Ike Eisenhower: My Friend in Basic Training

Dr. Phillip Leveque has spent his life as a Combat Infantryman, Physician, Pharmacologist and Forensic Toxicologist.

Courtesy: dwp.bigplanet.com

(MOLALLA, Ore.) - I can see readers looking at this and murmuring, "What in the Hell is this guy writing about?"

I don't blame them. When it happened I scarcely believed it myself.

In WWII I was lucky if anyone who served as a combat infantryman considers himself lucky.

By the time I was 18 and had to register for the Draft I had finished my first college year as a chemistry major which was considered one of the toughest majors on the campus and a critical occupation for the war effort. It seemed that after every exam we lost about one quarter of the class. We started out with 258 students and by my senior year there were only two of us left.

When I did register I found that he chariman of hte Draft Board was the father of the Professor of Chemical Engineering. I was told that if I kept my frades "up" that they would defer me as long as possible.

By the fall of 1943 there were few men on campus. Some were discharged vets who looked like they had been through the mill. It was awful how they looked. I found out I couldn't be an officer because I didn't have a whole index/trigger finger. It had been cut in half when I was 4-years old. I could be an infantry rifleman though?

I graduated in April 1944 in chemistry and assumed the Army could use a bright young chemist. In fact I was sent to a chemical warfare camp for basic training.

The second day I was there we had mail call and everyone gathered hopefully around. Then came the call "Eisenhower" and everybody's head snappped around.

I'll be damned. There he was and he even looked like our General. He said he was a distant cousin and since the General became so well known, "everybody calls us Ike".

For whatever reason, several of us were chosen as squad leaders. He was in the first platoon and I was in the second. As squad leaders we had priveleges the others didn't have: no hated KP (kitchen police), we were dayroom orderlies (in charge). We were the "elite" with a bunch of about 200 rookie slobs.

In our 6th week, Eisenhower, myself and 7 others were sent to the 89th Infantry Division to be Gas Warfare non-coms. I think only a couple became that. I became a Battalion Scout Pointman and Forward Observer. I barely survived the war.

We knew from our bull sessions that Eisenhower was a Petroleum Engineer and also had been working for a large oil company. Why he was drafted and put in the Infantry was a standard Army foul up.

After the war we found our that he had been pulled out of the Infantry and became the Senior Petroleum Officer for Europe. They couldn't make him an officer but he had his own C-47 transport plane with pilots and he flew all over the place with proper papers to get him into "officers only" hotels, etc.

Talk about a lucky Dogface Infantryman. Ike Eisenhower was it.

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Got a question or comment for Dr. Leveque?
Email him: Newsroom@Salem-News.com

More information on the history of Dr. Leveque can be found in his book, General Patton's Dogface Soldier of WWII about his own experiences "from a foxhole".
Order the book by mail by following this link: Dogface Soldier

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