02/19/14

Ike the Loser

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower addresses American paratroopers in England on the evening of June 5, 1944, as they prepare for the D-Day invasion. (Library of Congress)

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower addresses American paratroopers in England on the evening of June 5, 1944, as they prepare for the D-Day invasion. (Library of Congress)

Not all kairos decisions are made on a small stage.

On June 4, 1944, Dwight D. Eisenhower, as the Supreme Commander of all Allied expeditionary forces preparing to invade German-occupied Normandy during Operation Overlord, brooded in his rain-beaten Army trailer knowing he alone was in charge of the largest invasion in world history. At this moment he commanded over 3 million men—over half of them American. (1)

The surprise invasion, two years in the making, consisted of over 10,000 aircraft, 7,000 sea vessels, a night-time airborne assault of nearly 24,000 troops, and a seemingly infinite amount of supporting resources. (2)

No one felt the pressure more than Eisenhower. A reporter who interviewed “Ike”—a nickname stemming from his boyhood days in Abilene, Kansas—that day observed he was “bowed down with worry…as though each of the four stars on either shoulder weighed a ton.” (3)

Every ashtray in his trailer was “full to overflowing” (4) as Eisenhower bolstered his strength with cigarettes from one of the six packs he smoked a day (5), each paired with a constant stream of black coffee.

The next day, Ike walked around the air fields to visit with the paratroopers as they steeled themselves for the battle ahead.

Wandering alone among them, and helpless to do anything more, he asked their names and joked about their jobs, their favorite sports, their wives and girlfriends.

He queried one private, wanting to know if the man was scared.

“No, sir!” came the emphatic reply.

“Well, I am!” Eisenhower said with a sly grin, soliciting cheers from the men huddled around him. (6)

The notebook draft of the greatest speech Eisenhower would never give.

The notebook draft of the greatest speech Eisenhower would never give.

In his pocket, tucked in the folds of his wallet, was a scrap of paper he would never use—a speech scratched out earlier that afternoon in his modest trailer to deliver to the world in case his decision was the wrong one:

Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone. (7)

He had underscored the last two words—mine alone.

As a good leader, Ike had planned for every contingency, but, as a great leader, he had quietly prepared to become the biggest loser in history. He would take full responsibility for whatever lay ahead.

Fortunately for him—and for the history of the world—kairos luck would shine on Ike’s leadership qualities the next day, June 6, and the successful D-Day invasion would become a turning point in the war against Hitler.

Eight years later, the American public would like Ike, and his great character trait of responsibility, enough to make him the 34th President of the United States.

(1) Michael Korda, Ike: An American Hero (New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007), 42.

(2) Ibid, 36.

(3) John C. McManus, The Americans at D-Day: The American Experience at the Normandy Invasion, (New York: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 2004), 116.

(4) Kay Summersby, Past Forgetting: My Love Affair with Dwight David Eisenhower (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975), 188.

 (5) Merle Miller, Ike the Soldier: As They Knew Him (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1987), 603.

 (6) McManus, The Americans at D-Day, 130.

 (7) Harry C. Butcher diary, June 8, 1944, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas.

 

02/7/14

Founding Fathers Friday: The Beehive

Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze 1851Chances are good you have his face in your wallet or purse right now, but when did George Washington really become the father of our country?

America as we know it might not exist today if Washington had made a different decision than he did at 3 a.m. on the morning after Christmas, 1776, while sitting on a beehive stuck in a frozen riverbank in New Jersey.

We might then know of Washington as a mere footnote in history, “a little paltry colonel of a militia of bandits,” known only to scholars and enthusiasts as another obscure leader of a failed resistance movement. (1)

Alternative histories aside, a closer look at Washington that morning, when he led a ragged group of desperate men across the Delaware River in an attack on the British at Trenton, reveals a man at the end of a rope.

Things had never looked bleaker for the American patriots. Washington had even admitted as much in a recent letter to his brother John Augustine Washington, writing “I think the game is pretty near up.” (2)

Even the weather seemed to be conspiring against Washington. He sat brooding on the rotting overturned crate that had once been a local farmer’s beehive as a furious winter storm hampered the crossing.

With almost nine miles still between him and Trenton, any attack now would be hours after sunrise. Despairing, he contemplated calling off the attack.

His kairos moment appeared before him here, now, as he sat on the beehive in the middle of the night. He must make a decision.

And so he did.

Above all else, the most prominent characteristic Washington displayed that morning was a complete sense of resolve to see his idea through, even in the face of ever mounting obstacles.

The passing hours had given Washington time to fall back on the iron willpower that constituted so much of his character. He would later tell John Hancock, “I determined to push on at all events.” (3)

One anonymous eyewitness is said to have noted in his diary, “I have never seen Washington so determined as he is now…He stands on the bank of the stream, wrapped in his cloak, superintending the landing of his troops. He is calm and collected, but very determined.” (4)

To Washington, his determination to follow through on the success or failure of the gamble was very personal. Much of what constituted his iron will that night grew out of who he was as a man. He was truly an exceptional man, but what made him extraordinary was his natural ability to do so many ordinary things so very well, and keep doing these things when it counted.

Washington and his aides, who had worked to compile excellent intelligence on the ground in New Jersey, had earlier realized that the British were momentarily weak. America’s fortunate reversal at Trenton came about because Washington was quick to recognize this seemingly small opportunity in those weeks before Christmas 1776.

But Washington alone could make the most out the available opportunity because his great determination and flexibility also made him the strongest survivor (three other attacks across the river failed that night).

The defeat of the British at Trenton paved the way for Washington’s subsequent victory at Princeton and completely reversed America’s fortunes in the Revolutionary War. The twin victories sent shockwaves reverberating throughout the British Empire and awakened a new respect for Washington and the American cause.

That morning—by sheer determination—Washington summoned enough rebel energy to drive a flying shuttle through the loom of the British defenses when the right opening occurred, and by so doing, created one of the greatest kairos moments in American history.

On the beehive see Richard Ketchum, The Winter Soldiers: The Battles for Trenton and Princeton (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1973), 252.(1) Edward Tatum, Jr., ed., The American Journal of Ambrose Serle, (New York: New York Times/Arno Press, 1969), 35.
(2) GW to John Augustine Washington, Dec. 18, 1776, in The Writings of George Washington 6:396.
(3) GW to John Hancock, Dec. 27, 1776, in WGW 6:442.
(4) The authenticity of the often quoted “Diary of an Officer on Washington’s Staff” is the subject of debate among recent scholars. It is often attributed to Lieutenant Colonel John Fitzgerald, one of Washington’s aides de camp, but no original has ever been found. Regardless, in this case, Washington’s resolve is self-evident and the description rings true. See David Hackett Fischer, Washington’s Crossing (New York: Oxford University Press), 422.

01/22/14

Let the Dice Fly High

Vercingetorix throws down his arms at the feet of Julius Caesar. Painting by Lionel Royer, 1899. Caeasar's successes in Gaul shifted the balance of power he shared with his rival Pompey and prompted his crossing of the Rubicon.

Vercingetorix throws down his arms at the feet of Julius Caesar. Painting by Lionel Royer, 1899.
Caeasar’s successes in Gaul shifted the balance of power he shared with his rival Pompey and prompted his crossing of the Rubicon.

One of the most definitive kairos moments in history unfolded in a cold and dark hour one early January morning in 49 B.C.

Warriors of Rome’s Thirteenth Twin Legion, veterans of the violent Gallic wars that had consumed much of the Roman Republic’s martial energy over the previous decade, stood on the bank of the Rubicon river on the edge of their homeland.

Their loyalty rested on the man who had first led them out of those fields on the opposite side of the river and across the high Alps at their backs. He stood among them, singled out by both the station he had achieved in life and the burden of the decision he was weighing in his mind.

His name was Gaius Julius Caesar, one of two surviving triumvirs of Rome, and he was now the declared enemy of a republic that had dominated much of the Mediterranean world for nearly half of a millennium. His dark eyes peered out from his broad face with the intense stare of a hawk and reflected the flickering light thrown from a nearby torch as he surveyed the unfolding scene. (1)

Caesar’s “thoughts began to work,” wavering as he weighed the consequences of the action of the hour. According to Plutarch Caesar “revolved with himself, and often changed his opinion one way and the other, without speaking a word. This was when his purposes fluctuated most…computing how many calamities his passing that river would bring upon mankind, and what a relation of it would be transmitted to posterity.” (2)

He quietly discussed the situation with a few close advisors. There was little they could say—to the north lay exile and defeat; to the south lay civil war and ruin. Caesar’s next step would be irrevocable, carrying the ripple of drama to the farthest corners of his world.  

The lynchpin moment, though great, was short. Caesar had turned fifty years old the previous July, but his decisiveness, energy, and drive were still terrifying traits to behold. Lifting his voice above the din in the darkness behind him, “in a sort of passion,” he abandoned “himself to what might come, and using the proverb frequently in their mouths who enter upon dangerous and bold attempts” Alea iacta est—Let the dice fly high “with these words he took the river.” (3)

Caesar would go on to defeat his enemies as they fled Rome, shaken loose by the speed of his approach and the confidence of the battle-scarred men at his side. He would later crush his rival Pompey in a final battle at Pharsalus in central Greece, despite being outnumbered three to one, and chase Pompey to his death on the far shores of Egypt.

The day would come when he would crown himself dictator of a new Roman empire, launching a new halcyon age for a 500-year-old civilization that would endure 500 years more.

The muddy channel of the Rubicon eventually became lost to history as time eroded the coastal plain it traversed on its fall from the Apennine Mountains running the spine of the Italian peninsula to the west. But the river’s more enduring imprint fossilized into the eponymous symbol of definitive action, the climax in every drama triggering a final denouement away from the familiar.

“Crossing the Rubicon” became the calculated point in a chain of action beyond which one could only press on to a new and different horizon.

What are you prepared to risk when you find yourself standing at your own Rubicon?

Bust of Julius Caesar Vatican Museum

Bust of Julius Caesar
Vatican Museum

 

(1) “Caesar is said to have been tall, fair, and well-built, with a rather broad face and keen, dark-brown eyes.” Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, The Twelve Caesars, 1:45, as translated by Robert Graves (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957) revised by James B. Rives, 2007.

(2) A. H. Clough, tr., Plutarch’s Lives of Illustrious Men (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1881), 517.

(3) Ibid.