Opening paragraphs......................

  
     It is a striking fact that the nation's most famous soldier was born to parents whose religion preached ardent conscientious objection to all mortal wars.  But the truth of a life is never contained in its summarizing labels;  the influences that shaped our thirty-fourth president were deeper, wider, and more idiosyncratic.  As Ike himself acknowledged, he wasn't an exceptional student or a particularly promising military candidate.  He once told his wife, Mamie, "If I'm lucky. I'll be a colonel."  His ambitions didn't reach farther than that.  Yet he went on to become Supreme Allied Commander, assemble the greatest fighting force in the history of mankind, defeat Adolf Hitler's war machine, save Western civilization from fascism, and manage to get elected president twice by decisive majorities.  He had never dreamed of being a general, much less president of the United States, but that's where life took him.

-Bret Baier with Catherine Whitney,  Three Days In January:  Dwight Eisenhower's Final Mission