Sublime

Administrative responsibility came naturally. He handled the staff adroitly and was always able to cajole crusty Cambridge printers into opening the forms and remaking a page for last-minute submissions by tardy college journalists. “In his geniality was a kind of frictionless command,” his co-editor, W. Russell Bowie, recalled.53

The legacy of this quintessential man-behind-the-scenes indeed endures. As Black Jack Pershing’s chief of operations and Dwight Eisenhower’s mentor, Fox Conner left an unmistakable imprint upon his nation’s military history. Were they alive today, Pershing and Eisenhower, as well as George Marshall and George Patton—all titans of 20th-century Ameri

“tough and competent.”

There amid the cigar smoke and rollicking laughs Billy had lifted one of the chains, testing it for heft. He was nineteen years old and had no idea that his war contained such things, and what a damn shame for him and the rest of Bravo that it has not been won in the two weeks since.

“He was a terrific listener,” Neuwirth says. “It’s one thing to have good ideas, it’s another to recognize when others do. . . . If there was a pony in your pile of horse manure, he would find it.”

“If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn’t plan your mission properly.” —Colonel David Hackworth