Eisenhower's peacetime service was unique in several respects, however. His World War I service training troops for the tank corps and a subsequent tank corps assignment at Fort Meade in 1920 gave him an early familiarity with armor that few other officers could match. More significantly, the brigade to which he was assigned was under the command of George S. Patton, with whom Eisenhower forged an enduring friendship. The two men began an intensive study program to prepare themselves for the day when they would be students at the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, methodically working their way through the tactical problems the school had used in previous years. Because of his work with Patton, Eisenhower was a serious student of tactics when he met Brig. Gen. Fox Conner, one of the most important influences in his life.

Eisenhower accompanied Conner to Panama in 1922, where the general assumed command of the 20th Infantry Brigade. The young major became his chief of staff. The two men developed a unique relationship when Conner decided to superintend Eisenhower's military education. Under Conner's tutelage, Eisenhower perfected his administrative and tactical techniques by drafting formal orders for each day's operations in the brigade and by analyzing the tactical problems of fighting on the terrain in Panama. The general also directed an intensive reading program that introduced Eisenhower to Plato and Tacitus, influential thinkers such as Nietzsche, the various military writers of his day, and Clausewitz, whose On War he read three times.

In Socratic dialogues that accompanied Eisenhower's readings, Conner and his student discussed the nature of war. One important aspect of those discussions was Conner's insistence that the Treaty of Versailles made another war inevitable within thirty years, and that any future war would be waged by a coalition of which the United States would be a part. Because of his dialogues with Conner, Eisenhower was well aware of the defects in the allied military command structure of the First World War, and he began pondering the question of coalition warfare as early as 1924.

The eventual consequence of Eisenhower's attendance at the Army's senior military schools was a posting to the War Department in the early 1930s, the first of a series of high-level assignments that accustomed him to dealing with issues of Army-wide significance. In 1930 he became special assistant to General Douglas MacArthur, then Chief of Staff. During those Depression years the Chief of Staff faced an uphill struggle to justify the Army's budget to a Congress intent on slashing military appropriations, while trying to allocate scarce resources to a service with a great

Schooling in the varied tasks of a future Supreme Commander. Captain Eisenhower, at Camp Meade, Maryland, 1920; training troops for the tank corps gave him an early familiarity with armor that few other officers could match. Below, Eisenhower in the Philippines, 1935; for the next four years, his duties in helping to create the defenses of those islands were as much diplomatic as they were military.