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Episode 2: Eisenhower and the Hellish 1919 Mud Convoy · Most Fascinating Stories

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  [Rebecca] Welcome to Most Fascinating Stories, where we uncover the real, well-sourced, and lesser-known tales behind history's most prominent figures.
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  [Rebecca] I'm your host, Rebecca.
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  [Rebecca] Today we turn our gaze to Dwight David Eisenhower.
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  [Rebecca] History remembers him as the supreme allied commander who orchestrated the liberation of Europe on D-Day, and as the two-term president who transformed the economic landscape of America by signing the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956.
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  [Rebecca] Today, millions of drivers travel seamlessly across the United States on 50,000 miles of asphalt and concrete, rarely asking where the vision for this colossal highway system came from.
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  [Rebecca] The truth is, it was born not in a boardroom or a congressional committee, but in the blinding dust, broken axles, and knee-deep mud of an agonizing, forgotten military expedition in 1919.
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  [Rebecca] Here is George with the story.
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  [George] In June of 1919, 28-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Dwight D.
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  [George] Eisenhower was in a foul mood.
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  [George] The First World War had just ended in Europe, and while his West Point classmates like George Patton had earned medals and glory in the trenches of France, young Eisenhower had spent the war stuck in Pennsylvania, commanding a tank training center at Camp Colt.
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  [George] He was an exceptional administrator and a master tactician, but he felt his military career was effectively over.
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  [George] Peacetime was shrinking the army, promotions were frozen, and Eisenhower was desperate for a challenge.
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  [George] That challenge arrived in the form of a bold, unprecedented announcement from the war department.
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  [George] The United States Army was going to attempt the first transcontinental motorized convoy in American history.
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  [George] They planned to drive a massive military column from Washington, D.C.
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  [George] All the way to San Francisco, California.
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  [George] The purpose was twofold, to test the durability of modern military vehicles under peacetime field conditions, and to thank the American public for their wartime sacrifices through a series of parades across the nation's heartland.
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  [George] Eisenhower immediately volunteered to go as an official observer for the tank corps.
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  [George] Along with his close friend Major Sereno Brett, Eisenhower packed his field gear, polished his leather boots, and prepared for what was billed as a triumphant cross-country parade.
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  [George] He had no idea that he was stepping into a 62-day survival trial.
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  [George] On the sunny morning of July 7, 1919, the convoy assembled at the Zero Milestone on the Ellipse, just south of the White House.
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  [George] The scene was magnificent.
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  [George] Brass bands played patriotic marches.
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  [George] Secretary of War Newton Baker delivered a stirring speech, crowds cheered and waved American flags.
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  [George] Lined up along the street were 79 heavy military vehicles, manned by nearly 300 soldiers and two dozen officers.
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  [George] There were massive five-ton Class B Liberty trucks, ambulances, light delivery vans, mobile repair trailers, field kitchens, motorcycles with sidecars, and even a colossal six-ton pontoon bridging truck.
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  [George] At precisely 11:15 a.m., engines roared to life, exhaust filled the air, and the great convoy rolled west.
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  [George] For the first few days through Maryland and Pennsylvania, the expedition seemed like a glorious holiday.
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  [George] The Lincoln Highway was paved with asphalt and macadam.
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  [George] The trucks cruised comfortably at 12 to 15 miles per hour, and in every town, thousands of citizens greeted the soldiers with platters of fried chicken, homemade apple pies, and iced tea.
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  [George] Eisenhower enjoyed the camaraderie, smoking his pipe in the passenger seat of an open staff car.
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  [George] But as soon as the convoy crossed the Ohio River, the paved roads abruptly disappeared.
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  [George] Ahead lay two thousand miles of raw, unpaved American dirt.
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  [George] In 1919, outside of major cities, American roads were little more than packed earth wagon trails mapped out in the 19th century.
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  [George] And when the convoy hit the Midwest, summer thunderstorms descended with unyielding fury.
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  [George] In Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska, torrential rains turned the black prairie soil into a bottomless quagmire of thick, gumbo clay.
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  [George] It was not merely mud, it was an adhesive, sucking sludge that clung to wheels like wet cement.
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  [George] Ten-ton cargo trucks sank to their axles within minutes.
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  [George] Their solid rubber tires spun uselessly, digging trenches four feet deep.
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  [George] The convoy ground to a complete standstill.
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  [George] Parade uniforms were quickly abandoned.
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  [George] Eisenhower stripped off his officer's tunic, rolled up his sleeves, and waded into the muck beside the enlisted men.
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  [George] Day after day, under pouring rain, the men worked twelve-hour shifts hauling vehicles out of mud holes using heavy ropes, block and tackle, and tree trunks for leverage.
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  [George] Worse still were the bridges.
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  [George] County road bridges throughout the rural Midwest had been built for horse-drawn wagons carrying a ton of hay, not for heavy steel military trucks weighing eight to ten tons.
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  [George] Time after time, as a Liberty truck rolled onto a wooden trestle bridge, the beams would groan, crack, and collapse into the creek below.
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  [George] The convoy was forced to halt while military engineers cut down nearby trees with two-man saws, rebuilding bridges on the spot just to advance fifty feet.
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  [George] Progress slowed from fifty miles a day to less than fifteen.
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  [George] Men slept in wet blankets by the side of the road, exhausted and covered in grime.
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  [George] If the Midwest was a trial by mud, the American West was a trial by fire.
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  [George] By the time the battered convoy reached Wyoming and Utah, the temperature soared over 100 degrees.
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  [George] The dirt roads of the plains were replaced by blinding alkali dust that penetrated every gasket, carburetor, and soldier's lungs.
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  [George] Radiators boiled over every ten miles.
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  [George] Water was strictly rationed, one canteen per man per day.
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  [George] In late August, the convoy faced its most terrifying hurdle the Great Salt Lake Desert.
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  [George] Local guides warned them that the southern trail across the salt flats was treacherous, but there was no alternative route.
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  [George] Beneath a thin, brittle crust of dried white salt lay an ocean of soupy, grey quicksand.
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  [George] The heavy trucks broke through the salt crust almost immediately.
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  [George] Within an hour, twelve heavy vehicles were swallowed up to their chassis in burning saline mud.
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  [George] Tires could find no purchase whatsoever.
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  [George] The heat was suffocating.
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  [George] To survive, the soldiers were forced to perform an agonizing labor.
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  [George] They unloaded heavy wooden planks from the supply trucks, carried them forward on foot, laid them beneath the tires.
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  [George] Drove the trucks forward twelve feet, picked up the planks from behind, and carried them forward again.
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  [George] For four grueling days, in a blinding expanse of white glare, Eisenhower and his men moved like ants across the desert, advancing at an excruciating pace of less than three miles per hour.
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  [George] Mechanical carnage was everywhere.
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  [George] In his logbook, Eisenhower meticulously recorded the damage: broken fan belts, burned-out clutches, cracked steering knuckles, strip differentials, and snapped drive shafts.
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  [George] Yet, amidst the exhaustion, Eisenhower marveled at the resilience of the men.
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  [George] Mechanics worked through the night by lantern light, fashioning replacement parts from scrap metal, determined that not a single vehicle would be abandoned.
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  [George] Finally, on September 6, 1919, 62 days after departing the White House, a battered, dented, dust-caked column of trucks rolled down the slopes of the Sierra Nevada, boarded a ferry in Oakland, and arrived in San Francisco.
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  [George] They had covered 3,251 miles in 62 days, averaging a miserable 5.6 miles per hour.
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  [George] They had endured 96 major breakdowns, 29 serious vehicle accidents, and had destroyed countless wooden bridges.
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  [George] The official parade in San Francisco was celebrated with medals and banquets, but Eisenhower was deeply troubled.
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  [George] In his formal report to the War Department, the young lieutenant colonel issued a stark and prophetic warning.
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  [George] The road network of the United States was utterly primitive and completely incapable of supporting military movement.
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  [George] If a foreign adversary launched an amphibious invasion of either the Atlantic or Pacific coast, the United States Army could not even transport troops and supplies across its own continent to defend the nation.
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  [George] The lesson burned into Eisenhower's soul.
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  [George] A quarter of a century later, General Eisenhower stood in Europe as supreme commander, watching Allied armies race across Germany on the modern, divided Reichstabon.
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  [George] He immediately connected the dots back to the summer of 1919 in the Utah mud.
• 8:59
  [George] In 1953, when Eisenhower was inaugurated as the 34th President of the United States, fixing America's broken roads became one of his highest personal priorities.
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  [George] On June 29, 1956, President Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act, launching a $25 billion initiative to construct 41,000 miles of high-speed, controlled access interstate highways, the largest public works project in human history.
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  [George] Today, that system bears his name, the Dwight D.
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  [George] Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.
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  [George] Whenever we drive at 70 miles an hour across the American heartland, we are traveling on a vision forged in the sweat, grit, and mud of a young soldier who spent two months pushing broken trucks out of the desert sand.
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  [Rebecca] Eisenhower's 1919 convoy is a powerful testament to how personal hardship can shape national destiny.
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  [Rebecca] Without those 62 miserable days in the Midwest mud, the interstate highway system that connected modern America might never have been built.
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  [Rebecca] It proves that sometimes the greatest forward strides begin with a broken axle.
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  [Rebecca] Thank you for listening to most fascinating stories.
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  [Rebecca] I'm Rebecca.
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  [Rebecca] Join us next time for another forgotten chapter of history.
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  [Rebecca] Until then, stay tuned.