenhower himself. Yeah. Yeah, well, we'll come to that. I mean, like Eisenhower will later miss World War I, he will miss, Connor will miss the Spanish-American War, right? He did. Narrowly. He's kind of on his way, but the fighting's done by the time he gets to Cuba.

That's right. And he's an artillerist. Talk about this part of his career and his gaining a reputation as a smart artillery officer. He spends time in coastal artillery, which hasn't existed for some time, but is this part of this defensive concept, which it's actually all sorts of, again, kind of another common thread through a lot of senior people in World War II is they spent time early in their careers in coastal artillery, which is this, you know, hemispheric defense-nested concept. Jim Gavin, I think, was a coastal artillery soldier in his youth, too, for example. But how does he build his reputation in his career despite having essentially missed the war? Right.

So one of the things about, you know, the coastal artillery service was you perhaps had a little bit more time on your hands, you know, during the routine of a day, a week, a month. You know, you had a little bit more time on your hands to study. Okay. And so what Connor did was, again, utilized that to go into whatever base he, whatever, you know, posting he was at, all of these facilities at some form of library. This was all part of some reforms that had been put. into place early in the 20th century to try to upgrade, you know, the educational, you know, maybe give a broader-based intellectual view to the army officers, you know, instead of simply focusing upon cavalry or artillery techniques, it was all part of some reforms brought,

brought about by a secretary of war at that time called secretary, you know, Elihu Root. And part of this was to educate. And so I think that's one of the major things was that Connor was able to use this time that one has kind of waiting for things to show up on the coastline, you know, to improve his educational aptitudes. And the other thing was that the fact that you had a studious sort and that his teachers at West Point had known him and had, you know, Aaron, as I recall, you're an Army officer, are you not? Marine, Marine Corps. But my dad was a career Army officer, so I know the institution fairly well. Well, you know, there are annual efficiency reports, you know, then as now.

And, you know, there's a paper trail on somebody. How did you do? How were you doing it? All up the chain, he was reported is this guy likes to study. He is a studious sort, hard worker. Put him in something that requires brain power. And so at the very time where the United States Army was beginning to try to implement a modernized general staff structure, a chief of staff, assistant chiefs of staff, you know, something.

something that was less bureaucratized and less politicized and something that was more professional formed on a German impression model, man, he was a prime candidate for somebody to pluck from an obscure artillery posting, quote to artillery posting, and begin sending him through the process of these schools. And so the fact that there were libraries, the fact that he had time, the fact that he came to the attention of people who were then, put into positions to select, okay. So if we're going to be picking, you know, what's the little saying, the best and the brightest,

you know, if we're going to find the Army's best and the brightest, the fact that he had the opportunity to shine, you know, to be bright, to do all that reading, was beneficial. And one of the ironies of his selection for what turns out to be extraordinarily significant service in World War I, right, is it's Pershing staff that he joins. But Persian was his tactical officer at West Point, during a fairerine. And there were, you know, as is often the case for young students, there were bumpy incidents there. But Pershing brings them to France in this really significant role, right?

Sure does. Yeah, Persian was, you know, General Pershing was sort of a hard taskmaster. And, you know, the particular cadet company that Connor belonged to just had this running battle with Pershing. They didn't like him. And he, you know, he didn't care is essentially the point. He didn't care if you liked them or not. And he didn't care. And so they gradually, and it got out of hand at some point, they had put a bucket of water.

Connor himself was not one that did this, but members of his company had put a bucket of water sort of on the top of a door that was partially ajar. And the plan was for Pershing to open the door and the bucket hit him and so forth. And, you know, that got sniffed out in advance and neutralized. But, you know, it was at that point, you know, the thing about Pershing, though, was he was strictly business, man. This was a, this was, this was not somebody. Pershing had had some tragedy in his own life, and I don't want to get the interview off, off the rails here. But, you know, Pershing had had some tragedies in his life and could care less, could care less what some West Point cadets thought of. But, again, what he could see was talent.

You know, he could see, you know, this boy from Mississippi here, he's awful quiet, but boy, he's pretty smart. And you know what? He's going to make a fine Army officer. And so Pershing spotted that talent. Again, right place, right time when the war breaks out, you know, again, facility for French language. So one of the things that absolutely was Conner's first foot into the door was, so the war, you know, is declared. the French send over a delegation, they called it a mission, you know, to start a sort of get the plan down. How are we going to do this, guys? Well, we needed somebody that could speak French.

There's Connor. So, you know, that was his first entree into that inner circle was he was somebody who could speak French and he was the liaison between, you know, this, this important delegation that had come over to the United States and the Army War College, which was where we were real busy at that point trying to formulate plans because we had none going to that war. Totally not prepared for that. And hardly maps too, which you talk about in your book and I've had other guests on the show talk about how the U.S. Army in this period literally doesn't have enough maps of what will be the theater of war in Europe and is using sort of German travel maps, like tourist maps. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. This was this was this was and you know, man, there could be, you know,

let me say this, I think, to try to draw any sort of direct correlation between, you know, the Army of 1917 and, you know, the military capacities of the United States in 2025. I mean, it's just apples and oranges. It's not even two levels of fruit. Man, we're talking about rocks and airplanes here. But, you know, but I will say this, there was this generality where perhaps, you know, the political folk had not listened, you know, to the military folk who would consider. consistently tried to tell them that we were not adequately prepared. Here's what's needed to prepare going one or out the other. But it was amazing. I mean, it was astounding. Like one of the things that just, to this day, it just astounds me. The poor French come on over here, man, they are on the ropes at this point.

You know, when we got into that war in 1917, we were getting in on the losing side. People don't remember that. Yeah, it worked, won, great. Yeah. But we were getting in on the losing side of that war. the time. And the French come over here and say, man, look, all we need is one division. Just send us one division. That's all we need, man, just one division. Man, we didn't have one division. We did not have any group organized, you know, to the size and organizational structure of a division.

We didn't have any, you know, which again, it's just astounding if you think about the United States we live in today and the United States that existed at that time. For our military to be tiny and not organized to any degree. Hell, we couldn't have fought a conflict on the continental United States, much less, you know, much less one, you know, across an ocean in the middle of the European Titans there, you know, so, phenomenal. It's really interesting to think about the kind of creation of the army from virtually nothing, as you point out in this period.

I mean, for Americans, and rightly so, sort of World War II looms largely in our minds. as, you know, the major military event of the 20th century. I mean, even the framing of your book, I mean, Connor, Connor did a lot in his career, but the fact that he basically is the person who, who educates and saves Dwight Eisenhower becomes the reason to be interested in him. But so many of the units, so many of the installations that we associate with the modern military, these divisions that people take such pride in the third infantry division, you know,

stuff like that, you know, pretty sure Quantico itself, Camp, certainly can't Lejeune, like places in the Marine Corps. They're all purchased by the U.S. government at this time, or at least massively expanded. And these units are created. You know, they just start on paper and then filled with people. And it's all to fight in France in, you know, what will, well, you actually discuss at some length. Really interesting. Like the plan, right, the original basic concept is to muster this massive, you know, essentially million man or better part of million man force.

And then strike in 1990. The Americans see themselves as the mechanism of victory two years later, two years out, which can't be all that comforting to the French and the British. Well, you put your finger right on it. So, you know, Connor, studious guy, you know, was one of, was not the, certainly the, he was not the only person, you know, involved in formulation of strategy, but was, but was heavily involved in it, and one of the primary actors. And, you know, we get into a coalition effort when we are,

clearly the junior, you know, member of that coalition. I would not even say we were a partner in that coalition. We were, you know, again, to use the law firm analogy, we were a first-year associate, you know, in that, you know, in that coalition. Conner's view was that effectively, look, Britain and France are running out of men between 1914 and 1918 because of the way they do this. Because of the way they do this. Because of the... static trench warfare, and there's nothing to prevent artillery shells from just raining into those trenches and killing people. You know, it's the way you're doing in French and British.

We don't want to do it that way. We want to do it our own way, but it's going to take us two years to form an army. Okay. So he actually had the temerity to, you know, he actually, you know, had the, whatever you want to call, the polite word of that is to go to the French and British and say, listen, guys, you're doing it wrong. You, you fellas need to fight on the defensive. Look, they're going to bring, because Russia had fallen, the German army had brought all those eastern front troops over to the west.

They're poising for this, you know, for this major offensive. The Germans planned in this thing in early 1918. And Connor's like, no, no, no, no, just like you haven't been able to breach the Western Front, neither will they. Okay. So you need to fight on the defensive and shield us while we bring over our three million men that we plan to bring over. okay we're going to form this army we're going to train it with different tactics we're not going to fight in the in the static trench zone where you are we're going to basically do an end around around the swiths border and we're going to go and capture the coal and iron mine areas of

of germany instead of fighting this on french salt we're going to invade germany that was his plan the french and the british were you know he never got that off the ground but that was his plan that was the plan. That was the American strategy. Now, again, this is a first-year associate coming to the senior partners in the coalition and saying, I got this great plan. You know, they look at them and, you know, humor him slightly, and but they do what they're going to do anyway. So that's how that went. But that was his plan. It never really came to fruition because the war ended in 1918. But the plan was to extend this into 1919 and invade Germany. That was the plan. Yeah. And there are all these, Kind of interesting, actually, for professional sort of technical debates on the structure of divisions and cores.

And one thing I didn't fully understand, I wanted to ask you about reading about it was Conner's notion, because he's over there in France at some point, and forgive me, I forget the exact date, but he becomes the operations officer of Pershing. So assumes this post of extraordinary responsibility, having sort of started his staff duty, kind of focused on artillery problems and other more narrow stuff. But he's in a position to have real influence. and he has this notion, and I couldn't quite understand it, that we need bigger divisions. We need, you know, these two brigade, four regiment divisions, because the bigger, you know, those are, this is what I don't understand. We want the bigger divisions, the 28,000 men divisions, because those will just carry more throw weight with them, and they'll be less vulnerable to the kind of stalemate and grinding attrition that the smaller French and English divisions are.

And I just did not understand that line of thinking, because, of course, it doesn't really matter how big that, division is, right? I mean, what matters is how many men you can deploy on a given, you know, frontage of battle, like the size of the actual unit is sort of, it's a command and control concern. But I just, maybe you can help me understand that and help, let's talk us through some of the problems he was trying to, trying to solve there. So, so on that level. So what you pointed out was, was one factor, you know, what would happen. So, you know, transportation, you know, And logistics, it is not as easy. It was not as easy in 1918 to move, you know, pick it, move a, you know, something, a regimental size organization, much less a battalion size organization, you know, or, you know, to, it was not easy to move people in and out.

So it was a lot of effort to get some, France had very rudimentary roads that were all torn up and hell the French were using them, you know. So part of the thought process was to get a structure in place and then to be able to leave it there in order to obviate some of the transportation and logistics problems. You know, with the, they call it a square division in the sense that it had four infantry regiments as opposed to a more standard triangular, which has three infantry regiments. And part of that was to have one of those regiments. one of those regiments at the rear of, you know, that front, at the rear of it resting. So that there would not be the need for major road space and rail traffic and animal traffic. Because you had to feed the horses. They were running out of blah, blah, blah.

Okay. The other factors, though, that went into that were they had to improvise very rapidly. And this is in 1917. We get into this and got to do something. There's no plan. There's no plan for this. So what he and the other gentleman who did this with him was named General Hugh Drum, General Drum, another figure who's forgotten. But they looked at it and said, look, we're going to have men because people were flocking to volunteer.

And that was even before they put in the draft, which eventually the draft goes in. This is the draft war as well. they knew they would have men. They knew they would have privates and maybe carpals, if you're lucky some sergeants. What they totally lacked were officers. They had, I mean, other than the guys that came out of West Point, they just didn't have an officer corps.

This was before the ROTC days. This was before they had no officers. So they had a lot of men. They had very few officers. They had almost no officers who were trained. at general staff functions. You know, that one of those guys called it a controlling brain.

So what they did was to match up reality one, we have a lot of men, reality two, we do not have a lot of officers. They made the division effectively twice as large, so you would need half as many officers, was the other side of that. Was that too rambling? No, no, no, not at all.

that helps clarify a great deal. Yeah. You know, I'm just trying to imagine these French and British officers listening to these Americans who, you know, by what the summer of 18, there's still only a handful of American divisions in France at a time when what, there's, well, all in with well over 100 on both sides. Is it over 200? I mean, there's a lot of divisions up and down the line.

Oh, yes. And the Americans sitting there saying, it was a bit like, you know, going to the Ukrainians today in the summer of 2025 and let's say some other power was coming in to support them, say, Okay, well, in 2027, we're going to launch the Grand Counter Offensive, but you guys keep bleeding and dying here. That's exactly what that's exactly the counterhead that wanted to do. That was it. Well, of course, as listeners may know, the summer of 1918 brings this tremendous crisis to the Allies.

Now, the Americans, I guess, they've been down in Lorraine. That's where they're building up, sort of eastern France. And they're focused and will eventually deal with this salient or bulge, which is, I may have mispronounce this, but the St. Mihiel, is am I in the neighborhood, salient, which is, you know, it's just a bulge in the line. The Germans kind of are, have pushed through. So a bit like the Battle of the Bulge of World War II,

same general phenomenon on a huge scale, similar scale, too, on the battlefield. And the Americans are thinking about that and maybe eventually going to potentially deal with that. Meanwhile, there's a series of German offenses further north, one of which, it ultimately turns into a dash for Paris. And so this new German salient, which comes down to the Marn forms.

And we're skipping over a lot of detail and a lot of important detail. But nevertheless, there's a crisis. You know, May turns to June, 1918, and it's not impossible that if things keep going the way they're going, France is going to get, is going to lose its capital. And who knows what the consequences of that will be? What do the Americans do and what's Connor's role in all this? All right. So effectively, when the crisis hits and the,

in the summer of 1918, you know, higher powers overruling, I mean, is the essential point. You know, Woodrow Wilson's involved at this point. You know, Pershing's involved at this point. And the recognition was clear that, look, we can't, we can't wait two years. We've got to help how we can and when we can. So effectively, what we were able to do was to trade off an agreement that instead of us combining all of our forces down there, you know, in that Lorraine area around the Swiss border, we would go ahead and fit, you know, battalion by battalion. You know, we would go ahead and work those into the French and British units on a short-term basis. What we got out of that, what we received from that deal, was the British in particular. Even though most of those troops went, even though most of those troops went to fight in French sectors, the British freed up a lot more shipping to bring the American army over. Because that was the problem we didn't touch on is that we, not only did we had no army, we had no ships, we had no troop transports to bring.

I mean, you realize how many people, 28,000 men is, and this was supposed to be multiplied by 50 divisions. And, you know, so that all worked out. we, you know, that's what Bellow Wood was. Bellow Wood was part of that operation. There's the, you know, Chateau-Tierry. People may have seen that, that reference. You know, there was a critical battle called Suasson, which was where basically the German offensive breaks and the Allies, you know, counterattack at a place called Suassant.

Two of our divisions, it was two American divisions, the first American division, second American division, and a Moroccan division. And how is that for, you know, how times have changed, you know. You know, an organization that's four-fifth American and one-fifth Moroccan spearheaded the counterattack that really kind of halted the Germans. And at that point, they had just run out. And that's when the French took the offensive and then started this big push that culminated in November. But that's what he did. I mean, he basically got overruled, was told, look, we can't wait for you playing.

So get on board. And then that he did that as well. As chief of operations, he made sure that whatever battalions went into the French and English lines. lines came out, you know, because that was a big problem they had. You give, you know, we're going to give you this, but we want it back, and he would get it back and gradually fit those in and combine them so that they could go and fight in American sectors, even if the American sectors were not the ones Connor wanted. They were at least American, you know, command under Pershing and other generals who, again,

names wholly forgotten, Hunter Liggett, nobody remembers him, you know. Robert E. Lee Bullard, you know, nobody remembers him. But these were very fine commanders who, once we did get into the game, it was on the French game plan. But once we got into the game, we did very, fought very well. We're fighting under ultimate, you know, French or I guess in parts British command, depending on where you are. But the major American actions are at the, like, brigade division level, right?

I mean, this is where the third infantry division makes its name, Rock of the Marne, Chatea, Tier. It's the second Marine Brigade. with the second division that's making. So the Americans are fighting at some level as American units. They are. That's when that started was in the summer. You know, once it became apparent that, look, we can't wait.

The French and British are correct. I mean, you just had to look at the battlefield. You know, the Germans had just me think about this. You know, they had all those men, the Germans did, tied up in the fight. And the Russians on the eastern front, the Russians collapse. You know, there's the first revolution, Kaczynski and all that. that, and then it, you know, then certainly once the Bolsheviks come in in late 1917, that Germany didn't need an army on the Eastern Front anymore.

All of that comes over, and all of that is just getting into, they're getting into the starting blocks to go, and it worked at first. They just never, you know, it just goes to show you the importance of logistics and transportation, you know, things that, things that we're much better at in the military now, you know, than we were then. And the Germans honestly could and should have had greater success in the spring of 1918. They just could not sustain their attacks. They just couldn't get the people in and out.

Again, talking about those large divisions, they couldn't get the people in and out. They couldn't get them fed. They couldn't get the wounded out. And these attacks just peter out right when they're on the break of success. Yeah, I mean, there's so many ways in which this period is really the birth of like modern American ground warfare. I mean, I had the opportunity to go some years ago to Chachotiri and Bellow Wood and walk around. I had a guide who claimed, it's my Marine Battalion Regiment Company, whatever, fought at Bellow Wood. And the guide claimed to show me the actual fighting holes of my company, which would have been 76 company at the time.

And I said to him, is it really? These holes, not those holes right over there, you know, or those holes right over here. These precise holes were where my company was. He was very confident. So I took him at his work. Man, you have to appreciate. You have to appreciate his effort, right? Appreciate the effort of going, at least telling you that.

And who knows? I mean, no, does make it it's possible. It's totally, I choose to believe he was totally accurate. And we found, I mean, there's, I found a boot being extruded from the ground. There was some unexploded ordinance that we saw. I didn't touch. I mean, that's 100 years on. And, you know, it just speaks to the intensity of the combat in this tiny little forest.

And then, you know, I got to go to the American cemetery there. And I found, you know, this is, I don't know how many people will appreciate why this was meaningful to me. I saw laid to rest next to each other, an NCO from the Sixth Marine Regiment, which is my regiment much, much later, obviously. And then another NCO laid to rest from the Army's 30th Infantry Regiment, which was in World War II, my father's regiment. Oh, wow. That is.

So it was just this weird moment where, like, everything kind of intersected here on this battlefield on the bend of the Marne River, you know, years before even my father was born. But, you know, these units were there and sort of made their names, there and I actually don't know at the regimental level if they were created there. I don't know that that story. Certainly the divisions they were fighting as part of were created for those fights. And it really, I mean, it's just, I think June the 6th is, you say this in the book, June the 6th is the bloodiest day for Marines until Tarawa. Correct. Until Terrawa in 1943. That's correct. June 6th was the, for those listening, June 6th, 1918 was, was the date that

the Americans begin their, you know, their attack into Bello Wood. in order to clear the Germans, you know, from that, from that wood. And that's very important to history again, a thing that, I mean, you know, Aaron, all we can do is what we can do. But it's a shame that people don't remember these things, you know. Just going around, you know, once I'd written that book and had many opportunities to speak, all of which was fun. You know, it just occurred to me, the general theory I ran across was,

well, we know there was a World War II. So we know about that one. So there must have been a World War I. It must have been one. Because the Germans really were determined to inflict the defeat on the Americans. This was, you know, Bellow Wood was not fought for any particular, you know, its position was not terribly critical to either side. This was a test of wills. The Germans were going to beat the Americans in their, you know, in their initial effort just to show them who's boss, show them who's daddy.

Are you going to see? and the Americans, you know, Fox Conner, a big part of this, you know, was, okay, let's see who's daddy, okay? And they've absolutely, now, the casualties that the, you know, the second Marine Brigade and the six Marine Regiment and so forth took were pretty heavy, you know, for that essential, you know, point of who's, who's daddy here. But at the end of the day, the United States came out on top of that. And let me tell you, and that was the start of a lot of things. Germans took the Americas a lot more seriously after not only Bellow Wood, but also Chateau-Therry. And then at Swazin, they were like, uh-oh, these guys are going to make a difference. Because that was nothing that they thought was going to happen.

The German, like you go back and, man, if you'd like all this, you can go to any of, in fact, this is online now. It's called, it's a blue book. If you're familiar with the Green Book series of World War II, where there's a blue book series for World War II. there's a Blue Book series for World War I. And we have translations of all of the German, you know, historical documents for this. They weren't at all concerned. They didn't think we could form an army, didn't think we could get it over in time, and they thought they would prevail on this.

That's why they went to unrestricted submarine warfare. They made the calculus that we could never get over there in time to make a difference, so it was worth trying to strangle Britain's food and ammunition and whatnot. But, boy, they were surprised. the United States and your former unit certainly acquitted themselves marvelously. So Connor then becomes really the key architect and planner of this major American contribution in the fall as well. So the Germans, they fail.

They don't take Paris. They're stopped. I was taught, by the way, in Quantico. And if you visit the Marine Corps Museum today, it's pretty clear that Bello Wood was where the Germans were stopped. There were reportedly some other things happening on the battlefield at places like Shatocet. Tertory, but they seem less significant if you go to the Marine Corps Museum. It's pretty much Bella Wood where the German offensive was halted.

As well, it should. And in any event, it was halted. And so the French and the high command see this opportunity for a counter strike. And the AEF plays a huge role in this. And we kind of skipped over. Connor, you know, he's a staff officer and he's a planner. But he's wounded in the lead up to all this pretty nasty, scary sounding wound where he's bleeding a lot from his neck and an artillery barrage.

So he's, you know, he is very much in the war and then designs this thing at the end. Talk about Muzargan and Mihiel sort of briefly. I want to get to Eisenhower, so we shouldn't spend too much time on it. But he is the architect of this. Right. So effectively, once the German offensive stops and the French and the Allies counterattack, the Allied commander-in-chief, General Farsh says, okay, we've got them on the run. We're going to continue the pressure, and we're going to break them.

before they get to a winter season, they can regroup. And so basically with a series of continuous offensive starting at the English Channel and going to the Swiss border, we all attack at the same time. The Americans have a sector between a forest known as the Argonne forest and a river known as the Mewis River. Our fighting was hard there, very difficult. So was the fighting in the French and British areas,

and it was just difficult. the terrain was difficult, very much like Bellowood. Terrain was very difficult. It had been fortified for three years. I want you to imagine this. Just imagine this as a, so you're in a woods someplace, okay? Not only are you going through trees, but you had, I think it was six miles deep of barbed wire. It wasn't just like a little strand, you know, they weren't just keeping a herd of cattle inside there.

Just imagine you got to go through six miles of barbed wire in the woods with people shooting down on you. well, that was the sector that was assigned to us. That's where those big divisions, you know, ultimately succeeded. The ultimate aim of that was to capture a particular rail line. And so we made it through the forest, through the barbed wire, and we interdict this particular rail line. And once the Germans lost the use of that rail line, again, transportation and logistics,

they could not get their army out. They could not withdraw it to regroup. the day we captured, the day that we interdicted that rail line with artillery fire, that was the day the Germans went to Fosch and requested an armistice. So Connor goes on to an objectively impressive post-war career culminating him being, I guess he's in the running for chief of staff of the Army a few times. And then he actually rejects it at the end, which is an interesting conclusion. And he's, I guess, I don't know if this is unusual actually, but striking combination. of a conservative who's kind of a skeptic of FDR in the 30s, but not an isolationist. And that comes through in his later analysis of what happened at Pearl Harbor.

So he has his impressive long career. We could spend a lot of time talking about the things that he does. But there is this critical moment that despite everything we've just talked about, this incredible contribution to World War I, the fact that, you know, he plays a major role in the post-war army. He goes off to command American troops in Panama in the 20s, and he takes along as his executive officer won Dwight Eisenhower. You mentioned earlier Eisenhower's career was on the ropes. Why was that? Tell us about Eisenhower at this time. Well, he had not made it over to Europe in the war. He had stayed

in the United States as a trainer of tank of tank troops. So he did not make it into, you know, an actual combat unit in the war. And he thought that this was going to be sort of the watershed between the officers that made it in their careers and those that didn't. That was something. that was important for him. He was a early pioneer of tank doctrine. In fact, the tank, he and George Patton were friends, and they developed ideas on tank doctrines. And effectively, their ideas on how to use tanks

and the Army's chief of infantry's ideas were out of sync. And he was effectively, his ideas, his writings were effectively suppressed. They told, don't do this. We're telling you, don't publish articles that contradicts, our promulgated doctrine. He had married a lady, Mamie Eisenhower, had married Mamie. He was from a kind of a well-to-do family, and, you know, Mamie had her struggles adjusting to life on Army posts. That was part of it. It was not a always copacetic marriage, and they had lost a child, which is quite a tragic thing for Eisenhower. They had a young child die of a scarlet fever. But what really had him on the ropes in a

addition to all of that. Look, and this is undisputed here. I mean, you know, you can, you know, you can, you can, you can look at his, at his 201 file, you know, his official personnel file, which is publicly available. Look, he, he, he did something he wasn't supposed to do. The army at that time, you had one of two options. The army would either put you up in base housing, or if you wanted to live off base, they would give you money to offset that expense. You could collect, you could either live on base or get reimbursement, but you couldn't do both. Well, he did both. He and his wife lived on base.

He did not want his son to live, you know, to live on that base. So his son lived with grandparents in Colorado. And so what he did was he would, the term was commutation. He would draw commutation. He would get an expense reimbursement. And at the bottom of every one of those checks that he got, he had to sign something under penalty of perjury, attesting that he was not living in government-supplied housing.

Well, hell, he was. I mean, there's no doubt about it. He was, okay? So that Eisenhower found out that another officer had been disciplined over that. So to his credit, he self-reported. He turned himself in. He paid back the money. All up and down the chain, his immediate superiors were all willing to just put a reprimand

in his file. and just let it go with that. Guy made a mistake. But the Army's Inspector General at that time, man named Eli Helmick, just thought it was just appalling that not only a United States Army officer, but a West Point graduate,

and said, look, there was no gray area here. I mean, he knew what he was doing was wrong and thought this guy needed to be weeded out of the Army. And so that's where, that's where Ike was. So, Connor gets this assignment to go to Panama, and he knows nothing. It was an infantry brigade he was going to command. He had no practical experience in the infantry,

and so he wanted an executive officer with infantry training to accompany him to help him, you know, work that brigade. He first went to Patton. Patton wasn't interested in going to Panama, but Patton was friends with Eisenhower. So Patton was mutual friends, Connor and Eisenhower. He's who introduced them. And effectively, you know, Connor needed a bright executive officer.

Ike needed to get out of Dodge in a hurry, and Connor made it happen. You know, by that time, Pershing had become the Army's chief of staff. He headed the Army. And so it's interesting. If you read the actual handwritten letters between the two, you can see where Connor is right. Eisenhower is saying, okay, but look, I need to, what about these court martial proceedings that are ongoing against me at this time? My trial's about to begin. And he said, don't worry about that.

you know, I'll have Colonel Marshall steer the matter for us. Well, Colonel Marshall was George C. Marshall. So basically, you know, who you know then is now is quite important. And that was effectively, look, he would have been found guilty. Hell, he was guilty of that. I mean, there's no question that had this proceeded to a trial, he would have been found guilty and convicted of that. I'm sure, drummed from the Army. I think history would be radically different today with no Eisenhower in World War II and then later in the Cold War. You paint the picture of their relationship in Panama in this series of sort of almost cinematic scenes of Eisenhower going over to Conner's House. And the critical conversation

seems to begin with Eisenhower admitting that he had liked history as a kid, but that West Point kind of drummed it out of him. The humanities education, such as it was in West Point at the turn of 20th century made Eisenhower less intellectually curious. And Connor takes this all in, and he loans him a few books. How does that process take off? Right. And that's, so they go down to Panama. It's under no threat. It's kind of like the coastal artillery thing we talked about earlier. These guys have time on their hands. Now you can, you know, you can go drink at the officers club, play cards, and all kinds of things you can go do. These guys talked, you know?

And Connor asks him, Eisenhower, you like history? Nah, general I used to, but not anymore. In fact, Eisenhower's high school yearbook had predicted he was going to become a history professor. So he says, Eisenhower, come on over to my course. And they step into this library that, you know, that Connor had compiled. And Eisenhower would just, again, it never left him. Yeah, he might have fallen out of favor with him, but that old love that he had for history,

you know, as a child kind of came back. And so Connor pulls three books off his shelves. Okay. None of them are military, you know, military theory books. They're historical fiction. They are novels, you know. You know, in the interest of time, one of them was written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame. He had won an officer in the Napoleonic Wars.

One was written, you know, basically telling the story of Stonewall Jack. and one was set against sort of Ulysses-Grant's early career. And there was kind of a theme through all three of those. So when the Civil War breaks out, you know, Ulysses Grant is nobody's prize, man. He is not anyone when the war breaks out that is expected to become what he ultimately became. Stonewall Jackson was a, he was a professor at, I believe, VMI. BMI. B.m.

Okay. And, you know, was kind of viewed as this. oddball that nobody expected him to be what he would become. And that was sort of the subtle theme. Look, Eisenhower, you're kind of down here right now as a young guy and you need to kind of, we would say today, reboot. I don't know what the regroup, I guess would have been the term back then. But it hooked him. Just the writing skill of those three writers hooked him. I mean, look, the way you write is important, you know, and it hooked him. And so Connor then gradually says, well, look, if you like this, why don't you read some studies I have about the

actual campaigns? Oh, and if you like this, why don't you start reading, you know, some of these military theorists, you know, there's, you know, Klausowitz and, you know, Sun Tzu and, you know, and by the way, I liked your show that you did with the guy who went through, okay, I know I'm mispronouncing it. How did he pronounce it, Sun Tzu? Oh, yeah, well, I kind of made fun of myself. This is Scott Borman in the episode we do that. I think it, I think he would say Sunzu or something like that. Yeah, I know. I'm probably still not. But still in all, for those listening, an excellent show, I would recommend it. Thank you.

And then he gradually, gradually starts working him into the world of, look, you know, look, here's some stuff I can show you. Here are the maps. You know, you have to learn to work with maps. Okay. Look, here are the maps of Gettysburg. Here are the maps of these different Civil War battles. And then they studied the campaigns of Frederick the Great. I mean, this was getting deep.

But again, it was, what else do I have to do down there? I mean, you know, there's no TV, no internet, you know, drink and play cards or improve my career. Well, we know what Fox Connor's answer was, you know, when he was in a similar situation, Coast Artillery Duty in Rhode Island, and it influenced him. That's the influence. That's the influence of an older person on a younger person. Didn't make him do it. Just gave him an example of how to do it. and then gave it to Eisenhower to do the rest.

So, and I turned him around it, I mean, to his dying day, look, I don't know if you've ever read At Ease, which is, which is a, at ease is a very interesting thing. It's reminiscences that Eisenhower put together. This was published, I think, in 1967 or 68, and Ike died in 1969. It's not meant to be, you know, detailed history of anything. This is Ike's reminiscences of himself, you know, is coming up and all that. And it is just, you know, oozing with admiration for what Fox Connor did to turn them

around. And it all started in those, you know, the jungles of Panama and Fox Conner's library. And you talk about Eisenhower talking about Conner's Socratic style. That in it, it was really almost like an ongoing kind of Oxford one-on-one tutorial where Eisenhower would do the reading. And I guess they would gather back at probably Conner's placement. most frequently, but wherever they would gather, and Connor would question him. That's right.

And ask him what he thought about this or that aspect of the reading. And Eisenhower is, he's got to be what? He's like in his, is he in his 40s at this point or late 30s, something like that? Probably late 30s at that point. Yeah. Yeah. So this is old for a student, but I think that in and of itself says something important, right? Right, right.

It was, you know, it would go this way, you know, okay. So tell me what happened and why? Well, then what would happen if instead of, if General X had not thrown his cavalry in, if he'd have instead brought it around to the rear? What do you think would have happened? What would have happened? What would you have done? How would you have adapted to that?

What would we have done if all of a sudden that day we had rain and we couldn't bring anything up because the wagons couldn't get through? How would you handle that? What would you do if you had to make a perimeter? How would you do it? That's sort of, so take the known, take the, you know, take what we know. know, but then gradually change the facts around just to get him to think. And is there a right answer?

Is there a wrong answer? You know, who knows? But the point is, his brain got trained to formulate an answer, which is half the problem with anything. I mean, you know, paralysis by analysis, you know, you don't want to do that. You know, you need to assess a situation, formulate a plan, and then begin to effectuate that plan. And I think that Ike was good at that.

And again, I'm quoting. I'm not relying upon my own powers of deduction here. This is Eisenhower's own attribution of what he became to the effort that Connor put in, you know, with him. And you have this description of Eisenhower sitting alone on his screen porch. I don't know if maybe he had gone back to the states by this point, but sitting alone on his screen porch with his maps spread out in the books from Conner's library. Sort of how do you put it, sort of fighting these wars, you know, for himself. And, you know, if you'd walk by that porch at the time, it would have seemed quirky, you know, or, you know, diligent, I suppose he is a professional officer. But what you probably wouldn't have realized is the world historical significance of what you were looking at.

Yeah, he was considered odd. I mean, you know, like I say, most guys, the primary occupations, you know, were not on duty were playing cards and drinking. Now, they did have some fishing. They were able, you know, they're in Panama. It's not hard to get to either coast. You know, they did have some good fishing, you know, when they could get the money together to charter or boat. But no, man, he was, he had just decided that, you know what, kind of, I think it made a big impression on Eisenhower when he took a shortcut once in his life. Okay.

Our man took a shortcut. Our man didn't do it the right way. And it nearly, you know, burned him badly. I think Ike was more or less straight arrow. So he was going to, he doubled down and wanted to succeed in his career. And I think that at the end of the day, he liked learning more than he liked, you know, playing poker and drinking, you know, and drinking, although he did both of those as well. And, you know, this is the guy who, you know, obviously because of all the discussion of maps and terrain, we're sort of thinking about World War II and this man who will go on to become the, you know, the warlord of Western Europe. But then this is also the man who has to formulate, really, America's early nuclear strategy.

in the Cold War. I mean, the burdens that this man is going to bear in the decades to come are burdens that few Americans, if any, have in their totality boring. One of the things like the, you know, when you write, I mean, you can see, I'm long with it. I mean, I'm sorry about that. No, no, no, not at all.

Well, it was the same in the writing of that book, okay? So when it was turned in, there were a whole lot of things that did not make it into the final product, one of which, you know, and it really, it wasn't properly developed. So one of the things, so Eisenhower, again, this comes from comments that he made. So, man, I believe it was called game theory,

I think was the earlier nuclear strategy. It was like Von Neumann and gain theory and all that. And Connor, then they're trying to teach it to Eisenhower and he is still trying to distill that through this prism that Connor taught him on how to learn things. You know, I just thought that was interesting. And they were like, no, man, we got, look, you get so many words, this isn't going to make the cut by. That's fascinating.

One other thing you mentioned that I want to make sure we get in before we conclude is Connor was kind of unusual in that unlike most sane people at the time who wished for a better world, he thought there was going to be another war. And he thought there was going to be another war from almost the get-go from the end of World War I. he was pretty sure that within a generation or so, this had not really been settled. And there would have to be a kind of settling or at least another round. And so, you know, as the dialogue between him and Eisenhower continues in Panama, he starts to give him very practical advice about what this future conflict will involve. So we start with historical fiction, which one of those first three novels, the Napoleon one, the Conan Doyle one, is set on these battlefields of northern Europe.

So there's through lines all the way through. It's all, I mean, I don't, I suspect my guess you would know, but my guess is it's more casual. But as a, as a considered curriculum that concludes with the practical advice for how you need to fight this war, you could hardly have designed a better one. And Connor, you know, is telling him like, well, the problem was Fosh lacked, you know, he lacked the authority he needed. I kind of pushed him around. You shouldn't allow that. Yeah. Like America can't allow that.

If it's going to, if it's going to go back, there has to be unified command at the top. All this, like, super practical stuff, which, kind of. has to have no, I mean, how could they know in 20 years? This will be Eisenhower's actual job. It's just stunning how appropriate it all was. Yeah, no doubt. So, man, there's a deep history there. So Connor, because of his fluency in French, he was able to serve in 1911 in a French military unit. So he spent a year serving in the French Army in 1911. He knew just the visceral hatred that the French nation had for the German nation over the fact that the war, you know, the first, the first round of all this was in 1870, the Franco-Prussian war.

You know, Germany wins that one, the Prussians win that one. The French were just burning with revenge. They were going to fight, they were going to fight at some point. And he saw how that worked on the French side for him and spent a year. He could see how the first World War ended. So round two was the 1914 to 1918 conflict. He and Pershing, one of the reasons they did not like Fosher strategy was they wanted to destroy the German army

because he was very concerned that if we just do an armistice and the Germans just march their army on home, they're never going to admit to being defeated, and that's exactly what happened. So if you look at what happened during the Vimar period, which then leads up to, you know, the Nazi period, a pervasive, you know, theory here is, we never lost that war. Hell, we were about to win that war.

It was the, you pick it. It was the bankers. It was the Jews. It was whoever, whoever they wanted to blame, because their army marched home with drums beating and flags flying. Connor, in all these conferences with Fosch and the French, thought it was a mistake to not destroy the German army. Okay.

and he, again, he was not his, it was not within his remit to make these decisions. But he knew, he knew when they did that, when the French imposed the conditions of harshness on the Germans in the Treaty of Versailles, which he was there for the signing. He knew that the Germans would react exactly the way his French comrades had reacted in 1911.

This is not over. They're not going to just quit, particularly when we let their army go home. Okay? And another thing factored into it was just how much contraction there had been in the American Army. So Versailles limited Germany's army to 100,000 men. That was thought to be a force sufficiently small to neuter any country. By the time Eisenhower and Connor together, the American Army is 118,000. Okay.

He knew there was no deterrent. He knew this didn't go away. He knew that those men who just marched on home with their rifles and hands, they didn't just go away. And that was the genesis of why he said, this is not over. You know, the League of Nations didn't work out. You know, America didn't join it. In Conner's belief, there was going to be a round three, like on everything else, there was going to be a rubber match, like to say.

And then the thing he drummed in Eisenhower was, look, it's going to be a coalition war. But we need to be the big dog in it because, man, I had some good ideas and never got off the ground because I was a first year associate. Nobody would listen to him. You need, we need to be the senior partner in this thing going into it. And again, that fueled Eisenhower as he continued his training after Panama. Stephen Rabelay, author of General Fox Connor. Thank you for making the time for this really, really interesting conversation. today. And thank you for all the work you've done to shed light on this man who is an absolutely

pivotal figure in the, you know, early 20th century, early mid-20th century American military history who so few people know about. It's been a really, really great episode and I'm grateful to you for coming on. Well, Heron, it has been my pleasure indeed. It's been an honor. And you please keep up the good work. It's a wonderful program. I look forward to every episode that drops. So, thank you. Thank you, sir. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.