Dogface Soldier: The Life of General Lucian K. Truscott, Jr.

Preface

Preface Dogface Soldier is the first comprehensive biography of Gen. Lucian K. Truscott , Jr.1 It will be of interest to military historians in general, but especially those with an interest in the interwar American Army and those with a particular interest in the North African, Mediterranean, and southern France theaters of operation in World War II. It will also be of interest to those historians and general readers who are attracted to biographical studies of the great captains of World War II. This book is particularly timely because of the favorable reception of Rick Atkinson’s two recently published best-seller books devoted to the North African and Mediterranean theaters, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943 and The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944, both of which have stimulated renewed interest in those virtually forgotten campaigns, especially among general-interest readers. John S. D. Eisenhower’s They Fought at Anzio and Lloyd Clark’s Anzio: Italy and the Battle for Rome, 1944 have also excited new interest in the decisive but often overlooked Anzio campaign, in which Truscott played a vital role. My interest in General Truscott dates to 1992,when I met Martin Blumenson in Paestum, Italy, while on a tour of World War II battlefields in southern Italy. During one of our discussions he said that he considered Lucian Truscott to be one of the greatest of the American World War II combat commanders, and his memoir, Command Missions: A Personal Story, the best memoir of any written by an American general of that generation. Blumenson went on to say that he was mystified that no historian had taken on the task of writing a biography of this outstanding soldier, and suggested that I consider doing so. However, I busied myself with other writing tasks until the spring of 2001, when I joined Mr. Blumenson for dinner in Paris.As we renewed our friendship Martin asked me if I had given any further thought to writing a biography of Truscott, and urged me to take on that task. Thus stimulated, I began my research, and soon became completely captivated by the life and career of this too-long-neglected “dogface soldier.” Lucian Truscott was arguably one of the best combat commanders in World War II, but today is little known outside of military and military history circles, xi where many continue to hold him in high regard and laud his memoirs of his interwar years and World War II.2 In this biography I have examined in depth the influence of his forebears and the heritage of honor, honesty, and courage of conviction they passed on to him; of his family roots in rural Texas; of his growing-up years and his experiences as an elementary schoolteacher in Oklahoma; of his wife, a descendant of Thomas Jefferson, in molding his character ; and of his thirty-year career in the Army, where he earned a reputation as an honest, forthright, outspoken, fearless, and aggressive senior commander, which led to Central Intelligence Agency director Gen. Walter Bedell Smith’s choosing him in 1951 to be the senior CIA officer in postwar Germany, an era of his life about which little has been written.3 xii Preface ...