I started reading Michael Korda’s superb biography of Dwight Eisenhower. “Ike: An American Hero”. It’s part of my book of the week program.

Korda cuts through a lot of unncessary detail to give the essence of the man and the character he had and was. I am using material from the book this week in a Beyond Today television program on the subject of character. Here is a story from the young Ike’s life to illustrate:

“…the most important incident of his childhood was not his struggle with an angry goose, but his brother Earl’s loss of an eye. Dwight has been whittling with a knife in the tool shed, and put the knife down on a windowsill, out of Earl’s reach. While Dwight’s attention was diverted, Earl, who was then three, managed to climb up on a chair and try to grasp the knife, which slipped from his hand and fell, piercing the child’s eye. In this case, there was no draconian punishment but both parents seem to have felt that “accidents will happen” and that this was lesson enough. But Dwight could not help feeling that he had been left in charge of a younger brother and could have–ought to have–prevented the accident. As late as 1966, Dwight Eisenhower was still blaming himself for what had happened, and wrestling with “my feeling of regret…heightened by a sense of guilt”. In old age he was sill alarmed when his grandchildren played with anything that cause an eye injury. the accident in the tool shed surely helped to form one of his most salient characteristics, far more obvious (and productive) than his inherited quick temper–his extreme sense of responsibility. In later life, Eisenhower might be impulsive sometimes, and always quick to blow off steam, but he never shirked responsibility, or failed to take responsibilities seriously, however burdensome and unwelcome they might be. In his own unsparing view of the matter, he had failed to act responsibly once, with serious and irreparable consequences for Earl, and he was determined that it would never happen again”. (Page 73)

And that is why as Allied troops were embarking on June 5 for the beaches of Noramandy he wrote out a letter taking full responsibility if the invasion failed. I’ll tell that story tomorrow.