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Introduction
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Introduction A journalist once called Under Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson “the toughest man in Washington” for his “all-out” efforts in managing U.S. mobilization in World War II.1 An informal poll conducted after the war ranked Patterson second only to Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall as the person most responsible for America’s victory over the Axis powers. The memoir that follows recounts Patterson’s own formative military experiences in the First World War. Writing for his family in 1933, fifteen years after the “War to End All Wars,” Patterson did not intend for his reminiscences to be published. Because he had “kept no diary” and “had no papers before me to refresh my memory,” he modestly judged his “story” to be of Robert Patterson in World War I uniform, 1919. From collection of the Patterson family. xiv Introduction “little interest” to the “general reader” and thus restricted it “to the events in which I took a personal part.”2 Nonetheless, the very personal memoir published herein is a remarkable rendering of what it was like to be a line officer of infantry during the so-called Great War.3 It tells us much about the personal experience of war and of the man himself. Born in Glens Falls, New York, in 1891, Robert Porter Patterson graduated from Union College and Harvard Law School, and joined the distinguished Wall Street firm of Root, Clark, Buckner & Howland in 1915. Following service on the Mexican border in 1916 as a private in the New York National Guard and with America’s entry into World War I, the young lawyer earned a commission as a “Ninety Day Wonder” at the first Plattsburg Officers Training Camp of 1917. As a captain in the 306th Infantry regiment of New York’s famous 77th “Statue of Liberty” division, Patterson participated in the major battles from July to November 1918. In what he describes as the “greatest adventure of my life,” he earned the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism during an August skirmish along the Vesle River near the tiny French village of Bazoches. Patterson’s resulting bond with the citizen-soldiers of F Company endured for decades, as he kept in close touch and left legacies to several comrades when he died in January 1952. His steely determination to do all that was possible for the American “GI” in World War II stemmed from his own personal experiences in the Great War. So impressed was Patterson with the resilience and gallantry of his own doughboys that he vowed, as his biographer notes, that “no effort should be spared in reciprocating their trust and promoting their welfare.”4 “We do not ask our boys in combat to do an adequate job,” he would say. “We ask them to do their best. We can do no less.”5 President Herbert Hoover appointed Patterson in 1930 as the U.S. District Court judge of the Southern District of New York, and in 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt elevated him to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Despite such exalted standing as a jurist, the forty-nine-year-old Patterson was obediently performing Kitchen Police (KP) duty at another Plattsburg training camp in July 1940 when he was promoted from “private” to become assistant secretary of war.6 Despite his personal preference for active service as a combat infantry officer, Patterson heeded the call to become Secretary Henry L. Stimson’s principal collaborator in running the War Department for the next five years.7 As assistant secretary and then under secretary of war, Patterson negotiated the contracts and supervised the delivery of more than a hundred billion dollars’ worth of supplies and equipment to America’s far-flung forces in World War II. President Harry S. Truman nearly appointed Patterson to the U.S. [44.197.195.36] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 06:53 GMT) Introduction xv Supreme Court before naming him to succeed Stimson as secretary of war in September 1945. The new secretary led the fight for unification of the armed forces under the National Security Act of 1947 and the creation of the Defense Department. His appointment of and strong support for the Gillem Board’s recommendations in 1946 for the postwar utilization of “Negro Manpower” laid the foundation for President Truman’s executive order to desegregate the armed forces two years later.8 Patterson returned to his law practice in 1947 and later...