Beetle: The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith

6. Born to Be a Soldier

109  6  Born to Be a Soldier Americans are a paradoxical people: though wary of foreign entanglements , when drawn into hostilities, they are at once strikingly bellicose and peculiarly unmilitary. During the years before the Great War—except for Grand Army of the Republic parades and bursts of patriotism, such as during the war with Spain—Americans troubled themselves little with martial thoughts. A citizen could easily live a lifetime without laying eyes on a soldier of the regular army. Young Ike Eisenhower captured the national mood. When asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, Ike answered without hesitation, Honus Wagner. Baseball greats Wagner, Ty Cobb, and “Christian Gentleman” Christy Mathewson held the thrall of most young American boys in the first decade of the twentieth century , not military heroes. Unlike other boys, Walter Bedell Smith wanted nothing else in life than to become a soldier. Hoosier Boy Smith described his boyhood as “normal, middle class, substantial,” but that was only a half-truth. The Smiths were a family of moderate means. Beetle came into the world on 5 October 1895. His father, William Long Smith, worked as a silk buyer for the Pettis Dry Goods Company; the family also owned substantial shares in the firm. Beetle’s mother, Ida Frances Bedell, was the daughter of German immigrants. Her parents emigrated from the Rhine valley, coming to Indianapolis via Cincinnati and Madison, Indiana. The Smiths lived—together with Ida’s parents— in a two-story wood-and-brick frame house at 1713 Ashland Street on the verdant north side of Indianapolis.1 Christened Walter according to the traditional rites of the Catholic Church, from infancy everyone called him Bedell (pronounced BEE- 110  BEETLE dull). He suffered from an onslaught of infant maladies so serious that family members thought he might die. His anxious mother nursed him back to health, and even after he recovered, she carried him about on a pillow bundled in a thick blanket. Under the watchful ministrations of his protective mother—and subjected to a heavy German diet—baby Beetle grew ruddy and fat. Family members began to call him “Boodle.”2 Family and friends recalled Beetle as a nice, clean-cut boy but with a marked obstinate streak. Other than the chores he performed around the house, Beetle spent his childhood in all manner of outdoor activities. In summer he and his cohorts fished, played sandlot baseball, and rollerskated . Perhaps in anticipation of Indianapolis’s famous Brickyard, they constructed a racetrack in a vacant field, where they staged bicycle races all summer. In winter they played skinny, a variant of hockey.3 Sunday mass featured prominently in the Smith household; Beetle remained a dedicated Catholic his entire life. At Oliver Perry Morton Public School, his third-grade teacher found him a joy to teach. “He was a marvelous reader and a very intelligent child,” she remembered; his advanced reading skills were a product of nightly sessions with his mother.4 Smith remembered, “I always wanted to be an army officer. I never thought of anything else.” His uncle Paul Bedell confirmed this observation : “[Beetle] had been a soldier from the time he was big enough to walk.” A member of the Smith clan had fought in every American war since the Revolution. The family traced their ancestry to Samuel Stanhope Smith, a resident of West Jersey. A propertied family, the Smiths numbered MG Thomas Mufflin—aide-de-camp to George Washington, signatory to the Constitution, and governor of Pennsylvania—among their kinsmen. Smith took pride in his military roots. More immediately, his grandfather had seen action in the Franco-Prussian War. A spiked helmet and a needle-gun offered material substance to his grandfather’s bloodthirsty accounts of fighting the French.5 As further proof of his childhood obsession with militaria, Beetle’s favorite playthings were his assortment of wax, wooden, and metal toy soldiers. He spent hours playing with them, arraying them in battle formations . Whenever the Smiths went visiting, Beetle brought along a cigar box filled with his most prized pieces and quietly sat by himself, orchestrating a make-believe battle. Smith would be a loner and an inveterate collector all his life.6 His love for the military prompted more than collecting miniatures. A martinet even then, “Boodle” Smith organized and drilled his neighborhood pals. Broomsticks substituted for muskets and hobbyhorses for cavalry. Under the tireless gaze of their captain, the troops marched and [3.129.67.26] Project MUSE...